Night Owl Cards

They exist. Yup, what you're seeing here is a 2014 Topps Heritage blaster. In other words, I've gone full bore from being one of the last poor saps to find any Heritage at all to being one of the first to spot ... or at least show ... a Heritage blaster on the blogs. Nothing but 360 miles an hour around here. I knew this would happen. I knew the minute that I wrote a whinefest about Topps' distribution techniques that one of its elves would drop something wonderful in front of me and whisper "See? We're not so bad." Blasted evil elves. Yesterday, I needed to get wiper blades in anticipation of the spring season (little did I know that we'd get eight inches of snow 12 hours later -- blasters, snow, life is full of surprises). That was a perfect opportunity to travel north of town and see what the Walmart there featured in the card aisle. This Walmart has the smallest card section of any big box store near me. It's about a quarter of the s...

I've mentioned a few times that I have cut back on buying blasters quite a bit. Prior to last weekend, I had purchased only four since January. That's not too bad for me. Three years ago, I could have accumulated four in a single week. The decrease has come partly because I've found other retail means more to my liking, specifically rack packs and the relatively new value boxes. But mostly it's come because I'm not in denial anymore. Blasters are simply a waste of money. I'm not going to calculate the per-card cost or anything like that. I'm not one of those "find the bargain" blogs. I'll just say, simply, that the only time blasters are not a waste of cash is when you're buying cards from a set for the first time. Or maybe the second time.  I can even see buying them more often for a large set -- if anyone put out a large set anymore. But for sets of only 300 cards with loads of short-prints and inserts? Stay far away. I still had...

I have heard and read about "hot boxes" and "mutant blasters" a number of times. They seem to be a slightly common occurrence among the blogs and message boards. In real life, not so much. Then, on Sunday, I bought a blaster of A&G from Target. Unlike past blaster purchases, I did not grab the third one from the back because "that's where the hits are." I took the first one in the display and then headed out to the parking lot to pathetically open the box in the car. I wouldn't call this blaster a hot box, because it didn't really contain any hits. But it was definitely "mutant." Probably more accurately, it can be called a "bizarro" blaster, as you will soon see. I wasn't wise to what was happening until the second pack. See if you catch on quicker: PACK 1 350 - Aclides Escobar 332 - Ricky Nolasco 304 - Carlos Pena 186 - Jose Reyes TDH47 - Brandon Philips Have you figured it out already? I hadn...