My collecting life, as told through retail

For better or worse, I've lived in the suburbs my entire life.

Thus many of my earliest memories involve walking through the narrow, blinding aisles of retail chains. As time has passed, I like to believe I've become less retail-reliant than I once was (I mean, I no longer go to the mall for fun). But I got to thinking recently -- even if we're just talking about the baseball card part of my life, my memories are flooded by retail chains.

From what I can gauge by stories I've heard and the oddballs I've acquired, big box stores were once a supreme supplier of cardboard. I can't say I've ever stepped foot in a Rite Aid or Woolworth's, but I own baseball cards produced by both. Nowadays people are shocked when I tell them that Target sells cards at all. But still it's worth noting the impact the world of retail has had on my collecting life, whether I like it or not.

So, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to take you on a trip through the memories of my collecting life, as told through the retail chains I've frequented once or a hundred times.

Target

Target is my main source of retail purchases for many reasons -- not the least of which being that there's been one right across the street from me for much of my adult life.

For the most part, they run a pretty tight ship. They're timely with the output of new product and the cards are right by the cash registers. Get in, get out: that's the name of the game for retail in my book. Target's issued quite a few store-exclusives over the years, but my favorite have to be the red parallels they made before borderless Topps sets became a thing.

Barring something drastic, Target will be my retail home for the considerable future.

Walmart

I buy cards from Walmart maybe once or twice a year.

There's not one close to where I live and I only go if I'm desperate and/or my Target's been slacking on their stocking. Even then it's rare, because have you ever been in a Walmart? I get headaches even driving through the parking lot.

Still, I'll admit they've probably had the best retail-exclusives of my lifetime with these all-black beauties of the late-2000s and early-2010s -- but even those weren't enough to get me inside a Walmart on anywhere near a frequent basis.

K-Mart

K-Mart was my biggest source for retail cardboard for a few years there in my teens.

Their card aisle was every bit as expansive as today's Target/Walmart and there's one almost literally next door to me. And they even had the retail exclusives like the other chains: I bought many blasters of 2008 Topps for these rookie variants alone (back when JR Towles was considered a hotshot prospect, which should tell you how long it's been since K-Mart's heyday).

The K-Mart by my house is still there, but the card aisle is long gone -- there's nothing but candy and party supplies where the rack packs and blasters once stood.

Toys 'R' Us

I can't say for certain that I've ever actually bought cards from Toys 'R' Us, but for the sake of this post I'm willing to bet I did at some point in my youth.

I have quite a few singles from the boxed sets Toys 'R' Us put out in the early '90s, and though you had to overpay to get 'em, these purple parallels from more recent years of Flagship are terrific. (Trouble is, they're impossible to find: I own maybe a half-dozen.)

Toys 'R' Us is now defunct, of course: a sad end for the overall aura of my childhood, but not necessarily a great tragedy for my card collection.

Jewel-Osco

The only card memory I have of Jewel-Osco is a small plastic spinner of packs they had near the cash register for a brief time long ago.

The packs were woefully overpriced and you had to get a worker to open the case for you -- quite possibly every sign I could ever want not to buy any. But there were at least a couple times I succumbed to the temptation, tracking down some poor retail associate who probably hated me for interrupting their work so I could get my too-expensive pack of 2003 Upper Deck or something.

If I were to create a pie chart of my retail collecting life, Jewel-Osco would occupy that tiny, barely discernible slice -- but it's still there nonetheless.

Walgreens

The only other retail outlet in my memory is none other than Walgreens -- my prime repack supplier.

True, I don't buy nearly as many of those 100-card Fairfield repacks as I once did, but they're always tempting should I find myself in a Walgreens for a cheap soda or candy bar or something. And the percentage of cards I need versus the ones that go in an extras box isn't great. But repacks have long been a source of cheap pleasure whenever I need that pack-busting itch.

I don't go to Walgreens hoping to pull anything mind-boggling or even very much I want at all, but every once in a while, they do surprise me with cards like this Yoenis Cespedes rookie variation I got from a repack earlier this year (also a hit to my "42" mini-collection!).

So that's my baseball card retail life in a nutshell: some chains still standing, some hanging by a thread, others gone all together -- but the memories live on.