The Wally World near my workplace used to be my go-to source for cards. Ever since the pandemic, it's been increasingly sparse. I had pretty much given up checking the card isle altogether on the few occasions I went there.
Last week however, I found myself having to go there, and what the heck let's take a look. As usual, there were the same things I had seen time and again over the last few months: Soccer cards, a few basketball, hockey cards from the 2021-22 season. I did manage to spot a small number of Series 1 Topps jumbo packs, but what really caught my eye was this:
What a minute...Japanese League baseball cards? How random is that? Of course, there were no prices listed, but to be honest I still wanted one just for the sake of novelty. If nothing else, I get a blog post out of it right? Who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get a pre-MLB card of Red Sox "rookie" Masataka Yoshida.
So we get 5 random cards in addition to the pack. I lucked out there, with 4 of the 5 being Red Sox cards!
All of these cards are from the team sets Topps pushes out, so that's cool. In the vein of Schrödinger's cat, I technically have these cards already in a still sealed team set pack, but I can also argue I don't know if those cards are actually in the pack. Either way, they are keepers (except for that renegade Cardinal).
On to the pack itself:
It Topps. It's Chrome. I have no idea who any of these guys are or if they are any good, but it's cool to see cards I had never seen before. Oh, and I can only assume I did well with this pack, because I also ended up with a serial numbered parallel! Again, I have no idea who he is or if he is any good, but this orange refractor is limited to only 25 copies, so there's that. (Maybe someday this rookie will be the next big Japanese player to make the jump to the MLB!)
The pack ended up costing me as much as one of the jumbo packs would have, so cost-wise, not really worth it. The novelty of opening up cards of players from the NPB League however? Totally worth it just this once.
Oh, and if anyone collects these, I'm more than willing to trade them!
I had the same experience as you did. Saw these at my local Walmart with no price on them. I wouldn't even have noticed if there weren't some kids talking about them. WAY over priced, but I went ahead with it. I got one with standard NPB cards rather than the Chrome variety, but it was the novelty of buying Japanese cards in the States which made me suck it up and pay the high price. At least I got a few more cards for my money.
ReplyDeleteMy extra 5 cards were also from the 2022 team sets, but they were all Yankees. NOT a Yankee fan but at least they were all cards I didn't have (and to be fair there were a couple of decent stars, although no Judge). Better than junk wax.
A lot of them had regular American packs showing--I saw a lot of Gypsy Queen--and I don't know how they're going to sell them at that price.
Takashi Ogino is a 3-time All-Star and a Gold Glove winner.
ReplyDeleteYuki Takahashi was an All-Star in 2021.
Hideto Asamura is a 9-time All-Star and 2-time Gold Glove winner.
Wow! Seems like I did better than I thought. Asamura in particular seems like a big deal.
DeleteCool find!
ReplyDeleteThat is very random. I'd totally buy that, too. ... My Walmart is pretty good on cards these days. Target is another story, but I found them the last time I went there a week or so ago.
ReplyDeleteI'd have done the same thing. I wound up finding some of those cards in a collection I bought recently. I pulled them out and they have been sent to Fuji (he collects them or at least the Asian/Japanese players).
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on pulling the orange refractor! Hope he becomes the next Ohtani.
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I would probably try one too if I saw one. Been a while since I checked Walmart though. Looks like Fuji will have to make some Walmart runs!
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ReplyDeleteFour cards in the pack seems kind of stingy on Topps' part.
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