2018 Cards For Much Lower Prices: Card Show Recap #9

One of the main reasons why I haven't been all that interested in new products other than Series 1 and Heritage this year is the cost. I'm not interested in paying $10-$15 for a Gypsy Queen rack pack let alone $20 for a blaster. I was considering getting a blaster of Opening Day, but Topps decided to raise that cost to $20 a blaster as well instead of the $10 it used to be.

Yeah, no thanks.

Other than relying on the dime bins for player collection cards, I also rely on them for cards of sets I wouldn't necessarily buy. For example, I never opened a pack of 2017 Topps Fire, yet I have 30+ cards from the set. Same goes for 2017 Panini Diamond Kings, 2017 Donruss, and many more sets that appear to be joining that realm as well such as 2018 Gypsy Queen.

2018 baseball cards may not interest me all that much to buy retail or hobby, but if I can get cards from these sets through the dime bins, please sign me up.

The dime boxes were my main focus at the card show I attended today, but I originally didn't have any 2018 cards on my radar. That was until they started popping up all over the place. For example, these Retro 1984 Donruss cards from 2018 Panini Donruss were pretty plentiful throughout the 2 boxes I looked through. Even being unlicensed, I enjoyed pulling these out of my 2018 Panini Donruss rack pack as well as buying them for some of my largest modern player collections at the show.

In fact, there was a lot of 2018 Panini Donruss in general, but I didn't want to get too much of it. Panini Donruss can be like sand in your car, you can never get rid of all of it once it's there. Therefore, I was very selective with my choices, coming home with just the 4 cards shown above. Again, I'm able to see past the no logos when they pull off cards well such as this Stars in Cincinnati of Tony Perez and Dave Concepcion.

I'll admit, the Opening Day insert set, better known to me as a "messy construction site" is flawed, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to buying cards from the set, especially when they're in the dime bins. Due to the Royals falling further and further into oblivion year after year, I haven't been able to add to my Salvador Perez collection in a while, or many Royals players, for that matter.

There were also blue parallels of these Opening Day inserts included in the bin. Coincidentally, all the players I got Opening Day inserts of are catchers, no other players were found. See, if the set had a different name, I might get behind it. But I do NOT need an Opening Day insert set to confuse myself with the actual Opening Day set.

The Donruss and Topps cards may not have been my first looks at either set, but the Panini Diamond Kings cards that I picked up at today's show were the very first cards I've gotten from this years' set. I didn't like the design from last year all too much, but I have to say they took nice steps to improve the design for 2018, including a well-designed logo in the bottom right corner.

After seeing only blue and red cards from the set for a while, I began to worry that, somehow, Panini had only used 2 colors in this years' set. So, finding this Nolan Arenado and seeing the purple border and design in the background relieved my concerns and allowed me to appreciate the set even more.

Speaking of Nolan Arenado

I was able to add 2 2018 cards to my collection of the Rockies' star 3rd baseman. He's another current player who I have a pretty large player collection of. I don't have many of current players since all of my major collections are of retired players. Still, Rizzo, Votto, Posey, Longoria, and Cutch have been around long enough for me to accumulate 50 or more cards of each of them.

Andres Galarraga is one of the most forgotten players in baseball history despite being very talented and not playing all that long ago. Spending most of his career with the Expos and Rockies, Galarraga is a 5-time All-Star whose won multiple Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and has over 2300 hits. Still, playing for small-market teams is likely what held him back. After all, as an MLB player, you can't get as much attention in Colorado is you would in New York City.

I haven't opened a pack of Opening Day since 2016 and frankly, I don't have intentions of doing so. Hell, I barely buy the cards when I see them for 10 cents each simply because the set doesn't do much for me. Still, the parallels in the 2018 Topps design look incredible and I don't care if they're from Series 1 or Opening Day, I'll still buy them of players I collect. King Felix may not be off to all that great of a start, but he's already made his Hall of Fame case pretty solid anyway. Anything else he can do will only make that case stronger. To me, he should be a Hall of Famer, though I think it'll take a couple years to get in.

But it was this last card that was the biggest 2018 card I bought all day. This 2018 Panini Diamond Kings card is my very first card of Andrew McCutchen on the Giants. After acquiring over 70 cards of him as a Pirate, It's now time for me to start getting cards of him on the Giants instead of the Pirates just as I much do for Longoria. It feels weird, but they're 2 of my largest modern player collections as I stated before. I can't just stop collecting them because they changed teams, even though I really wanted to see both of them end their careers in Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay respectively.