How to slowly enjoy opening baseball cards, without paying the big price.
Every day I pull out one card from a baseball card pack. It’s my way of enjoying pulling baseball cards more, without having to spend the $$$ to buy new packs all the time. Because, as we know, cards aren’t really sold in packs anymore. They are now sold in boxes. It’s tempting to rip through an entire box, because all the cards are right there.
But I’m not into collecting cards to find the rare foil autographed relic. I like the stories. The designs. The stats. Not the thrill of the chase.
Now when I open a pack, I’m careful to slice open the top of the pack so that I can slide out one card at a time. There are some days that I don’t pull out a card because I forget. And that’s ok. I do this more for the fun of being able to pull a card out.
Today I was taking my daily card from a Topps 2022 Heritage pack. As I slowly pulled out the card, I noticed all the years and teams on the card. Hmmm, who could this player be? Before entirely pulling out the card, I was trying to think… who played for the Royals a bunch, and then the Padres, and then the Red Sox. The Red Sox part stumped me, but I do recall a certain first baseman who played for the Royals and Padres – Eric Hosmer.
Indeed, it is Eric Hosmer. I heard recently that he retired.
I realized this might be a fun thing to do when opening baseball cards. Now it seems so obvious, certainly others have done this too?
If you’d like to play this guessing game, here’s the specific instructions
How to play the Rip Guess game
Optional: take a photo of your pull and post it online for others to guess.
We could use a hashtag for this game. What should it be? #ripguess feels right. It’s succinct and not widely used on Twitter and Instagram.
From time to time, I’ll be posting my #ripguess cards on Twitter with my @57hits account. However, I won’t post these to Instagram, because the hashtags don’t work on Instagram anymore. Take a look at the #ripguess hashtag on Instagram. There are 31 posts. But you can only see ONE post. Just one! Where are the other 30? Instagram shows only the “top” posts for a hashtag now. Instagram started doing this sometime in 2023. It really makes hashtags useless on Instagram.
Here’s where I’ll occasionally post #ripguess cards
I invite you to join in posting #ripguess cards on any social media platform (other than Instagram)
Opening baseball cards from packs gives you a chance to slowly learn about today’s baseball players. Open up a pack and take a look at each card. Analyze the photo. Read the trivia on the back. This sort of slow enjoyment is a nice alternative to today’s fast news clips and videos. Often MLB and … Slowly learning about baseball players via baseball cards Read More »
57hits ⚾ (Matt Maldre)
Matt Maldre