Ok, so my long (14 months) self-imposed pack buying boycott came to a crashing halt Saturday afternoon. I totally blame Meijer for pricing these so low that I just couldn't say no. But I did, and I'm still just as mad as I was 14 months ago. This looks like a great place for me to bitch awhile as well as pontificate about the state of the hobby in general.
The packs that got me were the 2008 Topps Series 2 baseball. I already had a set of Series 1 that I put together by buying somebody else's leftovers but I never got around to picking up a Series 2 set. I was hoping to wait a couple of years and just find a good deal on one of those Tiger versions of the factory sets. But these cards were too discounted for me to pass up.
These were the jumbo packs of 36 cards that were priced at $4.99 when they came out. Meijer had them marked down to $2.99, with an additional sale of 20% off all cards, bringing the final total down to $2.39 a pack. I shuffled my feet for awhile, looked down at the ground, and then held my breath as I picked up 10 packs and checked out at the register.
Perhaps ready to give Topps a second chance, I eagerly opened the packs when I got home. Some good, some bad, but mostly the feeling I had afterwards that I was wasting my time and money trying to collect a fucking Topps base set.
The good and the bad are sort of related. I absolutely hate insert cards. That's because so many of them are piss poor I don't get who the hell would be interested in them. The Topps Stars are among the worst inserts ever. (Even though I did get one of .26...) The Year In Review cards are a cool concept, but a 180 card insert set spread across three series? Really?
The one that chaps my ass most of all is the card of FDR and Herbert Hoover. Where did this marriage come from? I didn't read FDR's biography hoping there were five pages about Hank Greenberg in there somewhere! Not only do I not give a rat's ass about political cards, but these are printed on cheaper stock then the unnumbered checklists. Seriously, the Toppstown game cards that come in every pack are nicer than these.
Ok, I'm done with that rant. Now for the good. I like these jumbo packs because you only get one insert per pack. In a pack that only has 6 cards that makes it virtually impossible to build a set. But in a pack that has 36 cards, that's a ratio I can take of having to write off a card that's not part of the set.
That left 350 cards to try and build a 330 card set. Not since mid 80's Fleer could you pull something like that off, so I was prepared that I wasn't going to get the whole set. But how many different cards did I get?
Two hundred and twenty one. That's right I got almost exactly two-thirds of the set. That's ridiculous. Knowing just enough about probability as I do, that means I would likely have to buy another 10 packs to have a realistic shot of finishing this set. And that's where I really get juiced.
Yeah, I only paid $23.99 for these 10 packs. With tax it was a hair over $25. Which means that I'm going to have to shell out another $25 to try and complete this set. That's $50 for one fucking series of Topps if I'm lucky. That's outrageous, and that's not as bad as it could be. These were originally $5 packs of cards. Last year you would have had to shell out $100 to try and complete this series. HEY TOPPS, NO WONDER YOU ARE LOSING LONGTIME CUSTOMERS LEFT AND RIGHT!!!
Well, I'm almost finished with my second beer and now I'm done ranting. Yes, my sucker ass went and bought 10 more packs today that I need to open, so I'll have more to bitch about later. (And while I'm scanning a few cards, I opened the first card and got a card of Abe Lincoln. If anybody has some Tigers inserts they'd be willing to trade for these crappy political cards, like Abe Lincoln, I'm all ears. Get it? All ears? I'm done.)
3 comments:
I haven't bought current cards since the early '90s, when 10 card companies were putting out 50 sets! So bear with me if the answer is common knowledge: What is Topps reasoning for putting political cards in a baseball card set?
2008 was an election year so both Topps and Upper Deck had presidential inserts. Topps also had individual cards for the major 2008 candidates as well (my daughter pulled a Rudy Guliani card once).
Meijer was also selling boxes of 2006 Topps at 70% off, so we bit on those last week. I haven't run the numbers but it does seem like the variability in the packs isn't totally random, common cards greatly outweighing any stars. But that could just be my perception as well.
I bought a 3,000 count box of 2008 Series 1 Topps and Upper Deck cards when they first came out from a guy who bought several boxes just to pull the Candidate cards.
I paid $75 for the box and was able to get 3 complete Topps sets and 2 complete UD sets (minus the sp cards). I kept 1 Topps and 1 UD and put the other three on ebay and easily made back what I spent.
It amazed me that someone would only want the candidate cards (he left a John Edwards in the box, so I ended up with one anyway.)
Wade, I think it might be age for me, but even when I pull cards of the biggest stars of today they're not really "stars" in my head like it was pulling cards of Ryan, Rose, Reggie, Schmidt, Carew, Brett, Yount, Carlton, Seaver, etc from when I was younger. One of the packs I opened the other night had a Pujols and a Jeter card, and it was sort of like, "well that's cool I got those two guys."
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