Monday, July 24, 2017

Fairfield $5 box.



I finally made it into a Five Below store to check out their card selection. I found about a half dozen of those '100 cards + one pack' Fairfield repack boxes. Same thing I bought from a Walgreens a month ago which I didn't bother to post since it was so unremarkable.

I opened the box while I was out on the road and was hoping for something interesting which is probably a foolish expectation when dealing with a Fairfield repack. I was unimpressed that night and planned to vent about it in this post.

But as I went thru the cards a second time trying to pick out which ones to scan I found that there were a few 'gems' in the bunch as well as cards which filled in a gap or two in my card knowledge.

The 1994 George Brett at the top of the post is his last career card (I think). Any time I can do a little scoreboard detective work I dig right in. That photo is from Brett's second inning at bat in this 1993 game vs Milwaukee. Royals won it on a Chris Gwynn double in the bottom of the ninth.

The mid-90s are a baseball vacuum for me so I have few if any '94s. But at least I recognised the design as a Topps set. However this next card sent me to Google:


I'm sure that somewhere along the way I've been sent at least one 1996 Topps but I would have lost a bet on this being a Topps flagship set design.

The box covered a lot of ground. Oldest cards were 1981 Donruss....


...and the newest were from 2016. Yes, I got two of this card. It's (they) are from those team sets that come in hanging blister packs at Target.


Plenty of shiny stuff:




There were 17 Topps 2013 cards, by far the most from any set:


And that includes another pair of dupes:


El Presidente made an appearance. Too bad he isn't.


Here is a set that hasn't crossed my mind in a long time. Sportflics. This is Tom Browning from the '86 set. I had some Orioles because back then I bought everything Orioles-related. I'm pretty sure I tossed them out in the 'Junk Wax Purge' of 1993.


There were some other good players such as Andre Dawson....


...and a DK Barry Larkin.

I like the O-Pee-Chee Premier design.


1989 was Jim Rice's final year. Here is his Fleer card out of my box.


Greg Maddux out of an UD set I didn't collect. This was the card visible through the front of the box. Of the six boxes there I chose him as 'best available player'.


And Juan Berenguer. Juan looks like one of my brother-in-law's brothers-in-law. That guy is the life of the party, too.
There are nearly 90 others but none worth rolling my chair over to the scanner for. Now that I think about it the reason I was so down on the box at first was probably the pack that came out of it:


Ugg. ANY real card pack would have been better.

I've spent close to $25 or so on various repacks in the last six months. I think it's time to give it a break for awhile.

6 comments:

  1. Great detective work! That Brett card is awesome. Always nice putting a specific photo on a card to a specific game.

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  2. Pretty standard repack stuff, but like you said, a few gems. I can't take those Triple Play packs anymore.

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  3. I put all my Triple Play packs out with candy on Halloween for the trick or treaters. Thankfully I haven't been t.p.'d!

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  4. The last time I bought a Fairfield, I looked at the side and made sure the unopened pack wasn't covered in red foil.

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  5. A couple of cool cards. Can't say I've ever picked up one of these

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  6. Same here..those Triple Plays have stopped me from buying any repacks...for now.

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