What life would be like if I lived in civilization

 

I spent a couple of days away to visit folks in the Buffalo area.

 

I've mentioned many times how much I love that city. Not only is it full of nostalgia -- it's where I spent my college years, where I met my wife, etc. -- but it is much more "me" than the place I live currently, where I've lived more than 30 years, a.k.a., not the most civilized place in the world.

 

For example: The hobby of sports card collecting.

 

My life of collecting cards where I live is mostly buying online, waiting for a card show to appear every month or so, and taking a gander at the card aisle whenever I happen to be in a big box (which is a lot less often than it was 5-10 years ago) and finding it barren.

 

Those are my options living where I do. Admittedly, they're not too bad and better in some ways than they once were, I mean I never heard of a monthly card show in my neighborhood even two years ago. But if I lived in a city like Buffalo, I could do so much damage.

 

In the short time I had there, I drove over to Dave & Adam's, which is the sprawling Buffalo suburb of Amherst. I've written about it a couple times before. Most of what is offered there is Buffalo Bills clothing of every kind. Almost nothing in the store is cheap. In the next room behind the clothing displays is the collectibles area, which is pretty large.

 

If you are interested in current product, they have it all (as you can imagine from their online presence). There are no empty shelves. There is no loser clearing out stock the second it's put out. There are box pyramids of 2024 and 2025 product on multiple table displays.

 

I showed up the day of (or the day after) release for 2025 Heritage. In my outpost that would mean maybe finding 2025 Heritage in a week -- if I'm lucky. Two, three weeks is more likely. But not in a city like Buffalo. I could have bought any kind I wanted -- value boxes, mega boxes, hobby boxes, packs.

 

Of course, I couldn't afford much. This is what I picked up:

 

That's a blaster box of 2025 Heritage, a hobby pack of 2024 Heritage High Numbers and a package of nine-pocket pages.

 

I didn't specifically go for Fanatics' "LaserWeld" pages -- I don't even know what those are and I haven't opened the package yet. Honestly, they were the only baseball card pages I could find there (so I guess they don't have everything). This is much different from a previous visit when I could've purchased any version of page I wanted. But the pages seemed to be a casualty of fantasy-card collecting means of storing things, which do me no good.

 

As for the 2024 Heritage High Numbers pack, that was an impulse buy at the counter. There were plenty of Heritage High boxes for sale, too, but I didn't want to add to the cost. There were also many discounted boxes from 2022 and 2023, too. The inventory was staggering to a yokel like me who jumps up and down if he finds one blaster of baseball cards hiding behind some wrestling and soccer boxes at Target.

 

I took a shot at the hobby pack because I don't think I've opened a hobby pack in 15 years -- again, I don't live in a real city.

 

 

Let's look through that $8.95 (eep!) pack.

 

 

The first four. Not off to a great start. A Padre, a poorly shooped Diamondback, a Dodger I have already, and I think we can stop making Aroldis Chapman cards now. And also evidence how the rookie logo plague has spread to Heritage in the last couple of years.

 

 

I guess this is my reward for buying a hobby pack. It's a numbered-to-225 chrome card of Nationals pitcher MacKenzie Gore. But a Nationals card hasn't been a reward in years. Even then I was barely interested. 

More Padres, Diamondbacks and rookies. But I did get a very colorful Now and Then insert. (RIP, Adolis Garcia, he exploded).

 

I suppose if I lived in a city with hobby shops I'd have known better.

 

As for the Heritage box, I'll save that for an upcoming post. I'm a bit traveled out. I also have many blog posts to catch up on, I may have been to an actual city with actual stores and drivers whose driving make sense, but I was staying with people who insist on living where they've never heard of the internet.