Gypsy Queen is a product I have given very little attention to over the years. There has always been a bad taste in my mouth because my only prior experience with a Gypsy Queen has been a few blasters, and there are limited hits and short prints in the product.

All that hate on Gypsy Queen even after I pulled a Bo Jackson autograph from a blaster box a few years ago. I don’t why. I’ve just never liked the product. Which is odd, because I love Allen & Ginter. Since my collecting has taken a different approach for 2018, I have been looking forward to Gypsy Queen. Mostly because it’s an early release and I have the 2018 baseball card itch.

Never have I been lucky enough to get product early. Typically it’s release day at best, and that’s when I have placed a preorder with a company that will actually get me product on my doorstep on the actual release date. Luck changed this week.

Gypsy Queen wasn’t even on my radar until I received a Facebook message from a collector in my city asking if I had seen any product in stores. That sparked my attention so I made a Target run after work Monday. Conveniently, I pass a Target on my drive home from work.

Normally, this store’s cards are not stocked until later in the week (Wednesday or Thursday), though last Saturday a friend was in town and we had made the rounds to the local card shops and stopped by this Target. The card section was ravaged, but there were Excel boxes at the register next to the cards. Knowing those were cards and wanting some Donruss, I asked two Target employees to open the boxes and was told only the distributor could open them and they wouldn’t be in until Monday.

So, Monday could be a new day this Target gets stocked. Both Topps and Topps Heritage Retail was released early and saw many people finding these products days before release. I was in luck.

Not only was my Target fully stocked (even restocked with Heritage), there was a fresh supply of the brand new Gypsy Queen. Blasters, hanger boxes, and packs.

I grabbed three blaster boxes, and held off the urge to buy more Heritage. Much like Allen & Ginter, I find the design changes very little year after year with Gypsy Queen. Even with that said, I really like the 2018 Gypsy Queen design.

It helped that I pulled doubles from the blasters. Normally, this is a big complaint if I pull multiple duplicates when buying just three blaster boxes. I’m not complaining because I pulled two Shohei Ohtani rookies, and my favorite Cub, Javier Baez.

Jason Heyward is the forgotten Cub with his struggles the past two seasons. I love how the blue jersey pops on these cards.

The photos are close up on these cards, and Schwarber is donning the white jersey.

Another pull was Jon Lester.

Finally, Kris Bryant. The only change I would make is place a team logo in the bottom left corner where GQ is located, and place the GQ logo in the top right. The team name or position could be placed below the GQ logo. It looks really odd that the position is in such a prominent spot in the top right. Our baseball card collecting eyes (in my opinion) are trained to see that spot as a team name or brand name. Position is not as prominent as either brand or team.

Gypsy Queen was a fun quick retail break. I won’t be finishing the Cubs team set, just hoping the rest come in trades down the road.

Trades have begun to pick back up following Heritage-Palooza. I am still filling 2018 Topps Heritage orders on Sportlots, and eBay auctions are ending this evening. The bulk of the work is in the rear view mirror, though. Ripping, sorting, and catching up on pre orders encompassed a week and a half of work. Now, it’s just filling orders as they come in.

Five Cubs packages arrived this week for a total of 571 new cards to the collection. Four of the five trades were smaller deals. The fifth made up for that as I hauled in approximately 40,000 cards (not all Cubs) from an in-person Twitter trade. Tim did include a stack of nice Cubs cards in addition to the multiple monster boxes of baseball, football, and basketball cards.

The next largest trade brought in 215 cards from Otto in Saskatchewan. I’ve always loved saying Saskatchewan.

John in California sent 197 cards including a few autographs. Cool! Elvin Puello, Buck Coats, and Brendan Harris were the autos. In return I sent out a bunch of Wayne Gretzky cards and some other hockey cards.

Henry sent 50 cards including a few new ones for the collection. The 2016 Bowman Mark Zagunis purple is numbered /250. Keith Moreland 1987 Drake’s is a new oddball for the collection, as is the Luis Montanez Refractor.

Finally, I purchased a couple 1980’s partial Oddball team sets. This is the 1982 Red Lobster and 1983 Thorn Apple Valley. Both sets are complete minus the Ryne Sandberg rookies.

This week was down in terms of Cubs cards acquired, but next week is shaping up to be a big week with a couple flat rate box trades in the works.

Two 1980’s Chicago Cubs Oddball sets I have had my eyes on have been 1982 Red Lobster and 1983 Thorn Apple Valley.

The Thorn Apple Valley set has long been on my want list, namely for the Joe Carter rookie. This set is a bit pricy because it contains both a Carter and Ryne Sandberg rookie. It is not a rare set by any means, but certainly not as populous as Topps, Donruss, or Fleer.

Joe Carter Cubs cards always fascinated me. I grew up watching Carter’s heroics with the Cleveland Indians and Toronto Blue Jays, and one day discovered his 1984 Donruss Rated Rookie at my local card shop in Geneseo, Illinois as a kid. It became one card I always wanted in my collection, and later would seek out other Joe Carter Cubs items.

Until now, the Thorn Apple Valley eluded me. Not because of rarity, but my collection has varied and I never really found a good price on the set.

There are a handful of Thorn Apple Valley cards in my collection from a large Craigslist bulk buy a few years ago, and on occasion I’ll do an eBay search. Recently, I found a partial set along with a Red Lobster partial set on eBay for $17.75 shipped. Neither set included the Sandberg, hence the low price. But…it included the Joe Carter rookie!

The Cubs team card does include Sandberg.

The set’s photography includes both action shots as well as posed shots like the Carter. I love the Wrigley ivy back drop for this Steve Lake card.

And Thad Bosley is posing in left field in what appears to be a gameday crowd in the bleachers behind him.

Bill Buckner is watching a hit in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And a swinging Jay Johnstone.

1983 was also the year of the great Lee Elia tirade. Elia was the manager when this set was produced. He was fired later in the 1983 season.

The 1982 Red Lobster set was something I recently became aware of when I saw a Sandberg. It was only fitting the eBay seller had both of these sets as a lot.

Lee Elia received his own card.

And the Cubs coaches, Billy Williams included, were on a separate card.

One of my favorite 80’s Cubs was Jody Davis. Great action shot of the backstop on defense.

And the Cubs team card does include a young rookie named Ryne Sandberg (front row, far right).

This week was my second in-person meetup with a Twitter follower. The first came about a month ago when I drove to Sterling, Illinois and picked up around 160,000 cards.

Tim from Nebraska reached out to me a couple weeks ago that he had a bunch of 90’s cards to get rid of, and there was probably around 1,000 Cubs cards inside the many monster boxes.

He was driving from Nebraska to Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week and Madison happens to be right on his route. We met at a Speedway gas station on the west side of Madison and loaded up the approximate 40,000 cards into my car, and spent several minutes talking hobby.

I’ll be sending out a nice package to Tim next week. Along with the boxes he gave me a nice pile of Cubs. Some generous additions to my collection including a Logan Watkins autograph.

There were several serial numbered cards, like this 2015 Topps Arismendy Alcantara 89/99.

A couple purple bordered 2017 Gypsy Queen of Wade Davis (36/250) and Jon Lester (138/250).

A 2016 Topps Disc Insert of Jake Arrieta.

And a 2017 Topps Chrome purple Ben Zobrist 175/299.

I have yet to sort through the monster boxes, which I’ll save for a rainy day.

As expected, the 2018 Topps Heritage cases have set me back over the past two weeks. As of March 13, I have shipped out 134 Heritage orders, with another half dozen yet to ship and several auctions remaining on eBay.

The dust is beginning to settle, and the One Million Cubs Project is starting to get back on track. A total of four maildays came in last week for a total of 1,203 Cubs cards added to the collection.

Chad in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin sent a box of 700 cards with a great mix of Cubs from years extending all the way back to 1974. I sent off a box of Green Bay Packers to Chad.

The box of Packers wiped me out of that team, so Sharon in Ponca City, Oklahoma sent over a pile of about 25 Packers along with 76 Cubs cards.

Two purchases were made off eBay. A couple of former Cubs prospect autographs were had on the cheap. This Sean Gallagher Bowman Signs of the Future was $2.60 shipped.

And this Jeremy Papelbon Bowman Chrome Refractor autograph also came to my mailbox for $2.60. Papelbon was one of my favorite prospects in the late 2000’s. Jeremy is the brother of Jonathan Papelbon.

That’s a quick wrap from last week. So far, two boxes have come in the mail this week, and I made an in-person Twitter trade today that I’ll review tomorrow.

The dust has settled on 2018 Topps Heritage, and the One Million Cubs Project has been pulled into the sorting, listing, and shipping phase of Heritage orders. Hence the lack of posts in the last few days.

In all, 224 Cubs cards were pulled from 2018 Heritage to be added to the collection, including a few variations. A complete review will be posted later in the week.

Last week saw 3,415 Cubs cards added to the collection. A flat rate box arrived in time for the weekend that was filled with 1,551 cards. This was the result of a Reds for Cubs swap.

Sunday brought a guest appearance on the Preserve the Hobby podcast, talking about the project as well as Topps Heritage.

Monday saw a nice box in the mailbox from Chad. I’ll be sending out a box of Green Bay Packers for him this week.

That’s a brief update, and look to get caught up and post regularly by Thursday this week .

Thursday was a light mail day, but it did bring in a sweet package that I purchased off eBay. Much of the One Million Cubs Project is all about trading, but on occasion I’ll seek out some oddballs on eBay.

One such set I actively searched was the 1971 Dell Stamps set. There are a few loose stamps in my collection that were apart of an oddball lot I bought a few years ago. Really, I didn’t mind if I had the Stamps loose or in the complete booklet, figuring they would be a bit less if loose. Little did I know I could find the booklet on the cheap. In fact, I found one for just $16.69 shipped.

The front cover is very colorful and really pops. The font and color screams 1971. Love it.

On the inside cover is a brief history on the Cubs. On the next page is the first set of stamps. There are 12 on each page. The first page features: Randy Hundley, Fergie Jenkins, Jim Colborn, Glenn Beckert, Bob Miller, Ken Holtzman, J.C. Martin, Danny Breeden, Ken Rudolph, Ron Santo, Juan Pizarro, and John Callison.

My beef with the Dell Stamps is that Miller, Martin, Breeden, and Pizarro are pictured with other teams. Not even a classic 1970’s airbrushing for these players. That’s a bummer.

The next pages feature the back sides of the stamps with a short bio and on the next page is stats for each of the 12 players.

Next, we find “Historical Events of the National League,” which includes an 1897 snippet about the Cubs scoring 36 runs in a nine inning game.

The final set of stamps feature: Billy Williams, Jim Hickman, Don Kessinger, Joe Pepitone, Joe Decker, Bill Hands, Roberto Rodriguez, Hector Torres, Paul Popovich, Milt Pappas, Phil Regan, and Ernie Banks.

Again, more players in other uniforms: Pepitone, Torres, and Pappas. But look at Roberto Rodriguez. That’s a clear painting , or really bad air brush job. Maybe after the Rodriguez stamp was seen quality control decided they will just feature players in whatever photos they had access to.

The next pages again feature the back sides of the stamps with corresponding stats for those players.

Finally, an advertisement for all other Dell Stamps team books as well as Chicago Cubs All Time Stars: Hack Wilson, Gabby Hartnett, Rogers Hornsby, Hank Sauer, Charlie Grimm, Kiki Cuyler, Charley Root, and Larry French.

Very happy with this booklet, and not sure how I will store it. For now, it’ll join some other programs on a shelf. For the record, this booklet will count as 24 cards for the One Million Cubs Project as I’ll count each stamp as a card.

Today marks the official release day of 2018 Topps Heritage, though many retail outlets have had it out for a few days. Heritage is my favorite product of the year and I’ll go into more detail this weekend after my hobby cases arrive.

First, I had one package in my mailbox. Big thanks to Brian in Montana for the lot of Kerry Wood cards. He sent me 29 Woody’s. His famous 20 strikeout game came during the 1998 season, which brought me back into baseball and baseball card collecting after spending a few years as a basketball fan.

The package included the Topps 20K card, Topps gold cup, Upper Deck star rookie, and a few others that are new to my collection.

After work I decided to stop by Target to see if Heritage had been stocked. My nearest Target is right on my drive home, less than five minutes from my house so it’s a quick trip to check out the latest card offerings. Typically, the three Target’s in my area are a day or two late stocking new product. To my surprise, there was a fully stocked Heritage selection.

Since I have plenty in transit, I just needed a quick fix to check these out. I’ve been following Twitter and the Blowout Forums living vicariously through everyone else breaking this product, so I needed in on some of the fun.

On the outside of each blaster box is a coupon for a free pack of Topps series one. I grabbed three blaster boxes and three packs of Topps.

The three packs of Topps yielded zero Cubs. Bummer. But, then my first pack of Heritage gave me a Javier Baez. My favorite player!

All in all, I pulled 10 Cubs cards out of three blaster boxes. Included in the Cubs haul was a hot pack that featured two Kris Bryant cards, including the retail exclusive Insert.

Wednesday’s Cubs count registered an additional 39 cards and this week’s total is up to 1,357 Cubs cards.