First it started with a friend of mine saying, just one pack, let's take a look at these cards and see how they look.
So he got a pack, and I got a pack, both from Target and that's when it all started. His first pack was filled with Brewery goodness. A mini-Yovanni Gallardo, Ryan Braun, and JJ Hardy. Heck, I didn't even understand why there are mini cards at that point, and to be honest I'm still not certain I know, but damn, I wanted to one-up him.
So over the course of that week, we each grabbed four packs. I may have pulled one 4-in-1 out of those four packs, but my friend Brian was pulling more, and that's what lead us to the blasters.
At this point we both knew we were going to buy more packs, even though we knew it would be nearly impossible to assemble just the base set of 200 cards (or 220 if you count the short prints), let alone all the 4-in-1 cards, the Heads Up, or the Sports Royalty subsets.
The we started reading the blogs and once we found out every card could be a mini, or that the 4-in-1s came in four different colors (red, blue, green, black), or that certain cards were short printed, we became daunted and were going to pass on this set. But then I said to my friend
"I don't even know why I want these cards, but I'm pretty sure it's because I can't fully comprehend the set. The more confusing this set is, the more I want it. All of it."
I'm still pretty positive there's a parallel to women here, and you don't have to look very hard to find it. But I digress. We find ourselves grabbing a blaster from Target a couple weeks back, since we both knew we'd purchase at least 8 more packs, it was cost effective. Then we started debating the merits of a hobby box, but what's the point when I can get 16 packs from 2 $20 blasters at target instead of spending $80 to get 18 hobby packs. We did the math and settled on 2 blasters.
But what we noticed between the time it took to get our first blaster and the time it took to get our second (and, oh god, the addiction set in, *COUour thridGH*) was that they were drying up all around the Twin Cities. I want to say I had to go to about 9 Targets to actually find a second blaster, and once I found that one I couldn't leave its twin brother behind, so I bought that one too. I figured I'd have to be pretty close to the 1-200 set after three of them.
While I don't have a pack by pack breakdown for you, I can tell you I've assembled 101 of the 200 base cards. I landed Cal Ripken and Johnny Bench Sports Royalty cards. 8 Red 4-in-1 cards, 2 Blue 4-in-1, and 3 heads up cards featuring Ozzie Smith, Grady Sizemore and Tim Linecum. I've actually got a double of Sizemore up for trade.
My prize from blaster #1 was this Bill Hall memorabilia card:
I managed to snag a Whitey Ford card from the 201-220 short printed cards
And last but not least are the 8 minis I've found thus far. 3 are blue back - the Kershaw, Carmona and Nolan Ryan Sports Royalty, which is also blue bordered. Also pictured are an Albert Pujols mini, Aramis Ramirez mini, Rich Harden mini, Cal Ripken mini, and Derek Jeter mini
I look forward to opening the last 8 packs over the next week or so. In the meantime I'll post the list of doubles I have for trade outside of the Sizemore Heads Up that I already mentioned.
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