Thrill of the Chase

A few weeks ago I popped into Target for a grocery run. It was my first time visiting my local Target since early-March and my first time spending substantial time away from the four-block radius around my apartment.

The Target was in a much better shape than it had been since my previous visit. Shleves were stocked, freezers were filled with food, and the checkout lines were organized and well-managed. This was not that case back in March during the nation's great chase for toilet paper, as the Target was flooded with hysterical people and not much else.

While my trip to Target was largely centered around restocking my fridge, I had ulterior motives. I very badly hoped to find some cards in the card aisle. Luckily for me, I managed to snag the last box of cards available...though it's not something I'd typically purchase. 

And here are the contents. pic.twitter.com/WYhjxtY8WT

— Alex Markle (@markle05) June 5, 2020

You might immediately notice that a couple of things from this repack have made their way into my prize pool for the contest I'm currently running, namely the 1988 Donruss hanger pack and the contents of the two Leaf Babe Ruth packs. 

It'd been along time since I last picked up a repack box, and I was hoping I might find some packs from earlier in the decade in there. No luck. I opened way more 2019 S1 than I needed to last year, so finding two packs in the box was a bit of a bummer. The 2019 S2 pack was welcome, as I'm still trying to track down all the Dodgers from that release (anybody have an extra Cody Bellinger 507 or Hyun-Jin Ryu 515?). That said, I didn't pull any Dodgers from the pack, so there was no help there. 

I've never been a big fan of Gypsy Queen, so I typically shy away from it on the shelves. It just feels like such an unnecessary set, and I've never fully understood its appeal. I did manage to pull a new Corey Seager card to add to the binder, so it wasn't all bad. 

My favorite card from the box came from the pack of 2019 Heritage. It's not autographed. It's not an SP. It's not a variation. It's a simple base card of Dodgers' reliver Kenley Jansen. I suppose the card itself isn't anything special, but it did finally prompt me to undertake another collecting goal I've been pondering for at least a year: collect all of the Dodgers team sets from Topps Heritage. 

I've historically been a player collector, but I've shifted away from that a bit over the last several years. I started my quest to collect all of the Dodgers from Topps Flagship a few years back (now the focal point of my collection), though I've never really chased any other sets (with a few exceptions). So now I'm adding another set to chase down, though I imagine it will be much easier and far cheaper to do so. 

I have added my needs (and there are a lot of them) to my Want List page. You can also access my spreadsheet directly here. I'm not sure how much effort I'll spend to chase these down, but my goal is to have at least 10% by the end of the year which is about 45 cards.