To the.....12's?

One week into my new project, I can say that the new collection philosophy has definitely reinvigorated me to purchase a wider-spectrum of products (I just cruised through 9 packs of 2007 Bowman Heritage...the card shop owner was baffled). I was on the hunt for 9 rainbow refractors. A couple silly little relics and an auto of some Orioles prospect that obviously never made it big got in the way and I ended up two short...but there are still about five packs left to finish out that page.

As I continue to assemble full pages (8 out of 9 Goodwin relics, woo-hoo!) I have also been drawn to the most unlikely of places for cards...target rack packs. I KNOW!! so I already have the entire series one completed and there is no chance that I will pull a hat relic, or probably any relic for that matter from this set, so what is it that I am attracted too? Larry Jones baby, oh yeah! Well, more specifically the Topps mini exclusives found in two formats...red-backed at Target and Blue-backed at Wal-Mart. I believe they fall about 1:3 which is danged accurate because in six rack packs the other night I pulled Larry as well as this guy...

"I am not a machine, I am just Albert". As you can clearly see, there are 45 available subjects, and I only need 12 (those goudey square sized mini sheets fit 12 cards instead of nine). I could go the easy route and just hit up eBay, but its kinda fun to rip open a cheapie rack pack and watch one of these fall out.

Unfortunately I need to be a bit of a realist here. While I have a Target a few miles away, the nearest Wal-Mart is about 30 miles away, and I MAYBE go once or twice a year tops.

Has anybody out there collected any of the Wal-Mart packs and pulled some of these that they are not necessarily set on keeping for their collection? I have a plethora of trading material that I can offer in return...a ton of inserts for the 2010 Topps set (after all I am only keeping one page of each type) as well as a ton of base from the set as well.

Let me know if you can help me out. I need a case of the Wal-Mart blues!