How many years have I bought a blaster-or-whatever of Topps Archives and been annoyed an hour later that I bought it? Five? Seven? Ten? Archives, in its current form, has existed for 11 years now and I established long ago that it doesn't make me happy. And in this year of not taking chances when it comes to card purchasing, I thought I was over this. Two steps forward, one step back. Like last year , I was doing a little Christmas shopping a few days ago -- just a little because who can stand more than 20 minutes in a big box at this time of year? -- and swung by the card aisle. Only this time it was Target, not Walmart. A couple weeks prior I had found the card shelves very healthy. This visit, they were less healthy -- the ransackers had been at work -- but I found a blaster of Archives. I had seen a little bit of it interesting on the blogs, I wanted to see what the 2003 design looked like, so I took the gamble. Mostly what I found was cards that don't look like the ol...
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