Tag: Target

Random Review: 2018 Topps Fire Blaster Box

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

Truthfully I had no intention of buying any 2018 baseball release with the exception of a hobby pack of Panini Chronicles if I come across one. Then a few things happened that made me open to it: I liked the design of Topps Fire and wanted to see them in person, it doesn’t hurt that I can put this on a credit card, I became a fan of Ozzie Albies, and Ohtani went down thus probably lowering any price gouging of Ohtani chasers. These factors also opened me up to the fact that I wouldn’t mind doing a set of the base cards.

For those unaware Fire is a Target exclusive.

I will definitely do a set of this.

Truthfully, the base cards look better on camera than they do in person. That said, the inserts look amazing. This design is not for everyone. This product certainly isn’t. I wish there was a hit in the blaster but this rookie class has made demand for products  such that Topps must not feel the need to do so.
One final thought: can you imagine a chrome version of this product?

Random Review: 2018 Panini Stars & Stripes blaster

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

So buying this product started on a sour note. I used a Target card to get 2 day shipping for it and it did not get to me in 2 days. In fact, the start of the shipping process took 3 days just to get a tracking number. Then this came via UPS, who I have completely lost faith in to begin with. When the package with the blaster box arrived, it came like this:

This was the first time that I videotaped opening a package – I didn’t include the video or post it anywhere because the box was fine. The box was fine but the air bubbles in the box were popped from the damage.

So let’s move on to the box itself.

I want to make clear that my feelings about the shipping of this item are not clouded by what I have to say about the product itself. My judgement on this product is that it is a hit based product. Fun if you are a chasing hits but let’s be honest, that is all this product is for. It takes years for USA baseball products to show their potential. Unless you are a die hard baseball prospecter who happens to be a collector then you are pretty much hit chasing this product. It’s why I bought it. Heck halfway into it, I reminded myself that I was looking people who I had no idea of. When I bought it, I convinced myself that I was chasing beautiful cards. These are beautiful cards though. People say that they are chasing the veterans on this product but the odds of vets in these is not good to begin with.

Random Review: Target Repack product with piece of Floor #2

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

Six weeks ago I reviewed a box of a Target Repack product with a floor. I said that I bought two of them but only reviewed one. This is a quick review of the second one. For a link to the first one, I made this whole paragraph a link to it.

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The packs were decent on paper but I didn’t pull anything. The jersey is a Mike Sweetney It shows him a Bulls jersey on the card but the piece is clearly from his Knicks day before he got traded for Eddy Curry. At least I got my Durant rookie card unlike my last box. The box was crap but I did have a minor win: I said I wanted a Celtics ‘Teenymate’ and pulled it.
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Random Review: Target Repack product with piece of Floor

~ danieladubay ~ 4 Comments

We all have a love hate relationship with repack products that promise hits. I am not going to dwell on that, as I covered that enough in the past. So a month and a half ago, I was in Target with a graduation gift card burning a hole in my pocket. Something new caught my eye, that wasn’t the standard repack or guarantee product that you see at Target. This one promised a hit, a Kevin Durant rookie, had packs, and a floor piece for less than $20 price point similar boxes fall on. At $12.99, I grabbed two to kill my gift card. This is one of the boxes:

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The Floor Piece was from the all star game that took place at the Staples Center, so my go to venue being that I live in the LA suburbs.

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The Kevin Durant rookie card was not in my product. I don’t know if that was an oversight or if it was because I hit a jersey that came one in four boxes, but I am bummed. In my mind the Durant rookie was one of the bigger selling points for me – over the memorabilia card and packs. It was nice to see Prizm packs inserted, where my best hit was a Sam Jones parallel. The Rick Fox hit was decent to me. He is still relevant as he does a ton of acting now, so I occasionally see him on television.

Even without the Durant rookie card, it was worth the $12.99. I would take this over an underwhelming blaster box any day. I will review my other box soon. I have it sitting on my desk for when I have an appetite to open packs.

Update: Someone on Twitter who pulled a mini jersey in this product, got his Durant rookie card so it looks like my box in an anomaly.

Per a request, here is a picture of the floor piece with a card used for size reference. 

Random Review: junk from Target

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

For my birthday, I recieved $50 to Target from my sister. I annihilated it in one purchase. I bought 4 blaster boxes and 1 Fairfield box.
The haul:
Fairfield $7.99 baseball box – got me with the Bowman Platinum pack
Topps Allen & Ginter 2013 World Champions
2013 Panini Prizm football
2013 Bowman football
2013 Topps Archives football

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Random Review: Another Fairfield Product

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

Since The Fairfield Company treated me so well after one of posts about their product, I decided to buy product for a third time. For the price of $5.99, I bought a ‘Jumbo Box’ of football cards. I bought this product purely because I liked how they treated me when they sent me that jersey card.

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Random Review: 2014 RS Longevity

~ danieladubay ~ 1 Comment

I got lucky and won 2nd prize in one of the NFL pick-em contest over at Steel City Collectibles. See it does take skill to win stuff sometimes. This was actually my 3rd win in as many NFL seasons and I usually get a blaster box as a prize, so I wasn’t expecting anything special. I received the box after week 1 and it promptly sat on my desk until this week when I rewarded myself after writing a mind numbing 5 page paper for one of my classes – who am I kidding, I love writing papers, no joke. The box had a sticker that said ‘Target exclusive’ on it so I wasn’t expecting anything.

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Random Review – Platinum & Archives 2014

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

In my last post, I went to Target desperately looking for cards to make my day better. In this post about my next visit to Target, I had no desire to get cards- okay, as a collector the desire never leaves me but I wasn’t prepared to buy cards. Naturally, they had out some solid clearance boxes that I wish they had last time after my CT scan. Thankfully I had gift cards on me – I am really good about waiting to use my gift cards until I see something I really want. Unfortunately I am out of Target gift cards, but hey my birthday is in November.
The  Bowman Platinum and Topps Archives Baseball caught my eye, both from 2014. As a small time collector, I never get anything Platinum or premium, so I jumped at the chance even though I am not a fan of the Bowman product. (Naturally, I am also sitting on an unopened box of Inception that I won and am waiting for the right time to open.)  At $12.99 it was worth the fun. Archives caught my eye because this is the set that features cards from ‘Major League.’

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Random Review

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

The other day I had a CT scan and needed to reward myself for the mind bender that came with it. With no card shop in my city, I did what many others do: I hit Target. I was ready and willing to spend $20 on a blaster box but I didn’t see anything that would give me a hit that made me smile. I almost walked away empty handed but forced myself to buy something. This was the one day where my budget didn’t matter because it was a draining day, do you know how much special juice you have to drink in preparation for CT scans? It is a lot. I ended up going cheap. Since the Fairfield Company treated me so good with their customer service, I went with two of their products:
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Review: 100 baseball cards box from Fairfield Company

~ danieladubay ~ Leave a comment

As stated, I am not a fan of buying any retail products. I have said this in past posts about packs and blaster boxes but my feelings extend to the ‘value boxes.’ I would lump the ‘value boxes’ into misery packs  mystery packs. I am just not a fan. I have never got any value from these ‘value boxes.’ That isn’t to say, they aren’t fun.
The other day, I was with a family member who was getting school supplies at Target. I didn’t need any, unless you count printer ink which I didn’t have the funds for, so I wondered off into the card aisle. (Yes, I see the logic: I didn’t have money for printer ink so I go to spend money on cards. Even if they cost less money, it is still money that I could be saving, but I know that I am not the only card collector that faces this paradox.) A box that just guarantees you 100 cards caught my eye. The box said that 1 in 4 packs contains a hit. With 5 boxes there, I picked the box that I thought contained a hit. I was wrong.

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The ‘hit’ ended up being some newer Topps cards stuck together. I got what I deserved as even though it was visible, I was pack searching in a way; and everyone hates a pack searcher.
The box ended up being pretty fun. I ended up scoring a bunch of cards that I will actually keep for my personal collection. Some of the highlights are pictured:

-A random assortment of manager cards including Tony LaRussa and Tommy Lasorda. 2 of the all time greatest managers and to be honest, 2 of my 3 personal favorite with Sparky Anderson being the other. I love that the LaRussa card is from his lesser known White Sox days.
-Chad Curtis cards. You don’t expect multiple cards containing the same player in these boxes but I got just that with Chad Curtis. This box landed in the right hands as I am probably one of the few people in this world who can appreciate his cards, since we share the same birthday.
-2 Danny Tartabull ‘Diamond Kings’ cards and random rookie cards including a Jason Schmidt rookie card. I don’t even mind the duplicate Tartabull cards as he won me over in his Seinfeld cameo.

I was disappointed in one aspect as I got 2 cards that were very damaged. There was no excuse for this. The company can’t blame the fact that these are older cards that were in way better condition in the box. I am not the only one who had this problem as there have been some similar complaints on Twitter.
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With boxes like these, you always feel like people opened packs and put the junk in a pile. This was no exception. At least one of those junk pack piles was early 80s Donruss.
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Overall, you can do a lot worse for $5.99. For a product with a bad reputation, I was pretty happy if you take away the damaged cards. The rookies were nothing special but I was happy with the older cards.