I Am All Fired Up!

A couple weeks back 2018 Topps Fire was released.  I believe this continues to be a retail only product and I saw some hanger packs at my local Target and picked up a couple up right around release day.  I put together the base set last year because I really liked the design and found this year's fairly similar.  I looked on eBay for a base set (seems this has become my default for set "building" of new sets lately) and didn't see anything that seemed reasonable.

A few days back I stopped into the same Target for a couple household items and walked down the card aisle.  I saw 3 boxes of Fire priced at $69.99.  Knowing I have a Red Card that gives me 5% off and would cover over half the tax I decided to splurge on a box (I have a knack at self justification).  I came home and cracked open the box.  It was a lot of fun, I pulled some good rookie cards, a couple of guys for my collections and a few decent parallels.   The hits weren't great but I was still enjoying the look of the cards.  Here are some of the better base cards and the two hits.

The box yielded most of the hot rookie cards and some nice veterans.

The Contreras card is numbered 24/75, I think I have pulled a few of his cards in the last couple years.  Outside of killing the Giants this year, I am not sure Brian Anderson has done much, not the greatest auto.

After sorting the cards and giving it some thought I was still debating on going after the set again this year.  I did some eBay searches for lots of base cards and didn't find anything that seemed to work.  Sportlots base cards start at 18 cents each and needing close to 100 cards, some of them stars plus shipping didn't excite me as a potential path to completion.  Finally earlier this week I decided that I was going back to Target, if one of the boxes was there I was going to buy it.  If not I was going to see if I could work some Sports Card Forum trades then hit Sportlots.

To my surprise, both boxes I had left behind days ago were still there.  I picked up the one off the top and turned.  I stopped and thought of how terrible it would be if I got a box with most of the same base cards and decided to put the box back and pick up the other one.  When I got home that night it was a busy one and I put the unopened box on my desk.  The box ended up marinating for 2 days which almost never happens for me.

I had made a list of my base needs before cracking box 2 and once I did start opening the packs I started comparing my cards to the list.  The first pack yielded no duplicate base cards; same with pack 2 and 3.  Pack 4 had 2 duplicates but I was pretty excited, looked like I had picked a good box.  I kept this up as I went through the box and the want list kept shrinking.  My excitement grew and I was very pleased I decided to go with a second box.  In the end, my want list has shrunk to 4 base cards and technically it could have been two as I had pulled a Dave Winfield and Andrew McCutchen out of my first box for my player and Giants collections.  I quickly went onto Sportlots and for less than two bucks had my last 4 cards and the rest of the base I needed for my player and Giants collections on the way.  Here are the highlights of the base in that second box.

Outside of the Albies rookie, the stars of this box were the veterans and retired players.

When I picked up the box my sole focus was on the base and after the relatively meh pulls in box 1 I didn't really expect much.  In fact I had kind of forgotten about the hits as I opened it as I hadn't gotten one until pretty deep in the box.  With about 6 packs to go my relic popped and it was a pretty solid one.  Luckily Machado is still featured in his Baltimore orange.  Two packs later I noticed a redemption towards the back of the pack.  I played it cool checking the base cards on my want list as I went card by card.  I did decide to do a slow roll to reveal the name on the card and BOOM!

I was in shock, a Mike Trout auto redemption.  While being a redemption isn't wonderful, Trout is pretty tight with Topps so I feel good it will be fulfilled.  This is my first Mike Trout auto ever and once I get it in hand, it will reside in my HOF Auto collection.  I bet the auto on the Fire design will look great and I assume there is a chance it will be on card.  Yeah the dude is only 27 but he is about as much of a lock for the Hall as possible.

I am fired up about the set and the hit, pretty exciting break for me.

I do have a nice stack of inserts and parallels I was planning on listing on Sportlots.  If anyone is interested in trades for them, let me know and I will put up another post with a trade list and some scans.