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.