I pulled my first buyback the other day

I don't have a lot of use for the buybacks that Topps has been putting in its products the last few years.

To me, stamping an old card is completely unnecessary. If you want to wow a collector with a 30-year-old card then just put the damn card in the pack. You don't need to deface it.

But, somehow, by stamping cards, and stamping them in different colors, Topps has convinced some collectors that they have something special. I don't get it. I'll never get it. Don't bother explaining it to me.

The reason why I collect the 1975 Topps buyback cards is because I want these buybacks to have some meaning. This is the only way I can think of where they have meaning, by trying to complete a set of them -- or at least as many of them that exist from a particular set.

I've formed this thought process all without pulling a single buyback card. Buybacks, for the most part, are inserted in hobby boxes. I don't know why, maybe so shop owners and dealers can tout them as "hits"? And since I don't have a suitable hobby shop near me, that cuts down on my ability to pull a buyback. I'm not in the habit of ordering hobby boxes online either.

So how do I know how I'd feel about pulling a buyback? Maybe I was wrong in my preemptive analysis. What would happen if I discovered a buyback in my pack and I actually liked it?

Well, the other day I got to find out the answers to those questions.

My wife brought home a pack of baseball cards from her sister's house. Her sister had bought another pack for me. It was a common, ordinary 2017 Topps Series 1 flagship pack. I have no plans to open any flagship for the rest of the year, except to use my coupon on Series 2. So I wasn't too thrilled with this pack at all. The 2017 design is interesting and uplifting only if you compare it to the set that came out the preceding year. Otherwise it's boring and a little bit depressing.

But let's open the pack so I can finally get to the point:

Blah, blah, blah ...

... blah, blah, blah, blah ...

... And there it is.

So in trying to capture my immediate thoughts when I spotted this buyback, I admit that it was nice to see a 1986 design pop out of a 2017 pack.

That was diminished somewhat by the 1987-themed insert card that arrived immediately before Candiotti, but still it was nice to see some color after all of the gray of 2017.

My next move was turn the card over because I didn't remember this card from the 1986 Topps set, which I have completed. Sure enough it was a card from the Traded set.

And I became immediately disgusted.

I need that Candiotti card for the 1986 Traded set! Oh, I'm not really attempting to complete it or have any real plans to in the future, but every card set from this time period is one that I eventually would like to complete. But now it's just a card with a "Rediscover Topps" stamp -- and there's no way I'm looking up what a bronze stamp means.

It's not a real big deal. I can go out and find the 1986 Traded set -- unstamped -- easily enough. I'm just trying to chronicle my immediate gut reaction. And, as a set-collector it was "Hey! A buyback ... ugh!"

I do try to look at the other point of view: pulling a 31-year-old card is kind of cool. Imagine if it was 1986 and I was pulling a 31-year-old card out of a pack? That would be a 1955 card, man!

But, again, that would never happen. First of all, 1955 Topps cards were larger than 2 1/2-by-3 1/2 and you'd have to wedge that baby into the pack and ruin it. Secondly, the only reason Topps is stamping cards from 1986 is because card companies created 90,000 more cards in 1986 than they did in 1955 and we've got to get rid of them somehow!

So, those are my thoughts about pulling a buyback -- pretty much the thoughts I had before pulling a buyback.

 

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.