Topps 2022 Update RETAIL : When Fear of Missing Out is Really JUST Missing Out

 

Sorry.

            About last week.

            An unexpected break.

            A brief explanation as to my absence. I usually get up to write four or five mornings a week. At around 4:45 a.m. Been doing this for almost a couple of decades now. Was much, much easier when I was younger. Trust me. In fact, getting down to four mornings a week is sometimes because I simply cannot get out of bed. Especially after working a later shift at the day gig. Sometimes I want to sleep.

            Don’t get me wrong; I like my morning schedule. I’m a morning person. For years I tried writing at night, but after capitalism has its way with me, I’ve learned that I’m not much use in the evenings and nights, other than having a few drinks on the couch and reading a book. I like to write in the mornings before the work world, and all that encompasses, gets to have its way with me.

            And it’s worked.

            Most of the time.

            I do have a small body of work out there on small presses.

            For about a year now I’ve been balancing my writing mornings between this blog, poem writing (when an idea comes to me), and a new novel that I’ve been working on. I don’t want to say much about it except that it involves Wiffle ball, baseball cards and middle-aged men carrying around lifelong grudges against each other. Don’t worry…it’s fun stuff. I’m in the home stretch with the novel now, so I’ve been dedicating more mornings to it, while writing this blog while at work.

            Sometimes work gets in the way.

            As if did last week.

            So…I’m sorry.

            Anyway…enough about my creative endeavors. We’re here to talk about cards. And talk about cards we shall, goddamn it! Two weeks ago, I gave a somewhat harsh review of the inserts in Topps 2022 Update Hobby Box. Or, in my case, you win some/you lose some/nobody likes a sore loser. I thought my Hobby Box is crap. But as the movie Grinch says, one man’s garbage is another man’s potpourri. So, perhaps it wasn’t all bad.

            And I went to the well again.

            Not a Hobby box this time.

            But a Retail box.

            You see, I live in New York City. That’s not a boast. It’s an actual fact. I go outside my door and there’s New York City. Well, not the Statue of Liberty. Although if I walk a number of block I can see Lady Liberty far off in the distance. I’m more South Brooklyn. Not the South Brooklyn rich people in Park Slope think they’re in. I’m in the part of Brooklyn that connects to Staten Island. So, technically, I walk out the door into New York City every morning.

            But…I digress.

            Being a card collector in New York City poses some challenges…especially if you don’t own a car. For one, I don’t get to take advantage of a random trip to Target or Wal-Mart. I have a lot of FOMO, or maybe its mild jealous, seeing other collectors get to stop off at big box retail stores and grab product right off of the shelf. I only get to do that if I’m visiting family in Buffalo or Pittsburgh…and thanks to Covid, that hasn’t been as often as I’ve liked. Or when I’ve been to either place, the card shelves were bare because of all of the card insanity in 2020 and into 2021.

            I do have LCS here. But they’re few and far between. And, to be honest, New York City rent overhead makes buying product in those stores a touch prohibitive. We have Targets but they don’t carry sports cards. At least not the ones in Brooklyn. I don’t know if it’s a space issue or what. There is the Major League Baseball Flagship store. But its in Midtown. Like across the street from Radio City Music Hall. And as any good New Yorker knows, avoid Midtown at all costs. Especially in the summer. Most especially during this time of the year. So… card collecting for me is primarily buying product online. That usually means shipping costs along with the cost of the product.

            Which is…fine.

            But sometimes I just want to pop off at the Wal-Mart and see that wall of sports card product waiting for me.

            It’s not FOMO.

            I actually AM missing out.

            Very long story short…with this in mind…I bought a Retail box.

            And I didn’t do too badly.

The Witt Jr. Gold alone was probably worth the price of admission.

            …unless he doesn’t pan out.

            It seems to be my year for Short Print cards.

            Any Astros fans out there looking to trade…I’m a Pirates fan, size XL.

            I’ll take anything Oneil Cruz.

            …and the Juan Soto Short Print is nice.

            Explain to me again why rookies like Michael Harris II can’t be in this set, yet Soto in a Padres uniform can?

            For the Kris Bryant lover.

            …which isn’t me.

            A nice assortment of the All-Star cards.

             Although I still gripe that they aren’t a part of the base set of Update, and I get celebration cards for dudes hitting 100 career home runs.

            That said, I’ve ended up getting a number of the big All-Stars in that set, and might make a run at completing my first ever insert set.

            Here’s the best of the rest.

            The shiny cards.

            The 1987 cards.

            It pains me to write this…but between 1987 inserts and Topps (probably production related) laziness of including 1987 as a part of Archives (a product I did not buy this year, as I saved my pennies for football cards instead); I thought I’d never say this…but I’m getting tired of 1987 Topps baseball. The design needs to go on the backburner for a few years.

            Here come the “bells and whistle” cards.

            Lastly, in nearly every pack of Update Retail you get a Stars of the MLB.

            And here they are for your perusal.

            I take, well, I almost take, umbrage with the word “stars” in this instance. Some of the guys here were once stars…or almost stars. Some guys…are they stars yet? Is Ryan Mountcastle a star? Johnathan India? I’m asking in all sincerity. And a lot of these guys…they’re rookies. I know Julio Rodriguez just won Rookie of the Year…and good for him. He deserved it. But is he a star? Stars to me are Aaron Judge. Mike Trout.

            But I guess they were all used up in Series 1 and 2.

            I like the Stars of the MLB inserts…but here it mostly seems like just another reason to slap an insert card with the RC logo on it, and let history and statistics figure out if Topps got it right.

            All’n’all I liked my Retail Box experience. It’s not the random joy of coming across a blaster or a hanger in a Target (maybe I’ll get to in December!), but it was a fun rip. Full disclosure…this isn’t the first time I’ve opened a Retail Box. And, to be honest, I tend to like the inserts in Retail better, and I tend to DO a lot better in what I pull. Honestly, I think I’d rather buy a Retail box over a Hobby box. But there’s a problem inherent in that thinking. Retail tends to come out weeks to a month after Hobby does. And I lack the patience to wait.

            If my envy of watching people buy retail at Target or Wal-Mart isn’t really FOMO.

            Then my lack of patience waiting on Retail boxes to come out sure as hell is.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Well, I just hope to have a blog post. I’ll come up with something. Maybe I’ll write a blog post about Wiffle ball, cards and middle-aged men with maturity issues….wait…I’m already doing that somewhere else.