My First Ever Father-Daughter Box Break (featuring 2015-16 Topps products)

A few quick notes before I start this post: my "star player" box blog series will resume next week with active baseball stars. Then I might do a post (or two) on football and basketball star base cards at the end of the week and save hockey stars for January - once my COMC order arrives mid-month I'll want to write a few posts about my purchases.

Also I've expanded my wantlist/current projects page, and I've added a former NFL tight end to the Debtor Hall of Shame. Now that we've got the housekeeping out of the way, let's get to the cards!

A short time ago, I was shopping in Target with the wife and kids. My six year old daughter has started to show an interest in my sports card collection (!!) and when we passed by the collectibles aisle she said out of nowhere "Daddy, when are you going to teach me about baseball cards?" Well that tugged at my heart; since I was her age when I started collecting I had to get her a blaster box.

While my girls looked at toys I picked out a repack: 20 packs (plus one relic) for $20.

I was expecting at least 10 packs from the junk wax era - and a crappy relic of some team USA player who never made it above double-A. I only got two junk wax packs (both 1991 Studio) and three packs of Triple Play I didn't care for, but we did pull the coveted 'real feel' jersey card:

Yusss!

To my surprise, every other pack was from 2015 or 2016 Topps or Topps Heritage. And the relic was not a nobody at all - unless you consider 15 year MLB veteran and 2-time All-Star Shawn Green a 'nobody'.

This is the holder it came in. I've yet to find a screwdriver to jailbreak the thing.

Here's a sample of the 1991 Studio, including a Ken Griffey, Jr with a dinged corner.

 Simple, yet informative card backs.

Did you know Cecil had a son?

I actually didn't mind the prospect of junk wax because I wanted my daughter to open the packs and look through the cards without me freaking out that she'd bend the corners. (I'm 90% sure the Griffey was already bent, it seems the Studio packs took a beating.)

We laid the packs out on the floor and divided them up. I let her open the Studio and Triple Play. I opened most of the 2015 Topps (one of my faves) and we split the Heritage in half.

I got the 2015 Heritage jumbo pack in the box window, which was a total dud. These are the "highlights":

Best of the worst. At least the Goldschmidt is a high #.

The 9 packs of 2015 Topps Series 1 were a lot of fun to open, for a couple of reasons:

My daughter pulled an Eric Young gold parallel, and she knew it was a special card. Later when she got a Pittsburgh Pirate in her pack she assumed that was special too, based on the border color. That's when I explained the difference between insert cards and regular base cards.

There's a difference. I guess.

Sox in my box!

The Ortiz free agent 40 is a dupe :/

Overall, I think 2016 Topps Heritage was the best of the bunch:

Whenever we pulled pull a star player I'd explain to my daughter that "he's the best player in the game" (Trout) or "one of the best" (Harper). So when she pulled the Ichiro card I told her "he's an all-time great player, but he's going to retire soon."
She replied "Why, cause he's really old?"

Lol...yes, dear. Because he's really old.

The purple chrome parallels were one per pack. I spared her the ethics lesson on A-Rod, and only  told her "he's another all-time great player" - but I did tell her about Jose Fernandez, and how he died in a boating accident a couple months ago. This refractor is #d/567.

Santiago Casilla hot box! I pulled one of his cards in each Topps product. Somehow he didn't make it into 1991 Studio. Maybe because he was 11 years old?




Tomorrow I'll post the box of Garbage Pail Kids she picked out for her 7th birthday - and a few classic cards from the original GPK series. 



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