I had the good fortune of getting to a Target on Wednesday just minutes after the vendor stocked the shelves with new items, including 2011 Bowman Chrome baseball. I tell you, it’s a wonderful feeling to walk through the doors and see from about 100 feet away the sight of new packs.
So I dove in.
I bought a blaster and a few of the Value Pack Rack Packs.
The basics: The blaster offers eight packs for $19.99 while each Value Pack offers three basic retail packs (same odds as loosies and in blasters) and a single pack of three green xfractors for $8.99.
What’s great about all of these packs is they offer a shot at the same cards that are in hobby packs, save for the superfractors. This means the basic chrome prospect autos are available in retail packs. Someone is going to pull a Harper Chrome Auto out of a pack at Target, or WalMart, or Kroger, or whatever. Awesome, right?
One problem: Autographs fall one in 77 packs. They are one per box (18 packs) in hobby.
Anyway, the price points are obviously a lot more palatable than that of the hobby prices, which I imagine are eclipsing the $5 per pack point in some places.
Anyway, here are the better cards I pulled in my packs. And yes, I actually hit an auto.
Did you know Bryce Harper is in this product?!
Calm down, I said that facetiously.
I got Bryce from the Past:
(And yes, it is dead center on both sides)
2001 Bowman Throwbacks
Bryce from the Present:
2011 Bowman Chrome Prospect
And Bryce from the Future:
2011 Bowman Chrome 2021 Bowman Chrome Future
Always nice at this point to see Bryce Harper in my packs. Too bad none of them were covered in ink. That said, I did manage to pull this auto:
2011 Bowman Chrome Prospects Autograph Starling Marte
I know I showed off my Bryce Harper 2001 Bowman Chrome throwback above, but I also puled these two:
2011 Bowman Chrome 2001 Throwbacks Brett Lawrie
2011 Bowman Chrome 2001 Bowman Chrome Reprint Ichiro rookie
The Ichiro is the Japanese version.
But perhaps the nicest card of all came from one of my retail exclusive packs:
2011 Bowman Chrome Prospects Green Xfractor Brett Lawrie
Dead center. No print lines. No scratches. Just beautiful.
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Target’s “new” card return policy?
Posted in Commentary with tags baseball, baseball cards, return policy, Target on February 28, 2019 by Cardboard IconsIt was tweeted yesterday by @OACCards (Once A Cub) that he’d gone to Target and found there was a new policy in place for the return of trading cards.
This is a welcome sight and likely will be rolled out to a store near you. We’ve all seen or heard the horror stories of buying retail boxes or packs that looked to contain the newest products, but actually housed commons that were inserted by an unscrupulous buyer who returned said item. Heck, some of us have experienced it. I had this happen in 2012 when three blasters of Bowman baseball were opened and all Chrome cards were removed — a discovery I learned the hard way. And it happened several times after that including last year when several Prism packs were found to contain run-of-the-mill base cards.
What’s interesting to note in all of this is that this policy that’s gained some attention this week is actually something that used to exist 20 years ago when I worked at Target. In fact, you were not able to return any cards or collectible toys — due in part to the volatile nature of the secondary market.
I’m sure this current policy will be prominently posted in most stores, and at some point will again be forgotten or not enforced once the shrink number have stabilized. But for now it’s great to see the retailer taking some action as the occurrences seem to be increasing.
That said, it’s in your best interest to inspect your blasters before you purchase. Sometimes thieves are burrowing holes through the bottom and removing packs, and other times they use razor blades to carefully cut the factory cellophane, and in extreme cases, the outer wrapper is being replaced completely, so make sure the company logos are printed ON THE WRAPPER.
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