Relaxing with Dime Packs

It's been over forty years since Topps baseball wax packs had a suggested retail value of 10¢.  In 1975... collectors were forced to pay an extra 5¢ for a pack of ten cards and the trademark stick of pink gum.

Fast forward to January of this year.  I drove up to Daly City to attend my favorite card show and as soon as I entered the mall, I found a guy with hundreds... possibly thousands... of dime packs.  I immediately began scooping up packs that were dime worthy.

In celebration of my highly anticipated three day weekend, I have decided to bust open a few stacks of packs.

Today's menu includes the following:  1993 Stadium Club Series 2 Baseball, 1992 Fleer Ultra Series 2 Baseball, 1992 Pinnacle Series 1 Baseball, 1993 Cardz The Flintstones, 1991 Topps Baseball, 1992 Pacific University of Washington Football, and 1994 Donruss Triple Play Baseball.

Here are the highlights from my break...

I kicked things off with Triple Play and was expecting some cheesy design or a product that catered to kids.  The result was a very pleasant surprise.  I actually like this design more than the regular 1994 Donruss base card set.

I was also fortunate enough to beat the odds and pull this Medalist insert featuring three popular National League first basemen at the time.

Next up...

I opened a ton of 1991 Topps back in the day and already own every card I could possibly want from this product.  But this set has several cards featuring outstanding photography and I was hoping to pull a few.  The Sandberg is a prime example.

I decided to take a break from baseball and moved onto the Flintstones packs.  Guess what?

I pulled a baseball card!  What are the odds?  I watched my fair share of The Flintstones as a kid, but don't remember this particular one.  I'll have to see if I can find it online.

Next up are a pair of packs featuring the University of Washington football program.  Back in the early 80's, I actively rooted for the Huskies because my cousin Keith went there.  He's actually the reason I became a Seahawks fan as well.

Eventually I attended San Jose State, so I started cheering for the Spartans instead.  But I still remembered a few of the names I pulled from the pack, including this Pelluer.

Okay... let's get back to baseball.

The problem with having high expectations is there's a higher risk of being let down... and that's exactly what happened with the 1992 Pinnacle and 1993 Stadium Club packs...

Back in the day, I enjoyed building the 1991 and 1992 Pinnacle baseball card sets.  I remember them being really nice cards, but for some reason... I just couldn't get into this product.  Maybe one of the reasons is that there weren't any A's or Padres in the pack.  It didn't help that Tony Pena was the biggest name... and he's not even in his Pirates uniform.  Insert sad face emoji.

Stadium Club was equally unimpressive.  The lone bright spot was this interesting insert featuring two Bay Area legends.  I took a break from the hobby back in 1993, which probably explains why I've never seen this insert before.

I saved the seven 1992 Fleer Ultra packs for last, because this was easily my favorite product of 1992.

Back then, I busted a ton of this product (both series) and ended up building a master set with all of the base cards and inserts.  They are still in the same binder from twenty-four years ago.  Damn.  I feel old.  Anyways... the second series mostly featured rookies, but I did manage to pull a few inserts including The Big Hurt you see above.

At the end of the day... I probably didn't pull $2.10 worth of cards, but I had a good time busting open packs... so that's got to be worth something.  I was also able to add the Medalists and Pacific Terrific inserts to my insert binders.  The rest of the stuff will be thrown into Super Trader packages or handed out to students this summer.

I still have a bunch of packs left from my card show purchase, but I'll save them for another day.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!