Repacks Sundays!

At the same Five Below store where I've been getting my repacks, they have some other kinds of repacks that I've been ignoring. In addition to baseball, they also have a football version that I'm sure is pretty similar. I don't collect football cards but part of me wonders what the football equivalent to the 1989 Topps jumbo pack I've been getting is. Maybe one of these days I'll splurge but for now, I'll be sticking to baseball.

They also have packs that are just 100 cards for $3.99. Up until now, I've been willing to drop the extra buck to get the four extra packs that come with the other box. I say up until now because when I went to pick up this week's box, I saw one lonely version of this $3.99 package hanging from the peg.

One of the benefits of this type of pack, is that you get a pretty clear view of four of the cards you'll be getting. As you can see above, the front showed a Geoff Jenkins and Johan Santana. Flip it over, and there's a Robin Ventura see through card and Frank Viola Cap'n Crunch card. And if you look real close, you can see a Jose Canseco card behind the see-through Ventura. Nothing spectacular, but for less than a nickel a card, I decided to give this pack a try.

Here's an unobstructed view of the four that were showing:

and the Canseco

In addition to the Canseco, there were a bunch of other All-Stars...

and Rookies.

The Frank Viola Cap'n Crunch wasn't the only oddball. How about some Bazooka?

Or a nice rousing game of Championship Baseball?

I scanned the back here because I forgot all about playing this dice game. I'm pretty sure I had books filled with boxscores from playing with friends. Makes me want to find a set and teach the kids! I recently took a statistics class where we talked about probability. I wonder how much thought Topps/Milton Bradley put into the probability of rolling a certain number vs the likelihood of the player actually hitting into that play. For instance, Carter seems more likely to hit a home run than rolling a 12, but maybe not when compared to the other plays.

And speaking of backs, here are a couple of cards that I thought deserved to have a front and back scanned. First up we have a Score Highlights card commemorating Jim abbot's No-Hitter.

Next up is this interesting Chris Stynes card. Not because it is Chris Stynes but because of the weird slide type pohoto that is inserted into it.

When you flip it over, you get a third picture of Stynes plus a reverse of the "slide" photo with the Reds logo removed from his cap and the logo from his bat removed too. The larger print is in Spanish while the fine print is the English version the text.

The final card that I scanned the back of is a Larry Walker card from Upper Deck. His "Strange but True" tale involves throwing out runners at first base...from the outfield. Obviously its not the same level but I did the same thing in high school on several occasions. In fact, over the course of my high school baseball career,  I threw somebody out at first from all three outfields positions. Granted, the guy I threw out from left field ran more like Cecil Fielder than Rickey Henderson and the ball was a one-hopper line drive right at me but it still happened!

The token oldest and newest cards in the box, 1979 Topps and 2001 Bowman Chrome.

This Phil Niekro card might win the award for oldest looking active player I have on a card.

And this has to be one of the most awkward pitching motions I've seen. Not sure why, but it just seems weird.

 

 And last but certainly not least, we have the Cubs and former/future Cubs from the pack.

  

Probably not the worst repack box I've ever gotten but I'll probably stick to the one that comes with the four extra packs in the future. Besides, I bought the last of these and with a store live Five Below, who knows if they'll even get replenished on an item like this.