Blog Bat Around and a not so good idea

First - typing in general. It busy season and spell check, etc be darned, my typing is worse, so forgive me my errors for the next month or so.

It's a blog topic hopping around out there, so here are my two cents regarding my collection and what I am trying to do with it right now.

As far as cards go, I am still collecting in a simple (ish) hierarchy
1) Toronto Blue Jays and Leafs - any - take top priority
2) Baseball and hockey inserts/parallels
3) Baseball and hockey error cards of any kind
4) Cards for sets I am working on

In addition to this, is collecting |Magic The Gathering Artifact cards and baseball/hockey/Magic unopened packs. As far as trading go, I don't really have much activity on these, so it is more what I collect outside of the trading realm and add to the collection.

As far as collection goals on a whole:
1) Reducing my trade cards
I am in the midst this year of trying to reduce the number of trade cards I have for cards I collect above. I am also all for trading basketball and football for any baseball or hockey cards I don't have, let alone cards that fit the list above. I call this my 2018 goal.

2) Reduce the "keep" collection
Right now, if I don't have it, I keep one when it comes to hockey and baseball. I need to look at if I really want to do this. It's great to have goals, but I can't collect every set so in 2019, I think I am going to go through my general hockey and baseball "keep" collection cards and set some sort of limit (say 50%), and any set I am not there on from a completion stand point, push those cards to traders and build on the goals above.

Definitely a 2019 goal.

So - that's it in a nutshell, at least where I am at today. But interests always change and who knows what I will find of interest in a couple months.

Anywho - you know when curiosity gets the better of you? You know when you realize this, and still go through with allowing your curiosity to win out? I can guarantee before we get to this, that is exactly what happen with this one.

I have seen these hockey mystery boxes at Walmart for a while:


I held out on getting one, then looked up a couple videos and saw some more recent packs were included, so I figured, if I can get a couple newer packs for the unopened pack collection, I could justify the buy to myself.

You may be asking - "so why don't you just buy the packs themselves since you can probably do it for cheaper." You and your crazy logic....

So what is supposed to be included is:
- 6 packs
- 1 mystery pack (I don't understand why it isn't just 7 packs since they do not tell you what the other 6 packs are going to be, and they are not consistent based on what I saw before buying)
- 1 bonus item
- 1 auto or relic card

From the videos I saw, the packs were pretty decent with new Parkhurst, newer Artifacts and such products represented in the 6 packs. I am going to guess my luck will not be as fortunate, it never is with these...

So my packs...

Happy with the Parkhurst, meh on the rest. I would have liked something newer and more Artifact related as the other packs are roughly dollar-a-pack ones. I will have to double check, but I think the Parkhurst and maybe the MVP will be good and new for my unopened collection.

The bonus pack...

Happy it is a hobby pack, and if I am going to get a duplicate pack as I think I have a hobby version, still okay, as opening this one should be good.

As for the guaranteed relic/auto...

About what I would expect from these boxes. Again, standard and call it maybe a dollar card. Not an overly long career, but a few seasons in Philly followed by single seasons in Tampa Bay and San Jose before being out of the NHL around 2012.

As for the bonus item - I think the box was feeling a bit bad for me...as I go two...

Oversized box toppers. Nice enough in being still wrapped and in package, though I don't need two. Good news though, with trading away as many cards as I am trying to this year, I can easily use one in a box as a topper - just as it was meant to be. There are a couple on COMC with prices around $8 which seems high to me, but makes me feel slightly better.

Well - definitely not worth the $30 paid for the box, but maybe there will be something good in the packs I will be opening. Have to wait until tomorrow to see what was in those, and if they redeemed this purchase.