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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Topps Target and Wal-Mart Exclusive Inserts

Ok, remember how last year Topps put exclusive T205 inserts into packs at Target and Dick Perez art cards into packs at Wal-Mart? Remember how cool they were? Do you want to know what the exclusives are this year? Well let me show you.

This is a Legends of the Game insert card. These are 1:4 packs and can be found in both Hobby and Retail packs:

Here's the checklist for these puppies. 25 cards in all, pretty hefty player lineup:
LG1 Cy Young
LG2 Honus Wagner
LG3 Christy Mathewson
LG4 Ty Cobb
LG5 Walter Johnson
LG6 Tris Speaker
LG7 Babe Ruth
LG8 George Sisler
LG9 Rogers Hornsby
LG10 Jimmie Foxx
LG11 Lou Gehrig
LG12 Mel Ott
LG13 Jackie Robinson
LG14 Johnny Mize
LG15 Pee Wee Reese
LG16 Roy Campanella
LG17 Ted Williams
LG18 Roger Maris
LG19 Bob Gibson
LG20 Mickey Mantle
LG21 Roberto Clemente
LG22 Thurman Munson
LG23 Carl Yastrzemski
LG24 Nolan Ryan
LG25 Cal Ripken Jr.

Fun, huh? Now, here's the exclusive Target insert for 2009:

Look familiar? Yeah, same design just with gold foil and gold frame. There are ten cards in the set, inserted in 1:4 Target packs:

LLG-1 Williams
LLG-2 Robinson
LLG-3 Ruth
LLG-4 Wagner
LLG-5 Gehrig
LLG-6 Ryan
LLG-7 Mantle
LLG-8 Munson
LLG-9 Ripken
LLG-10 Sisler

I haven't pulled a Wal-Mart insert yet, because I bought an Upper Deck blaster instead. I filched an eBay scan for educational purposes until I come across one of my own:

Yeah. These are the Platinum version, also 10 cards falling at 1:4 Wal-Mart packs.

LLP-1 Williams
LLP-2 Gibson
LLP-3 Ruth
LLP-4 Campanella
LLP-5 Cobb
LLP-6 Young
LLP-7 Mantle
LLP-8 Johnson
LLP-9 Clemente
LLP-10 Foxx

It does look like the photo is different on the cards though as seen from this Target Ruth. Making things a little more complicated is the fact that there are also Gold and Platinum versions of the non-exclusive insert cards that are serial numbered to 99 and 25. These are a LOT tougher at 1:1725 packs for the gold and 1:6800 for the platinum. The cards are nice and all, but Topps really cut down on their insert sets this year. It's ashame, since there were some nice ones last year like Trading Card History and the 50th anniversary Rookie Cup cards. Too bad. The ones they have are decent at least.

6 comments:

Jeffrey Wolfe said...

Thanks for clearing this up. I was confused. I buy packs from both places and I pulled a LG-9 Hornsby with silver foil and a LLG-7 Mantle with gold foil and I was like wtf? Topps being Topps again. But I guess three sets isn't TOO bad.

night owl said...

I was wondering why the Jackie card I got looked different from the one I saw on a couple of blogs.

Thanks for the info.

Ben said...

The Wal Mart inserts are beautiful with their black borders. I really like these and may try to complete all three sets. I'm even contemplating trying to put together Turkey Red.

The Drizz said...

totally lacks the creativity of last years "retail exclusive" inserts. it's like they just did parallels of the parallels of the parallels. i haven't seen any 09 blasters at kmart but maybe they'll come through with something unexpected.

madding said...

Good info on the inserts. I've bought 10 Topps packs at Target so far and hadn't really gotten around to looking at the inserts, although it seems like I pulled one in almost every pack. The only one I clearly remember not getting a Legends card in had a Turkey Red card.

I really liked the 50th Anniversary Rookie insert set last year, too. I think I would have liked the Trading Card History set better if I wasn't already bored with seeing a lot of the designs elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Haven't seen any of these on eBay yet, but there are also exclusive Shop-Ko inserts that blow these all away.

Guaranteed to in every blaster at Shop-Ko is an exclusive commemorative patch card, much like the ones from the older Sweet Spot Classic sets. It has quite a hefty checklist of retired/deceased/HOF players.