The state of retail (in Canada?)

I haven't heard anything lately about people pulling guns on one another over baseball cards in Target parking lots, but there does seem to still be a retail frenzy going on here in 2022.

The recent trend seems to be that I'll see something once, and then it goes away forever. I saw Series 1 once, purchased a few packs, and then it was gone a few days later. Same with Opening Day. Truth is that I've lost a lot of my pre-pandemic enthusiasm for buying retail - I rarely even check the card aisles when I'm at Target anymore. I'm perfectly happy buying most of what I need on Sportlots for fractions of what I would've spent on packs. 

Call it maturity, call it exhaustion, call it freeing up more money to buy stuff I actually want - whatever it is, retail (when I can find it) now occupies a very small slice of my spending pie chart.

I don't know what the state of retail in Canada is, but fellow blogger Doug of "Sportscards from the Dollar Store" seems to have no problem finding recent product.

I certainly don't miss those manu-relics that Topps insists we need, but fact is any new Anthony Rizzo card puts a smile on my face. As do these four cards - even the Cain which is as thick as a manu-relic for no particular reason (so thick that it doesn't even fit in a nine-pocket page!).

I'm also surprised I still needed that Dawson considering those early '90s OPC Premier cards seemed to have been printed in just as much quantity as all the other ubiquitous overproduction-era sets we normally hear about.

Doug and I used to trade a lot in the earlier days of this blog, but I think the exponential rise in shipping costs to Canada kinda put an end to that for a while.

Trading with Doug again was a thrill for many reasons, one of which being the hockey-card takes on my baseball mini-collections he always used to include in his packages (broken stick! tip of the stick!). It's a fun little bonus to your standard trade package material.

(I also have little more than a passing knowledge of current hockey, but I somehow know who all these dudes are!)

Most of this package centered around current Cubs material - including a handful of hallowed Museum Collection that I don't feel fancy enough to own.

These somehow all come from a single Panini Chronicles base set, and I have to admit I kinda like this brand because of how schizophrenic the checklist is.

I received a second package from Doug just a few days ago that included a few Cubs from semi-current Panini sets that I never opened/have no urge to open.

But even boring needs are still needs, and it remains a thrill to slide them into a nine-pocket page.

I bought most of the 2022 Heritage I needed at the card show a couple weeks ago (post coming shortly, hopefully) but it doesn't hurt to show some of the Cubs I received from Doug.

I admit there's a lot of cards in this set that seem to show the same pose/background over and over again, but I think people are sleeping on the fact that there are a few very '73-ish action shots spread throughout the checklist. (Patrick Wisdom even cracked my frankenset!)

And even better is the fact that I missed buying that Harold Ramirez at the card show - an oddity that has since morphed into a zero-year card after his recent trade to Cleveland without ever having played a single game for the Cubs.

But back to that first package for now, and to the reason Doug reached out for a trade - he had a "Keep Dreaming" card for me!

Despite the not-inconsiderable portion of my card budget that's been opened up by buying less retail, I still couldn't find this damned thing within a breath of my price range. I guess that makes sense - Maz's Game 7 homer one of the more momentous moments in baseball history, you know. But Doug somehow got his hands on an extra copy, and all things considered it's just a wonderful card that I'm thrilled to finally own. (Growing up when I did, I still have a hard time believing stadiums just let fans on the field to whoop it up with the players.)

While I'm obviously appreciative of all the current Cubs Doug sent me, I think we can all agree that Maz absolutely blows Panini Mosaic, Select, etc. out of the water - now I'm just wondering why I haven't always been spending the bulk of my money on vintage over retail.