Hitting it Big in a Fairfield Repack

Now that I’ve got the BASEMENT FUN GAME out of the way, I can get back to posting! And I do have some stuff to share. I made a trip to Target a couple of weeks ago and picked up a couple of Update hangers. I’ll share those in a day or two, but first I wanted to share some of the other stuff I found.

Let’s start off with this repack. I have never opened one of these before and always assumed they were filled with nothing but trash. This one was $5. The CVS Pharmacy a few blocks from my apartment also sells these, but they charge $8. $8 is outrageous and $5 even seems to be a bit much, but I was in a busting mood.

It turned out to be a pretty good time to be in that mood.

I grabbed the one that had a nice-looking Ichiro on top, something called a “Factory Set Limited Edition.” I have no idea that that means.

The bulk of the thing was junk-era wax. Which is awesome. Sadly, it was mostly Topps cards that I already had. I did get this gem from the first TSC set. A HOFer in a throw-back cap earns this one a place in my Frankenset.

A couple of purple-bordered cards of guys who gotten PED suspensions. I really like the look of 2013 set and these colored borders really pop.

Now here is some real junk! Say what you will for the overproduction years of the 80s and early 90s, at least you can keep track of stuff. In the late 1990s, it seemed like every card maker was releasing about 50 sets a year, most of them totally unnecessary. This is from Skybox Thunder. Which was way better than Skybox Sleet, but not as cool as Skybox Humidity.

At least the Thunder set didn’t have an uncorrected error on every card in the set. The same cannot be said for the Star Cal Ripken set from (I think) 1996. Meant as a tribute after he broke the consecutive games streak, it turned into a laughingstock when they INEXPLICABLY referred to him as “Cal, Ripken,Jr.” on EVERY CARD IN THE SET. This has got to be among the worst card sets ever produced.

Oh! And I got a “hit” in this package…

Yes! Former White Sox top-ish prospect Joe Borchard. Neat. I’ve already mailed it off to Nick V., who collects Stanford guys.

Oh, and last but not least, I found this one among the junk…

Now we’re talking! That is the rare(ish) Harper 661 rookie/non-rookie that was put into factory sets. Baseballcardpedia considers it to be his true RC, while collectors at large (based on eBay prices) seem to prefer his 2012 Update rookie debut card. Ironically, this was originally considered to be a less-expensive alternative to the 661, but now sells for 2-3 times as much. So, this is, however you label it, a titanic pull from a Fairfield pack. HOWEVER, over the summer, I went out and bought one of these for my 2012 set. So it was, at the moment, quite useless to me. Thanks to twitter, I found a trade partner who was interested in it and we hashed out a deal that sent a lot of Topps base needs my way.