Barnes & Noble >>> Target

Christmas is just over a month away and my daughter's 16th birthday is even sooner, so I've been doing a lot of shopping for girly things I know nothing about. We're visiting my family in Connecticut for Thanksgiving, so I had to order what I could last week to ensure it would arrive before this coming Wednesday.

A Barnes & Noble opened nearby just as the school year was starting, and both my girls wanted books, so I stopped in on my lunch break. There was a woman practically harassing the cashiers and manager, over something that was going to be released the next day. The lady claimed that Wal-Mart and Target had already released them, so she couldn't understand why B&N wouldn't sell to her. She tried all the excuses -- you're losing out on sales, flippers are going to buy them all up. Can you hide one for me? Can you limit them to one per customer?

The staff stood firm - we're going to follow store guidelines, ma'am. Good on them. But now I was curious... what the heck was coming out the next day that this woman was going psycho for?!?!

Just in time for the holiday season, the highly anticipated Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution—Phantasmal Flames drops Nov. 14 

Part of me wanted to come back that morning and buy up all the Pokemon I could, but the collector in me sympathized with the kid who asked for them. My mom used to go to toy stores at the crack of dawn and ask the stock workers if they were unloading a fresh supply of Starting Lineup figures so she could get first look at the selection. 

And so, as a way to support the store for standing firm while also appeasing the collecting gods, I bought some cards.

Apparently this has been a thing for a while; we used to have a much bigger B&N that closed about three years ago. Never saw any cards in there. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection -- four or five different brands of football, a small amount of baseball, and Topps Holiday Basketball. 

Yes, Topps is back in the basketball business. I've seen some interesting breaks of Flagship, but didn't know there was a Holiday release until I saw two mega boxes sitting on the shelf.

I don't care if there's a towel relic of some first-round bust in here, I'm just happy to have my purchase in hand..

The closest big box retailer to me is Target, and they almost always have a good selection of sports cards. I stopped in to shop for my girls and naturally checked the card aisle for Topps Update baseball and Upper Deck hockey. They had neither. I'm used to Target not having any hockey (they had a couple blasters of last year's Skybox Metal. Ugh) But ... no baseball?!?! Very little football, too.

Target had gone all in on Topps basketball; 80% of the card aisle was NBA product. I had to order the cards I wanted on Target's website because they are not available in stores. 

And so, I went home and ordered everything I was going to buy. Delivery was scheduled for Thursday. 

My soon-to-be 16 yr old had her first detention that afternoon (three tardies) and would have been home at 2:45 p.m. on any other day. My 13 year old comes home around 3:10 p.m. I texted her this:

NOT GOOD!!!! We didn't get the f**cking box!!!

Someone must have swiped it off our porch in the 15-20 minute gap between delivery and my daughter's arrival. Son. Of. A. Bitch. $150 in merch - more than half of which was cards - gone. 

There were more deliveries on the way, Friday and Saturday. I ran home as soon as I saw the delivery photo on Friday, then ran back when I saw a FedEx truck on my lunch break. Picked those up without incident. Saturday though... that was the big one. 

First year without my wife/their mom + sweet 16 b-day + Christmas = $800 laptop. This was me all day Saturday:

Needless to say the laptop arrived safely. One more delivery tomorrow and gift giving is just about done.

But I needed to fill that megabox-sized hole from losing my merch. I've been pulling double parent duty for 2+ months, working and cleaning and shopping for the girls. I deserve a little retail therapy, no? 

I wasn't going be too greedy and buy hobby boxes from my LCS for triple digits. And I wasn't going to order online again, especially since the delivery date would be the day we leave for CT. That meant more retail hoops:

It's not what I wanted, but I can treat myself to baseball and hockey after my next commission check from 4 Sharp Corners comes in (or my Christmas bonus from work 😉)

Not that anyone reading this is a big basketball collector (where have you gone, Jon and Billy?) but here's the highlights of the basketball haul from Target, starting with Prizm:

The Topps hanger was pretty standard. But it was interesting to see a (licensed) Topps set in a sport other than baseball:

Team cards and a Grizzlies throwback. I don't mind these, I just wish Topps would 86 the captions. The words "stars", "shine(s)", "young", "duo", and "lead the way" appear multiple times in these six cards. The editor in me is fuming at the lack of creativity. 

Legends are definitely not short-print variations in NBA sets. I pulled four, including a Schrempf Sonics card:

What is that wordmark though? I do not remember that at all. 

Here's a side-by-side comparison with the Holiday set:

Sochan paying tribute to Dennis Rodman here

One thing I was curious about was the cutoff date for off-season acquisitions. 

These weirdos both changed teams over the summer, but KD is pictured with his new squad on the Holiday card, while MPJ - now with the Nets - is still a Nugget in Flagship. Durant's latest trade demand was granted on July 6th while the Nuggets offloaded Porter on July 8th.

Holiday was released one week after flagship. Durant is a Rocket in both; MPJ is a Nugget in both. 

The hits had some more Nuggets, including the Jokic ornament and blue glitter parallel. The Dylan Harper relic is a nice pull as well. 8-Bit Ballers and 1980-81 Chrome are Flagship inserts. 

More Dylan Harper here. Collation was a bit odd - not that I was expecting a Cooper Flagg. Of the 85 base cards in the box, 18 were duplicates. Cam Thomas - who is still pictured in his Nets jersey despite being traded to Denver in the Porter deal - appears three times. Guess I'll have to return to TCDB soon..

One more thing... after I put my books and basketball card box on the counter, the girl at Barnes & Noble asked me if I would like to buy an Advent Calendar -- from Topps:

Yes. Yes I would.

Looks like I'll be doing daily posts in December :)



Thanks for reading!



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Arena Club - review

I never get sucked into sponsored ads. No amount of Draft Kings or Fanduel signage will push me to put 500 bucks on a three-legged parlay or bet the kids' college fund on which Cleveland Guardians pitcher will intentionally throw a pitch in the dirt. I am now more convinced than ever that Emannuel Clase threw BP against the Yanks in a playoff game to appease a bookie. I'm getting off topic here. 

But then.. some of my favorite sports talkers on YouTube started promoting something that I might actually use and enjoy...

What's this? A mystery pack of graded cards? Arena Club is a site/app that allows you to purchase a virtual pack of cards from $25 and up - which will contain one slabbed single. At every price point there's a chase card that could 10x your money, but it's a long shot (like a box/case hit) 

Arena Club offers packs in each of the four major North American pro sports - baseball, football, basketball, and... Pokemon. There appears to be something similar available for hockey - probably Canada only though. 

I always fight the impulse to boycott things that dont include NHL but then I grow up and buy from those places anyway. And boy, did I spend too much money at this site. Arena Club is dangerous!! 

The promo code from ThatsGoodSports gave me 20% off my first purchase, so I rolled the dice and bought a $100 pack. Then I paid for Slab Safe Premium protection to not get completely skunked. 

Okay, not bad. Arena Club gives you the option to sell the card back to them at a manageable loss. I think I was offered $82 for this Herbie. I passed. 

For a couple days I tried flipping it for $100. No takers. Then I woke up one morning at 7:30 am and saw that I had an offer. What I didn't have was my morning coffee/energy drink. The first thing I saw on the offer screen was $85. So I quickly accepted. Can't play around on the site if I don't have any cash, right?

My balance didn't change. I had $0. Where did my money go? Well, turns out that $85 was the estimated value -- and I didn't scroll down to see what I was actually being offered. Oh no. 

What did I get...?!?

Well, shit. That user must have been laughing hysterically at this newbie move. A Kyler Murray Mosaic numbered to 80 and a Cornerstones Jaylen Brown numbered to 25. I don't want either of these. The Kyler is a cool card but Mosaic has way too many parallels and he's probably done as a starter - at least in Arizona. Jaylen is clearly off-center and outside of the app, no one is going to take an Arena Club slab seriously. 

I had to divest these undesirable slabs, and I wanted to experience all that Arena Club had to offer. So I tried trading the Murray and listed the Brown in an auction. That netted me $20 ($22 - $2 fee).

The cool thing about the marketplace is that you can offer cards, cash, or a mix of both for anything you see on the site. Problem was, I had a lemon and I was having trouble turning it into lemonade. 

It became clear that I would need more tradebait. Which meant busting more Slab Packs. 

Hmm.. intriguing, but Chronicles waters down RCs. Also Burrow is injured - again :/

Ugh, no. Not even MJ fans would want a common card in this grade. 

Ooohh vintage. Now we're talking! But it's sooo off-center :/

Here's where I got foolish. Instead of trying to trade these, I sold them all back to the "bank" so I could buy more packs:

Jordan - $31

Carew - $42

Burrow - $26

Along with the $20 from the Jaylen Brown, I now had $119 to spend  -- but it cost me $190. 

The site offers special theme packs from time to time, and these popped up at a reasonable price:

Who would you expect to pull from a Yahoo Fantasy Football themed pack in the year of our lord 2025? 

Okay, I quit. This site officially sucks. Who's behind this scam, anyway? 

 No kidding. The guy who gave Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees, then left the Marlins to .. do this?

Ha! Now you know how it feels to open a Slab Pack from Arena Club. 

This is a neat concept but in my experience - and the breaks I saw online - about 90% of the time you're going to lose money. If you're one of the 10% you might pull something that you can trade, or flip for a small profit. I had a tough time trading the Kyler Murray, even when I lowered my standards to Cold List favorites like Kris Bryant and Damian Lillard. But, trade it I did, and... well, you be the judge:

This was the best I could do after a dozen tries. I know Ja Morant is a head case who is one strike away from completely detonating his career but these Test of Time die-cuts are cool as hell, very hard to gem up, and numbered to 75. Also, Morant has slightly more upside as a franchise star than Murray. I think. 

So, I'm over a hundred in the hole and I've got one cool card. Let's buy more packs!!! 

That's more like it. Please tell me this guy isn't a 27 year old whiff machine. 

Well.. he was a first round pick two years ago. He's got power. He's the right age. But man, that contact rate is no bueno. He's way down the list of prospects for a franchise in desperate need of offense. Meh. 

But this pull was just good enough for me to start feeling lucky. One more pack. That's it. Let's gooo..

Oh, you mock me. Not the first time I've pulled a gold refractor auto numbered to 50 of a Yankee thanks for reminding me of that. So much to ooooh and aaaaah about with this card - except the player. Oswald Peraza played about a season's worth of games in his three years with the Yanks and batted .189 with a .282 slugging. The Cash-man shipped his ass to Anaheim and he got even worse outside the meek dimensions of Yankee Stadium. Peraza's cumulative OPS+ this past season? 33!! 67 points below average. Peraza is a minor leaguer. This card is cursed. 

I'm absolutely done with this site. Except.. now I have to offload this sparkling turd. Maybe I can hunt some vintage if it's not a huge name. I'm more familiar with the value of vintage cards, and they're not contingent on current performance. 

Success! This Ken Boyer sold for $87 in August. Except this Ken Boyer is off-center on the back. 

I've now got a Ja Morant, Brock Wilken, and Ken Boyer to show for my hundreds of dollars spent. But before I leave the site for good and send away for these killer cards I need to pad the shipment a bit. 

The Arena Club marketplace is... actually good. If you're a graded card collector you can find some reasonably priced singles such as:

I've got an ungraded CMC silver that I can sell for the price I paid here - about $25. 

Plain Prizm RCs of PC guys who are not exactly lighting up wantlists right now. Dame is back with the Blazers, rehabbing his Achillies' injury while Middleton is in Wizards witness protection because the Bucks swapped him for Kyle Kuzma. 😒

I had about $45 left to spend and I needed to set aside half of that for shipping. There was one card that interested me, and I was one dollar short - a Mike Singletary 1983 Topps RC, PSA 8. I made an offer but it sold for full price. Not surprising but a bit disappointing. 

Even more disappointing? I could have - and should have - just bought it. Because you can't use store credit to pay for shipping!

So, I had to buy more cards on the marketplace. With the Singletary gone, I squeezed these into the budget:

Silver Prizm parallels are about as high as I go. Ladd McConkey was just $14. Not a steal but actually cheaper than his base single was on the site. Bijan Robinson Prizm base RCs were $30 and up so I got this Absolute single for half the price. My football RC collection needed some color anyway. 

That left me with a little bit of cash to rummage through the bargain bin. It was not easy finding something unique for under $15 but I managed to pluck one more sharp looking slabbed single:

Took a shot on this Chet Holmgren parallel cause it's numbered to 125. Kinda color matches, too. 

Order complete, let's get outta here:

Ugh... $28 shipping for $250 worth of cards that cost me $400. 

Overall, I would say that while Arena Club can be fun  -- the pack rip animation is a treat, and the marketplace is better than COMC -- if anyone reading this is interested in giving Derek Jeter your money please proceed with extreme caution. Luckily I don't think anyone reading this is as interested in collecting cards in plastic prisons as I am :)

Have you heard of Arena Club before? Have you tried it? If so, share your experience in comments. 

Thanks for reading!


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