Can’t get enough Bryce Harper? Find a value box …
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
For those of you who have chased Bryce Harper cards this year but have come up short in your quest to find a card of the Washington Nationals’ teenage prospect, there’s another shot out there with some pretty good odds.
As in one in three … for one particular shade of Harper.
Overall, though, he’s guaranteed in every single box.
Just in time for the upcoming holiday shopping rush (but will they last that long?), Topps has released a “mega box” with five packs of 2011 Topps Update, one pack of Bowman Chrome, one Diamond Anniversary code and a one-in-three-chance at a Harper Refractor card that is exclusive to these boxes.
The Harper cards will be found in Red, Silver and Gold with some cards tougher to find than others.
These boxes carry a suggested retail price of $14.99 and can be found at retail outlets as well as online.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
Bought one yesterday got nothing really. Went to put my code card in and it kept saying invalid code. Anybody else have this problem. I pulled a code out of the packs of update and it worked fine.
I always enjoy these types of offers that Topps has put together…I’ll take plenty of shots @ Topps and the hobby in general, but when Topps gets it right I’ll give them credit…This is a retail type of item that everybody can have interest in and the Harper hit @ only 15 bucks a box makes it a no brainer to try a few of these.
Codes should work now.
Next time I go to Walmart or Target if they have any of these I will definitely buy at least one. I agree that this method has been a very good idea in terms of packaging for Topps. It’s a little less than the $20 blaster, and is a great way to check out the various products.
love these boxes
THESE ARE AWESOME!!
i hate these types of box…hard to search packs in boxes like this. What a waste of money. I will stick with the packs!
@Roger Chen – You admit to searching packs? I hope you don’t live in my area.
Seriously? Whenever I see a pack searcher at Target I want to grab all their packs and hide them around the store… Chen you’re a tool
@Luke Harley – lol, that sounds like a good idea. Like watch them pack searching, get into a running stance and then run past as you grab the cards…run around the store, throw a few behind the pharmacy counter, throw a few in the ladies changing room (assuming it’s a guy) and if the target has a restaurant in it, go take some there. :) Chen, by trying to beat the odds, you’re showing that you care nothing about collecting, only investing (well, that’s my opinion).
I bought a handfull of Bowman Chrome packs this morning at a Target store. It was obvious a pack searcher had fanned through all of them. He missed the sweet Harper Auto I pulled out of one of them he/she searched. It doesn’t pay to search through these packs.
I’m a little disappointed the Update packs aren’t “regular” packs, but rather ones with just 8 cards each. Still fun to open.
Has Topps announced which Harper is tougher to find?
Well, I get plenty of nice inserts, auto patch cards, patch, jersey cards. check out my videos on YouTube! Target packs are the best to search.
I see guys constantly searching packs at the Wal-Marts and Targets where I live and thats why I don’t buy just packs of retail unless I get there when its being stocked by the vendor. I just buy the blasters etc…. Karma will eventually get those guys though.
chen, your bad for the hobby. it must suck to have to cheat to get a good pull. ever think the reason jersey cards aren’t worth the cardboard they are made on anymore might be because of guys like you!? at least you can’t search and cheat for a regular sized auto card. of course, you can mangle all the cards in the pack as you try to search for a thick card. on behalf of all of us honest sportscard collectors, please find a different hobby to cheat with!
I like these value boxes, definately a good idea, if for no other reason, than to stop cheating pack checkers! the harpers are sweet, too. i’ll take as many of those as i can get!
@Roger Chen – I understand what you may get, but do you understand what you’re doing? You’re making a lot of people not want to be in the hobby (by taking away the odds of getting those same nice cards). The more people that don’t want to be in the hobby the faster this hobby is going to disintegrate. Instead of pack searching, why not save up your money and buy a hobby box or two and get some nice GU, Patches, AU and inserts? I wouldn’t doubt you could get sweeter cards out of a hobby box.
I watched a guy search packs at a Target in Jackson MS. I got the manager and she watched him do this while I stood there with her. She said she was going to stop him so I checked out and headed for my car. I sat there for ten minutes and went back in to see him still searching packs…The point is that the stores knowingly do nothing while we collectors get ripped off by these scum who screw up the hobby.I ended up confronting him myself which sucks but was necessary. It’s sad when we have to police our own hobby in order toprevent people from screwing it up.
One day Chen will have to answer to God….I hear he isn’t fond of cheats,thieves. and people who vandalize other peoples property. Your soul for a couple of cards??? Bad choice Chen.
not all of us can spend $59.00-$100.? on a sealed box of cards, larry. and it’s quite sickening hearing that a shop owner allows a customer to pack search. we all know how much the price of a pack of cards has inflated since the $.40 cent a pack days. if the companies have to invest in search-free packaging (which, i might add may not even be possible), who knows how much more that is gonna cost us (the consumer) for said pack. as far as i’m concerned, it should be looked at by the store as stealing, and dealt with accordingly.
As for the store owner who said they were going to take care of it but didn’t, the only thing I can think of is that they got pulled into more pressing matters for the store. I’m glad you confronted them, hopefully in a proper tone, and hopefully they’ll stop (not likely).
As for the Shop Owner, he probably lets them search them because he’s already pulled the case hit. Who knows, but it is very sad.
I would love to only buy hobby boxes, but as John Paul said, I don’t have the money to do that. I’m trying to, and if I get this promotion I will be able to, but until then I sometimes have to scratch my itch at Wally Wonderland or Target.
And I wasn’t saying that examples like Chen are the reason why the hobby is ruined, because in reality there are many factors, but stuff Chen is doing is one of them. Now, mind you, I will say at times it might look like I pack search and here’s why. Just the other day I went to get some packs at Wally Wonderland and saw a pack of cards that looked extremely thick. It was right on the edge of the gravity box. Now, to me, after having bought those packs before, couldn’t believe how thick it was, so I compared it to other packs in the box. It was almost twice the thickness of the other packs. Mind you, it was only a filler card. I wasn’t pack searching in that example, at least in my opinion I wasn’t. When I got back into the hobby a few years ago I did pack search, and that’s because I thought everyone did. Now I do not.
As for the tamper proof, I don’t know how much it would cost, but I’d be more than ok with boxes similar to say UD Exquisite where they’re in a sealed box. I’d be willing to pay $0.50 more per pack for that kind of packaging. It protects the cards from being dropped, or bent, or opened (hopefully) and from pack searchers. This would stop the need for fillers if you ask me. It also provides users for a way to properly store cards if they don’t already have boxes.
As for the Box in the article, I recently bought a Topps Football Value box because it had a Cam Newton RC Refractor on it. I just sold it last night for $12.25 shipped, and there were four other cards, giveaway cards, in the box that also fetched me another $12.75. The box was $20 so I got my money back, saw some nice cards, added to the PC and had a good time opening the packs. I like boxes like these.
My two cents on the issue? Retail is the wild west — it’s gonna happen so just make sure you’re not the one that gets shot.
But don’t be naive to think that it doesn’t happen in hobby shops. It can and I am sure it does.
Buy selectively, buy smart and buy from those whom you trust.
ok you “oldsters” you never looked through rack packs at the dime store to buy the one with a Mantle showing?????