Archiving a birthday

In my previous post I spoke of not acquiring many cards through purchases as of late, and why that is. However, I failed (intentionally) to mention my not too long ago acquisition of many cards through an overly generous gift.

I'm always a bit hesitant to bring up my birthday, primarily because I don't want it to sound like I'm fishing for well wishes or any other sort of salutations (trust me, I'm not!). But since it's pertinent to how I came into all of these packs, it will be necessary to make mention of it.

Before I get to these particular packs, I will set up this short and, probably uninteresting story, by saying that after receiving the lot of packs from Oscar's Lucky 13 game, I knew I had to get my hands on more 2017 Archives. The problem was, like it has been for a lot of folks, they just haven't been in stock anywhere around here. Well, I guess technically that's not true, as I did see one whole blaster box for sale at the Walmart, but I had my heart set on getting more hangar packs, so I ended up passing on it (it was gone the next time I went).

So fast forward to a little over a month ago, when it came time for my least favorite day of the year to make it's annual appearance... my birthday! This year's "big" day happened to coincide with a ten day trip that my mom was taking back home to Portland. Since I had heard about most of her plans before the trip, I knew generally where she would and wouldn't be, which brings us to the packs.

Since I hadn't been having any luck finding the Archives here, I decided to ask her if she could look for any back there, especially since I knew that at some point she would be right near a particular Target in Vancouver (Washington) that could always be counted on to have a well stocked card aisle.

I'm sure much has changed in the couple of years since I moved away, but apparently that Target has changed a bit, as even during the height of Judge-mania, they still had a plentiful bounty of all the hottest current products. Now when I asked her to look for any, I was really hoping to just get a couple of packs, so you can imagine my surprise when upon my mom's return, she gifted me with a huge stack of 17 packs (I opened three before realizing I should get a picture of them). Even though I'm not a big fan of getting birthday presents, I have to admit that I was thankful to have received these.

This post ended up being a touch lengthy, so I decided to limit the base cards to just eight examples from each of the three different designs. If you've ever read my blog before, you shouldn't be too terribly surprised to see that I ended up featuring mostly older players.

The 1960 design is my favorite of the three designs used for the set. And the Gehrig is probably tied for first as far as my favorite card from the set goes.

The only real problem I encountered with all these packs was that collation for the 1960 portion of the checklist seemed to be much worse than the other two, I mean I must of opened up four packs that Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, and Noah Syndergaard all back to back. The '82 and '92 sections didn't have that kind of repeated mixture, so I don't if that's normal for the 60's, or if was just that way for me.

I don't have any sort of affinity for the '82 Topps set, so this would probably be my least favorite of the three designs.

More than a few people have already commented on how great the Monte Irvin card is, so I will just say that I am in complete agreement with everyone else's sentiments. I really like the color job they did on Jimmie Foxx as well.

I didn't think I would like the '92 design as much as I do. Whether it's looking back to the old timers, or showcasing today's young talent, it just seems to work for me. I had to show Lou, what with us sharing the same birthday and all (different years of course). It doesn't seem like you see Reggie as an Oriole very often. And how great is this Bob Feller? It's tied with the Gehrig for my favorite of the base set.

Randy doesn't look quite as ornery as he usually does. The coloring of the Ruth card is really well done too.

A quick note before I get to the non-base stuff. I think normally your supposed to get one of the Rookie Stars and one insert in each pack, but for whatever reason, about 2/3 of my packs had a Rookie Stars and two inserts in them. I just thought I should mention that, just in case anyone wonders why their are more inserts than there were packs.

You get one of these Rookie Stars in every pack. A ten card set, of which I only now need one to complete. I left out Yoan Moncada, only because his card has already made a recent appearance in the Oscar post.

I got a bunch of these Bazooka's, including a few duplicates. I love the background on the Bregman. And the Koufax is pretty neat as well, although I think the little kids in background that were trying (and succeeding) to get in to the shot, is what makes that card so great.

I haven't really figured out if I like these Retro Original's yet. I guess which ever way I end up leaning, I at least got some decent names.

My least favorite part of this year's Archives release... the Derek Jeter Retrospective insert set. I can't even begin to tell you how uninteresting these are to me. After I pulled my first one, I kept saying "Please don't let me get another one" multiple times before opening each of the remaining packs. As you can clearly see, that mantra didn't work out so well.

I managed to get four of the peach parallels, which are numbered to /199. The Jim Bunning is my favorite, but the Galarraga is pretty neat to. I'm not familiar with T.J. Rivera, but going by his stats, he seems to be having a decent rookie season.

The blues are numbered to /75. Young Mr. Alfaro seems to be a prospect of some note, who thus far, has only seen limited action.

Hey look, another Andres Galarraga parallel. This time in red, which are limited to just /25. I can certainly think of worse players to get two different parallels of. I don't remember him too much from his time with the Expos, but I do recall those couple of really productive seasons he had in Colorado very well. I can't really remember why at this point, but I do remember following the ups and downs of the Rockies during their first couple of years. I suspect that it might have been just because they were new and sort of close to Portland, certainly closer than that other fishy expansion team. Whatever the reason was for that interest I had in the team, it obviously didn't last. If it had, you might be reading another Rockies related blog right now.

It's a little hard to tell, but this is a Jacob DeGrom Gold Winner parallel. For obvious reasons, these parallels were only used for the 1992 portion of the checklist. The red parallel above was more difficult to get odds wise (I forgot to check one of the wrappers for the exact numbers), but for some reason, this one falling at 1:110 packs, (I think) felt like the bigger get. Another really cool image on this one as well.

Another rookie that I wasn't familiar with, who also seems to be having a solid season. Batting .284 with 113 hits so far, he is leading N.L. shortstops in multiple categories (never mind that one of those is errors committed). I might hang on to this one for a bit, just in case he turns into something special. I have to say though that his signature leaves a little to be desired, but I guess that's to be expected from the youngsters these days.

Now that is a cool card! A great image combined with an attractive signature. I was very happy to pull this as I believe it's now my first autograph from a member of the '95 Braves championship team.

So in an attempt wrap this one up, I will say that I really enjoyed opening up all of these packs, and I was satisfied with what I ended up getting. I don't know if it is or not, but I kind of felt like this was the equivalent of getting a hobby box. I will be adding set needs to my want list sometime in the next couple of days, so if anyone has any duplicates, I would love to try and complete this set. Also, if anyone isn't working on the set but is interested in any particular player(s)/team(s), just let me know what you're looking for as I have plenty of extras that are yours for the taking.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.