Cackling with joy

Even after 40 years, sports card collecting still gives me unexpected moments of joy.  

If you've bought retail packs at Target, you probably know that they are limiting the amout of trading cards per purchase. I would hope that this is to discourage flipping, but I don't think that's particularly effective. For one, it's easy to flip pairs of mega boxes and blasters. For another, just about anyone buying more than two fat packs of Topps flagship is trying to build a set. How much can you make fliping those? Maybe $3?

Regardless, the cashier took two of my packs away last weekend. So I returned Tuesday with a devious and sinister plan to break the rules oooooh I'm such a rebel!

Step one: take two fat packs off the rack, run them through self-checkout, pay. Place the packs in cargo shorts pocket. 

Step two: turn around, re-enter the store, buy $60 worth of groceries... and two more Topps packs.

Step three: profit.

Before I reveal what was inside these packs, I should applaud Topps for keeping these reasonably priced. Panini Prizm and Donruss Optic 'value' packs give you 12-15 cards for $15 each - and some Optic packs are all base cards. Meanwhile, these 36-card packs of Topps baseball - with at least two inserts per pack - are still just $6.99. No wonder Target limits them to two per customer.

On the other hand, 144 cards doesn't yield nearly as many set fillers as it should. The inserts are plentiful(for better or worse) and so are the duplicates. I think I got about 30 dupes out of these.

Ugh... too many Christians

For $30 after tax I'd be happy with the 75-80 set fillers, a few nice inserts, and one of the key rookie cards. Here's the whole haul.

Well, almost all of it. In the middle of the second pack I noticed a card was turned upside-down and when I flipped it over I burst out in a joyous cackle - not excitement at first, but devious laughter. It felt like I was being rewarded for breaking the rules.

Wait a second... is that... ? 

Hahaha! What?!?! An on-card auto of an inner circle Hall of Famer numbered to 10?!? Out of a retail pack?!? Okay, sure, the corners are a little white because this was probably one of the packs in my pocket, and Carlton's signature is shaky as hell because he's 80-something years old, and I'm not a fan of this geriatric nut job at all, but... it's a hundred dollar card. Out of a retail pack I shouldn't have been allowed to purchase. 

Have you defied the 'two packs per purchase' rule? Done anything devious lately? I won't tell ;)

Thanks for reading!

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