Owl see, owl do

The other day, Shoebox Legends featured a $20 repack box that contained a fair amount of fun and interesting for the money.

I don't spend $20 in one shot on current cards much anymore. If I'm buying repacks, I prefer the hanging rack packs for under 10 bucks. If I spend $20 on cards, I'd rather go online and get something I know I want.

But Shoebox's repack box offered a red signature autograph and few other things that made me find one myself the other day and open it up.

I did it so eagerly that I can't show you the packs in the box window like Shane did so expertly. This is all I've got:

So, you'll need to know the 20 packs I opened just in case you want to do the same. Here they are in boring old list form:

-- 3 packs of 2012 Panini Triple Play
-- 1 pack of 2013 Topps Opening Day
-- 1 pack of 2013 Topps Update
-- 2 six-card packs of 2013 Allen & Ginter
-- 3 packs of 2013 Bowman Platinum
-- 6 packs of 2014 Topps (Series 1 and Series 2)
-- 3 packs of 2014 Topps Heritage
-- 1 rack pack of 2014 Topps Heritage

I figured this arrangement could do minimal dupes harm. Although I'm not much interested in 2014 Topps, I have so little of it, it'd at least be new to me. The real appeal was some 2014 Heritage. Who doesn't love the 1965 design?

It turns out I didn't have near the success of Shoebox Legends, but I'm still not sad I bought it. Here is a brief rundown:

2012 Triple Play

The less I show of this, the better. But there's someone who you can't get in many card products. Or his likeness, anyway.


2013 Opening Day

I opened so much of this last year, thanks to all those $2.98 blasters I bought, that there couldn't possibly have been anything interesting in a single pack. And that was the case.


2013 Topps Update

By the time Update rolled around in 2013 I was pretty card fatigued. Much of this (besides Puig, of course) is new to me.


2013 Allen & Ginter

I'm just a handful of cards away from finishing the set, so no hopes of doing that here. This was all about the minis. Starlin Marte enters my Frankenset binder.

And I believe I've pulled almost every version of this Jose Reyes card now ...

... because it's the no-number variation.


2014 Heritage

The Heritage packs were easily the most fun to open. But you know Heritage. It's not about the hits or inserts, it's about the SPs. These were the two SPs.

This was also a very Jarrod Parker-heavy repack box, as you'll see soon.


2014 Topps

I gave up very quickly on 2014 Topps, which kept me from seeing cards like this. Of course, this isn't a variation photo, because Topps' mission is to confuse the hell out of you.

Also, I got a whiff of Topps' excellent collation. (There's Jarrod!)

Here are the parallels:

Machado looks like he spilled his dessert on his jersey.

I didn't get any pink or camo parallels -- or even any yellow or green ones -- as I was hoping, but there was one pretty good one.

That obviously is a filched image, because the actual card has already been packaged up for a Yankee fan, who should have this.


2013 Bowman Platinum

You never figured I'd save this set for last, huh?

Well, it had the one card in it that made this purchase the most worthwhile.

No, not Jarrod Parker.

Yasiel Puig!

This is the chrome parallel version, which is most welcome in my collection.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what the bonus items are that were advertised on the side of the box.

Sorry for the photo glare. That's Ortiz, Sandoval and Molina Chipz. The blue Molina is already scheduled for Cards On Cards.

So, overall, this $20 box did what I hoped it would do. A few cards for my collection, a little bit of trade bait, and not too many dupes.

But now I'm back to spending no more than 10 bucks on cards on the retail shelf.

I've got a whole online cart full of much better goodies than these.