As I look through my collection of vintage baseball cards I often become enamored with condition, and not in a way everyone does.
I can appreciate poor condition cards because they often can tell a story of a time in this hobby by where cards were entertainment and educational, and not an expenditure one can write off on their taxes. On the other hand, finding a mint copy of a card more than a century old is another story in and of itself.
One thing that always intrigues me when thinking in this head space is how we look at alternative cards, meaning those that had a purpose: Some cards were meant to be part of a game, some are legitimately checklists, and others were made for decor.
Take for instance the 1964 Topps “Stand-up.” These were inserted into packs, and they were perforated and made to be bent and stood up in a way that the depicted player looks to come to life on a bookshelf or desk.
I own a few cards from this set, specifically Sandy Koufax and Hank Aaron. And they are quite different. My Koufax is intact and in really good shape (save for a wax stain in the reverse) and the Aaron was enjoyed the way the cards were designed.
It got me wondering how collectors of today look at these cards. Which of the two conditions — intact or “used” would you chose for your collection and why?
Would You Rather: Own 1964 Topps “Stand-Ups” that are intact or “used?”
As I’m sure you’re aware by now, Walgreens sells sports cards. It’s something they’ve been doing for a few years, and over the last 18 months it’s become a place to potentially find hit product.
Sometimes they have rack packs, cellos and hangers, other times it’s mega boxes and blasters. But the constant has always been some sort of repack product that offers a sealed pack and a stack of various cards often not worth much.
Well, the chase for such repacks often gets rekindled when someone shares on social media some amazing card they pulled. Sometimes it’s unbelievable and leads to a slew of memes or silly posts, but all it takes is one such post to spark the next mad dash to the retailer.
A year ago it was someone finding a 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout rookie in a $5.99 repack; and just a few months ago it was folks finding good sealed packs in their baseball “Mystery Boxes.” And in recent weeks attention had turned to football repacks as modern packs of Football had made their way into football repack boxes.
Not all of these repacks are a winner. You pay $5.99 and take a chance. Sometimes you hit the Select pack, and other times you end up with a junk wax era turd product that probably cost about a quarter per pack. But, that chase is what piques the curiosity and causes us to spend.
I have a theory about the repacks. I think majority of them such value wise but they can be fun. But my theory is that the ones containing good packs are released in bunches that are distributed together. So, if you open one repack and see it has a Select pack, then you should buy the rest. However? If your repack doesn’t then you should leave them alone.
I have no proof, but my thought is this: If you’ve got a room of folks making the repacks, one or two people will be packing out the good products while everyone else is packing out more common stuff. And they’re not mixing up the batches when they send them out. So they stay clumped together until it gets to a region and then it’s broken down for various stores in that area. This would explain why folks in the sticks of Wyoming keeps running into Select while people in a populated area of Georgia may be pulling some 1991 Notre Dame college packs.
Anyway, this latest craze led me into two Walgreens lastnight in the way home from work. It was a low risk, high reward situation for a guy with a card habit. The first store had nothing worth buying; the second store had three baseball “Mystery Boxes” sitting on a peg hook inside a secured case.
My son and I opened a dozen of these around Christmas time and mostly saw nonsense. We did have one or two repacks that contained a 2018 Topps Series Two pack, the chase there of course being Ohtani rookies and the Super Short Print “Bat Down” Ronald Acuna Jr. Most of them contained multiple packs of 2019 Topps Series One and one retail Heritage pack. My son did pull a base Ohtani rookie from his sole Series Two pack about two months ago, but for the most part our experience was akin to scratching an itch with a Kleenex.
So when I saw this batch of three lastnight in a locked case I almost walked away. I didn’t really feel like finding an employee to open the case and then wait in line. In the end I decided to take a shot and bought the things.
As the headline here suggests: The boxes had good product. Each contained two 10-card 2019 Series One packs — these are from a blaster and contain only base cards — and then had two other packs. The highlight was two repack boxes had 2019 Topps Series Two (looking for Fernando Tatis Jr, Pete Alonso and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. No Number SP, and the other has a single pack of 2018 Topps Series Two. The mere presence of the lacks already made these a win since individually some of these cost more than the entire stack of repacks.
The very first 2019 Topps Series Two pack was a banger. About halfway through the pack I unearthed a Tatis Jr. rookie, and just a few cards later in the same pack was the Alonso. The other Series Two packs were uneventful.
If you’ve got access, the means and desire to rip these repacks it could be worth your effort, but it’s also important to know many of them will not contain anything of much value and you may end up hating yourself for the purchase.
That said, if you hit a streak like mine — or like folks are with the football ones — it could also be worth the effort to possibly chase down more. Just keep your expectations reasonable and try to enjoy the journey.
My son and I were at one of the local card shops the other day. It was our first time to this shop in a few months. While we were debating what to buy a man walks in and one of the clerks advises him to holler if he needed anything. The man said he had a question, then pulled something out of his pocket. He sheepishly said he’d purchased a re-pack item at Target recently and pulled something he believed was worth about $5,000 based on recent eBay activity.
This caught my attention so I glanced over from across the shop and immediately placed my hand over my face. The man was holding a 1988 Topps Jose Uribe in a Card Saver I, the type of holder one would send to a grading company.
The clerk got a gander of the card and went into a diatribe about how the sales for the card were a hoax and the card wasn’t worth much of anything. A second clerk had not seen the card but saw my reaction and immediately asked me: “Is that a Uribe?”
I nodded my head and fought back tears as I had never seen this question asked in real life, only online.
The man took the news like a champ, although he continued to question how on earth the completed sales were false. He of course then questioned why anyone would do such a thing. The clerk gave him several theories, all of which basically came back to people are assholes and the Card Saver I was worth more than the Uribe. The clerk asked me to confirm, which of course I did.
The man placed the card back in his pocket and said he was going to just rip it up. At this point I almost wanted to buy the Uribe because I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff. I mean how funny would it be to own that card, the actual one involved in this story. Worthless to everyone else, but priceless for me. I didn’t ask though, partly because It’s actually frowned upon for two customers to be striking a cash deal inside an establishment like this.
For those unaware, Jose Uribe was a MLB player in the late 1980s and 1990s and his 1988-1990 cards in recent years have been a running joke in this hobby. Someone somewhere posted a 1990 Fleer for sale at $5,000 a few years back and a sale appeared to be completed through eBay. Since then the 1988 Topps and 1990 Fleer cards for Uribe keep popping up with high price tags. There are a few theories that include folks just running up the price as a joke or scam hoping that others will start under cutting and buying, praying that a few actual sales get completed and someone ends up making a good chunk of money on a common. And then there are theories that the card and many others like it — commons from the era — are being used as a vehicle for money laundering.
In a nutshell, there are very few commons from the era worth the paper they are printed on these days. The memories and nostalgia attached to them, of course, can indeed be priceless for some folks. The actual Uribe in this story would’ve been worth $5 to me … but absolutely worthless to everyone else. Again, I’m a sucker for memorabilia, even if the item is merely a piece of memorabilia belonging to a specific experience.
For more than 10 days my order of Topps hobby boxes direct from the factory sat in a FedEx truck in Ohio as the region dealt with brutal weather.
The boxes arrived Wednesday night and my son and I decided to open one box before I jumped on as a special guest on the About The Cards podcast. In the very last pack of the box my son, a 10-year-old collector, pulled the hit: a 70 Years of Baseball Platinum Autograph of batting champion Tim Anderson.
Per the collecting rules we’ve established, he gets to keep whatever he wants from the packs he opens. This includes stuff like this.
It was my boy’s THIRD 1/1 in his three-year collecting career; and it really made me happy because … it’s actually the second Tim Anderson 1/1 in our family.
Back on 11/26/13 I opened a few packs of Bowman Draft from the LCS and in the middle of one pack was Anderson’s unlabeled First Bowman black border paper card. True, the bottom right corner is smashed —only card in the pack that was damaged — but it was a 1/1 of a prospect whose turned into a phenomenal player.
For the record, these cards are NOT available; they’re very much staying in the family.
About three months ago a co-worker asked if I could evaluate some cards he had since childhood. It’s COVID Time so we did what everyone else does: He shared pictures of what he had.
Only the binder pages were visible, and for the most part the binder had some basketball cards from mid 1990s, but no Jordans and none of the snazzy inserts. I broke the news to him that they weren’t worth but maybe $5-$10. He said I could have them if I wanted. I accepted the verbal invitation, adding I’d give them to my son.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. No cards were brought to work. I’m not the guy who is going to hound anyone for a freebie. Really it was no big deal; it didn’t change my opinion of him at all.
Then today he sees me in the parking lot.
“Hey, I brought the binder!” He says.
We walk to his car and from the back seat he presents me with this classic Topps binder; original crusty Topps branded pages and all.
I geeked out.
“Oh damn, you didn’t tell me it was THAT binder.” I said, overly joyed to be giving this a new home.
The content of the binder hadn’t changed – there was no baseball within. And there were some basketball Hal of fame players so it’s a perfect addition for my son.
But the binder? That is a treasure. It needs to be cleaned up a bit and is usable, but at this point its days are best suited as a display piece. I mean look at all those glorious cards in the cover.
Funny note I added one of these to my collection five years ago after finding it in thrift store for $19.99. (see Thrift Treasures 93).
Thanks, Greg for the awesomeness. It will present will among my collections
cardboardicons.com 
“I heard this card might be about $5,000 …”
Posted in Commentary with tags baseball cards, Fleer, Jose Uribe, nostalgia, Scam, Topps on May 7, 2021 by Cardboard IconsMy son and I were at one of the local card shops the other day. It was our first time to this shop in a few months. While we were debating what to buy a man walks in and one of the clerks advises him to holler if he needed anything. The man said he had a question, then pulled something out of his pocket. He sheepishly said he’d purchased a re-pack item at Target recently and pulled something he believed was worth about $5,000 based on recent eBay activity.
This caught my attention so I glanced over from across the shop and immediately placed my hand over my face. The man was holding a 1988 Topps Jose Uribe in a Card Saver I, the type of holder one would send to a grading company.
The clerk got a gander of the card and went into a diatribe about how the sales for the card were a hoax and the card wasn’t worth much of anything. A second clerk had not seen the card but saw my reaction and immediately asked me: “Is that a Uribe?”
I nodded my head and fought back tears as I had never seen this question asked in real life, only online.
The man took the news like a champ, although he continued to question how on earth the completed sales were false. He of course then questioned why anyone would do such a thing. The clerk gave him several theories, all of which basically came back to people are assholes and the Card Saver I was worth more than the Uribe. The clerk asked me to confirm, which of course I did.
The man placed the card back in his pocket and said he was going to just rip it up. At this point I almost wanted to buy the Uribe because I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff. I mean how funny would it be to own that card, the actual one involved in this story. Worthless to everyone else, but priceless for me. I didn’t ask though, partly because It’s actually frowned upon for two customers to be striking a cash deal inside an establishment like this.
For those unaware, Jose Uribe was a MLB player in the late 1980s and 1990s and his 1988-1990 cards in recent years have been a running joke in this hobby. Someone somewhere posted a 1990 Fleer for sale at $5,000 a few years back and a sale appeared to be completed through eBay. Since then the 1988 Topps and 1990 Fleer cards for Uribe keep popping up with high price tags. There are a few theories that include folks just running up the price as a joke or scam hoping that others will start under cutting and buying, praying that a few actual sales get completed and someone ends up making a good chunk of money on a common. And then there are theories that the card and many others like it — commons from the era — are being used as a vehicle for money laundering.
In a nutshell, there are very few commons from the era worth the paper they are printed on these days. The memories and nostalgia attached to them, of course, can indeed be priceless for some folks. The actual Uribe in this story would’ve been worth $5 to me … but absolutely worthless to everyone else. Again, I’m a sucker for memorabilia, even if the item is merely a piece of memorabilia belonging to a specific experience.
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