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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