Adventures in Retail

I had the retail itch the other day and stopped by Target on the way home. I admit I get retail fever from time to time. I am glad I was running a pack busting fever on this particular day. I picked up a 3 packs of 2010 Topps Update. Here are the highlights of those packs:

Yes I got 3 Strasburgers in 3 packs. Since he's on like 20 different cards in Update series, the odds are stacked in the collector's favor. I know a lot of collector's are stressing over the #661 thing. I put it at the end of my base set. It's #'d 661 for reason. The Gold and the More Tales of the game kind of annoy me for some reason. I don't think I will be buying any more Update Series because I'm a few cards short of the set.

I also bought 2 of the value packs of Topps Chrome. Refractor's galore! I think this is the first time I have ever opened a pack of Topps Chrome. I was pretty lucky I think because I ended up with some sort of refractor in each pack! The Strasburg and Stanton Orange came from the same clear cellophane pack. The Arrieta came in the other. Jake brings me one step closer to the Orioles Orange Refractor Team set. The Manny card is my best refractor/x-fractor pull of the bunch. To my astonishment, the Escobar Gold Refractor is a 1 in 775 packs! I am seriously thinking about busting a Hobby box of this stuff because I've had such good luck. My birthday is coming up so maybe I should treat myself or maybe I should quit while I'm ahead. What do you think?

Not pictured are : Orange Refractors: Yadier Molina, Roy Oswalt, Jered Weaver. Refractors of Torii Hunter, Johnny Cueto. X-Fractors of Carlos Zambrano, Erick Aybar

So this time I beat the odds at retail. I guess every collector has his day some times.

2010 Bowman box break #1

I got my 2 boxes I was eagerly awaiting yesterday. I am going to show 5 of the best cards from each box. Here is box #1. Box #2 will be posted in the near future.

Bowman Orange Ryan Howard #'d 125/250. Good Action shot. Too bad for Jeff Baker getting his brains knocked out by the tag.

Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor Starlin Castro #'d 176/250. I don't know much about him but apparently is an up-and-comer.

Bowman Chrome USA U-18 National Team Bryce Harper. It didn't scan so well but it's a pretty nice card of the (probable) #1 pick in this years draft.

Bowman Chrome Nick Franklin Autograph. He has kind of a sloppy autograph but you can't really tell because Chrome cards don't scan well.

I scanned this one a little crooked on purpose. I really like this product but all 38 Bowman Chrome Prospects Cards were miscut just like Stephen is shown here. Notice the bottom margin is much larger than the top one. None of the other cards in the box were cut like this. Only the Bowman Chrome Prospects. Other than that I am happy with my pulls from this box. I got home too late today to call Topps and complain about the Chrome Prospects. I have never had anything like this happen before. Is it better to call them or email? Do they just send replacements, or would they send an entire box? Any help would be appreciated.