Card shop Friday

It’d been far too long since my last visit to the ol’ card shop – the holidays and just being flat-out exhausted will do that to ya.  Plus, I’ve had to actually work at work lately, which puts quite a damper on my collecting.  And really, there just hasn’t been anything I’ve wanted lately that I haven’t purchased online.

I’ve purchased three individual Sweet Spot packs which have already resulted in a 1/1 bat barrel autograph, a low numbered Sweet Beginnings autograph, and a “regular” sweet spot autograph – there’s nowhere to go but down.  Besides, there was only one pack left in the box, and I assume it’s from the same box my dad and I have already raided, which means the good stuff has already been pulled.  Come to think of it, I should’ve offered $10 for the pack since we know it’s a dud, relatively speaking.  Next time.

And up until a couple weeks ago I was set to purchase a pack of 2009 Ballpark Collection, but then I went and got all impulsive and bought an entire box of the ’08 version.  No need for more at this point, but I made a mental note of the price for future reference.  And I was oh-so-tempted to try my hand at a box of Bowman Sterling just for the sheer shine-factor of the cards inside each mini-box, but I forgot to make a withdrawal from my baseball card fund this morning (aka envelope with money inside), so I had a very limited budget with absolutely no wiggle room and Bowman Sterling would’ve meant NOT getting something that I actually needed.

And crap, now that I’m back at work, I just remembered that I’d wanted to check out the box of “vintage” Becketts.  Forgot about that… Again, next time.  So I walked away with stuff I needed and some stuff just for fun.

Supplies, booooooooooo!

Packs, yaaaaaaaaay!!!  Well, maybe.

Topps Unique hasn’t exactly been well received, but I wanted to try a few packs.  The box was basically fresh, so maybe I’ll luck box my way into a bat knob or MLB logo relic.  And I almost bought a couple packs of ’09 Allen & Ginter until I noticed that the price of 2009 Bowman HTA jumbo had been slashed in half.  With reasonable chances of some sort of autograph, I figured, why the heck not?  I’ve always like Bowman, but even the shop owners agreed with me that the product has become irrelevant, brought down in large part because of the 1,983,498,039 sets in each pack/box.  But I’ve always been a fan, and the stuff is cheap, so I still may go ahead and put together the 2009 base set.  That is, if I can figure out which cards in these packs are actually part of it.

Wish me luck.  I’ll post any hits, and if there’s nothing good you’ll see the results in a “one pic pack rip” down the road.