Opening Day Roll Call

Last weekend I opened a box of 2018 Topps Opening Day and skipped right to a significant single. I'll show off the rest of the box in this post, and update my progress on other Opening Day sets.

This concludes my Brieday celebration. For now ;-p

Each of the 36 packs contains one insert, leaving me with 216 base cards to complete a 200 card set. Also there's a disclaimer on the front of each pack that Packs with a special insert may contain only 3-5 cards. What does Topps consider "special"? Most likely just relics, but I was slightly less certain that I'd be able to complete a set - until I saw the odds.

There were no "special" inserts in this box. Each pack yielded exactly seven cards including one insert as advertised. Here they are:

Nine (of 20) Before Opening Day inserts. Lots of stars, lots of Red Sox, and.. Mikie Mahtook.


I pulled eleven (of 25) Mascot cards. Here's the first nine (not pictured: Rays and Rangers)

How many mascots does Cincinnati have? 


I got six of the 20 cards from this insert set:

These are just called "Opening Day" on TCDB but they're numbered ODB-# on the back of the card. I'm assuming that stands for Opening Day Ballparks (or Ol' Dirty Bastard lol.)

There's that Rally Monkey again. I pulled ten of the 15 Team Traditions inserts (not pictured: Yankees Y.M.C.A.) That's 36 inserts. As advertised.


But wait! There's more!

The Dominic Smith Opening Day Stars card is insert #37. It's flimsy like a sticker but the odds on these are 1:27 so it's somehow the rarest insert I pulled. The Blue Foil parallels are my favorites by far. Mike Trout might be the best possible parallel pull other than the Ozzie Albies or Shohei Ohtani RCs. 

It was a nice surprise to have 42 non-base cards, but that meant I had to hope for near-perfect collation in order to complete the set. And that's exactly what happened!
 

I now have 43 duplicates to trade including Ichiro, Albert Pujols, and RCs of Ohtani and Alex Verdugo. Hopefully I can swap them for some Opening Day set fillers from other years. I need 63 cards from 2015 Topps Opening Day and 14 cards from 2019 Opening Day. I'm not collecting 2016 or 2017 OD. I had my fill of those designs with flagship.


Some bonus bDay content here, as I received a couple gifts from my wife's siblings. Her older brother gave me cash, while her sister('s husband) picked out a fat pack of Upper Deck hockey cards. Before I even opened it he asked me if I got anything good. 

I don't think anyone would call this a "good" pack. No inserts, no rookies, and no super stars like Crosby, MccDavid, or Ovechkin. However I did pull two Devils, one of the two Whalers cards in the set, and some great goalies including CT's Jonathan Quick. These were all new cards to my collection since I only had two series 1 singles before this pack.

D's younger brother bought me a book.

He's more of a comic book guy than I am, but I'm sure I'll enjoy this. I know my daughter will. 



I had originally planned to publish this in the morning, but the fourth-longest playoff game in NHL history postponed my post. The schedule here is packed with two more topics planned for the weekend so I decided to be like baseball and have a day-night doubleheader. This is what happens when I go away for a couple weeks, the ideas come rushing out. Thank you so much for celebrating with me and reading one or both posts!




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100k bDay

Hi there! Happy Jeff Fisher Day! Here are some quick thoughts I've had since my last post, and then I'll get to discussing my 100,000th card.

I do not like the new Blogger. I have switched back to Blogger 'Classic' for as long as allowed.

Holy sh!t my last post has over 600 views?!?!? I know I was away for a couple weeks, but I've had longer blogger breaks before. None of my previous posts had ever earned so many views in such a short amount of time.

New rule here at The Collector: Brie Larson leads off every blog post. At least until I can establish the cause of the sudden spike in views.

Speaking of The Collector..

Oh, my God, they found me. I don't know how, but they found me.

Has anyone been watching the NHL playoffs? It's crazy business. The Rangers, Penguins, and Oilers are done (but don't worry, one of them will probably land the #1 overall pick.) Happy birthday, Sidney! :p

We were about three minutes away from seeing the Maple Leafs eliminated until the Blue Jackets finished the game like a bunch of drunk high school kids forced to skate through a scrimmage ran out of gas. It's my fault. I read this headline in the Canadian media and instantly became a BJs fan. If the Leafs win a Stanley Cup and no one's there to see it...


Anyway, you're not here for hockey talk. You're here to see my 100,000th card, am I right?

I have meticulously cataloged my collection at least three times since December, adding everything that the Trading Card Database counts as a "card" - including cans, coins, tin packs, and stickers. Along the way I've realized that an exact count is practically impossible without losing a few battles to my OCD. I've got a number I'm comfortable with and I'm going from there:

A few weeks ago I made a deal with GCA of The Collective Mind, sending a handful of cards and $20 his way in exchange for a big box of cards from his hoard. For a minute it looked like card #100,000 would be in there.. but we didn't quite make it. 

My original plan was to list some cards on eBay in mid-late July, pile up some more PayPal cash, and purchase a significant single to celebrate this milestone just in time for my birthday. But then I got lazy and didn't list anything on eBay. 

I had $37 left in PayPal from previous sales, so I bought a card that I needed to finish a 13 year-old hockey set. The seller had multiple copies listed for months and had one left. I bought it. I paid for it. 

I didn't get it. The seller suddenly claimed that he was out of stock and refunded my money. Probably so he could resell it somewhere else for double the price. Par for the course in this godawful year. 

The price of retail boxes and blasters are out of control. There's no National this summer, and I haven't been to Target since February. I've opened exactly two boxes this year - a blaster of 2020 Gypsy Queen the Easter Bunny/my wife gifted me, and a box of 1993 Leaf Series 2 baseball which cost me less than a blaster ($19 shipped.)

And so I emptied out the piggy bank for ten packs of penny sleeves and this box of 2018 Topps Opening Day, which will contain card #100,000:

I'm working on the 2015 and 2019 Opening Day sets, and 2018 is one of my favorite recent flagship issues. Since I've only got 33 of the 200 cards in the 2018 OD set I should be able to complete the set and have a manageable stack of duplicates left over. 

There are seven cards in each pack, so the milestone card should be in pack #8. Kinda fitting since today is 8/8.

And here it is:

Hopefully I'll pull a dupe so that I can complete the set while setting this J.P. Crawford RC aside for posterity. I'm going to leisurely open the rest of the box throughout the weekend so I'll have a box break recap on my actual birthday. But this was a nice pre-bDay treat (and it arrived two days earlier than expected.)

 
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!





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