The Lonely Blaster

I hit Target yesterday looking for some cards and the only thing for baseball was this blaster. Literally the only baseball item was this single blaster.

No packs, no jumbos, nothing. So I bought it thinking I might not see any more packs this year even though I'm usually not a big spender like that, I typically just pick up a pack here and there.

I brought it home and told my wife that I would wait to open it and that she can give it to me for my birthday coming up. She insisted that I open it now.

I've been a bit unamused with opening new material the past few years, so let's be unamused together, shall we?

Pack 1

First card for 2026.

I'm not going to do a running commentary, let's just see what I pulled.

Pack 2

Pack 3

Pack 4

Pack 5

Pack 6

That's it.

Are you all finding product in your area yet?

I'm Going Back To 1987

I typically don't set goals for myself, for all the obvious reasons people don't. I will however set up a mission for myself; that is, an objective to reach, that's the military background in me. Maybe it's just using a different word in the end.

My TCDB trades are usually all over the place as far as my Angels collection goes, and that's fine but in order to focus my collecting for this year I decided to pick a year that I wanted to concentrate on and my mission would be to try to obtain as many missing Angels cards as I can from that year. Oh, I'll still take any Angels offered, but my trade proposals will try to be 1987 centered.

I knew I would need to pick an earlier year that would be more realistic, one without all the crazy parallel, numbered, and relic cards, so I went with 1987. I was recently in that binder when it dawned on me that I might already have most of the Angel's cards from 1987. Currently TCDB has my 1987 California Angels collection at 67.2% complete.

Probably the bulk of the missing items will be Topps Tiffany and O-Pee-Chee stickers, Fleer Glossy, and Odd-balls.

I realize that there will be some things that will be difficult to get, or too expensive for my tastes, so I'm okay not having those. But I'm pretty sure that I can pick off all if not most of the common stuff. I'm also not including any of the single or double asterisk, period or no period variations, unless it's for a PC guy, and no coins, and probably not sheets or panels.

Shouldn't be too hard.

All the cards above came in a trade with shadowblind and that Mark McLemore 1987 Broder Rookies is the first card I've received towards the 1987 effort.

PIF from Kin

I hope y'all have seen that Kin is back and blogging at I Feel Like A Collector Again.

He reached out through TCDB offering to send some cards my way.

He sent a nice little PWE of some Angels needs. Thanks Kin!

I also received these cards in a trade with Erdoro:

Always glad for an All-Time Angels autograph.

And these came in from bradsnow:

Brad offered these for a bunch of 2006 Fleer Tradition he needed.

How about you. Are you focusing your collecting on anything specific right now?

Why Waste A Trip

I finally made it over to Target only to find that there were no baseball cards to be found, only Football and Hockey. I also checked the clearance and there were NO cards on clearance. Not wanting to waste the trip (although we did grab some frozen cookies to bake later) I grabbed this pack of Absolute so that I would have something to open.

No Pats.

Instead of the "Three Exclusive Blue Parallels Included" I got a blue and two aqua, and two other inserts.

These are all available on TCDB if interested.

After Target we headed over to Half Price Books where I found this gem:

1997 Topps has been on my Someday list to collect, and it would have been fun getting it through trades, but for $15 I couldn't pass it up. Now do I open it and binder it so I can look at it, or leave it sealed? If I open it I can find out what the "8 randomly selected insert cards included" are.

Trades have been coming in too.

Here's one from scrubeenie

A scattering of wants.

And another from DThiry

Ah, more of those pesky Uno cards.

And one more from pksteinberg

Peter is getting me started on the 2026 Topps Angels Team Set.

So, should I open the 1997 Topps Set box?

Cleared for Clearance

 

A TCDB trade with stephen54scc.

I haven't been able to make it back to Target since I picked up those Uno Core boxes a few weeks ago, to see if they had anything else on clearance. I'm hoping that they treat the Uno Jersey boxes the same way, just because it was fun to rip some packs at such a low cost, and to maybe pick up some Patriots like these that I got in the trade.

I also haven't picked up any 2026 Topps Baseball yet, so hopefully some will be available by then.

I also recently bought a $5 grab bag of misc. Topps cards at the local junk mall.

The stack of 1978 Topps had me intrigued because I like the design, it's one I would consider collecting. Here's what was in the bag:

1971 - 1

1973 - 3

1975 - 3

1976 - 1

1977 - 34

1978 - 57

1979 - 1

1980 - 1

1987 - 7

1988 - 8

1991 - 11

I think I have another small stack of '78s somewhere, so there is a small possibility that I'll collect the set.

Find any awesome deals on sports cards lately?

When's Your Birthday

Shortly after the World Series is played, and the winners are crowned, and baseball season is over, my daughter, excited about baseball, will start asking, "When does baseball start again?"  and I'll always answer her with "Not until March". Sad face.

She'll keep asking that over several weeks, until I'll answer her with, "Well, when does baseball start, do you remember?" and she'll say "March" with a smile because she now realizes that March is getting closer.

But she's a sly one, so she'll change her question to, "When's baseball on TV?" and I usually chuckle about this time because she's a sweetheart, but now my answer is, "Not until after my BIRTHDAY!" (because I always make a big deal about my birthday coming up, it's a family tradition).

Funny, she never gets excited that my birthday's coming up!

These cards came in a trade with Geoff2568.

Do you usually receive baseball-related gifts for your birthday?

The La-la-lympics

The "La-la-lympics", that's what my kids used to call the Olympics when they couldn't pronounce the word. Funny even though they're in their mid-twenties we still call them that.

So, with the La-la-lympics now being on television there are occasions when this allows me some extra hobby time in the evenings. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching the Olympics, just not so much the ice-skating events. My wife and daughters, however, are glued to the TV for those events. That's when I politely leave the room and head to the "library" to either build a scale model or work on my card collection, and now, the new blog.

I'm an athlete at heart, so I enjoy watching most sporting events, and as far as the Olympics go, I would lean more towards favoring the Summer Games. I used to be a runner and track-and-field was my thing in high school, hurdles in particular, so I'm more familiar with those athletes and events. Besides, Summer means Team USA Baseball which will be back in the 2028 Summer Games!

For these Winter Games, I enjoy watching the Alpine and sledding events, and of course hockey. Another good reason the Olympics are on now is because my wife and I were running out of British detective shows to watch, but that's a whole other story.

Teddy Higuera up there, although not an Olympian had served as México's pitching coach in the 2006, 2009, and 2013 World Baseball Classic. I needed him for the 1986 Leaf set I'm working.

These cards all came in a TCDB trade with EBshark1955

Do you have a favorite Olympic sport that you like to watch?

Uno Clearance, Freebies, and a Favor

 Found boxes of these on clearance at Target recently, let's rip one.

You can see the details of this set in a previous post on A Pack To Be Named Later.

Comes with an info card for you to decipher all the codes on the player cards.

I highly doubt it if anyone actually plays Uno with these.

PACK 1

Quarterback hot pack!

The only thing I would change would be adding the player position to the card.

Green/Yellow and Yellow Foil parallels.

PACK 2

Red foil and another Green/Yellow, pretty nice.

PACK 3

Nice Josh Allen photo.

Blue Foil and yet another Green/Yellow!

PACK 4

Divine Deablo...interesting.

Pretty good pulling four Green/Yellow foil which I think are one of the harder pulls: the Blue, Yellow, Green, and Red being the most common.

From a box I opened earlier in the week I pulled 3 Viper foil parallels which I'm assuming are the hardest to pull.

FREEBIES

If you're a follower of the blog (you can become one on the sidebar) and would like five (5) of these base cards shown above (not the foil) just leave a comment below indicating player name and COLOR.

Then send me your mailing address.

FAVOR

And as favor, if you have blog, please add this new one to your blogroll. The old Angels In Order is no longer active.