I Really Hate Shopping

I really hate shopping.  Luckily, my house is in a place where I can walk ten minutes and buy most of the things that I need in life.  Driving is two minutes to most of these places depending on a traffic light.  There are two grocery stores, the post office, Walgreens, a Verizon store, a bunch of different restaurants, Lowe's (hardware store for you NC people), Target, an emergency room, etc, etc.  You get the point.

Usually, my wife does the big shopping trips in our household and I stay home and hang out with the kids.  However, the small shopping trips are all mine.  A week back I was dispatched to Lowe's to purchase playground sand.  The sand in our sandbox had been soiled by a cat.

There are actually many cats in my neighborhood.  We have a person in our neighborhood who feeds stray cats.  They come for miles.

At one point this summer she even tried to crowd source a vet bill for a stray who had been bitten by a snake. 

I bought the playground sand, but ended up being dispatched to Target for a few art supplies for a school project my son was working on.  Lowes and Target are right next to each other.  Didn't even have to move my car.  Now, I am not usually a retail card person, but sometimes I dabble.  I dabbled with three hanger packs of Topps Archives.  

The aisle was dominated by a bunch of Panini stuff.  I would have actually preferred seeing some Heritage High Numbers cards.  

The base cards out of Archives are the usual stuff out of that product.  Three different past card designs with both current and former players.  The best base card that I found was A's pitcher Daniel Mengden.  

I saw him pitch for the USA Baseball college team while he was at Texas A&M.  That mustache is incredible.  I know there are other cards of Mengden and his mustache, just like this one with the posed shot.  Pretty sweet.  Heard there is one in Heritage High Numbers too.  

So, what else did I get?  You know it has to be pretty good since I never blog about retail cards.  

Somehow I also managed to land two autographs in three hanger packs.  I consider anything beyond basic inserts and base cards out of retail packs to be something pretty special.  Maybe I am wrong and the odds are better now.  Still happy.  

First autograph.....

belongs to 60s and 70s Red Sox infielder Rico Petrocelli.  His career was not very long, but some of his prime years were excellent.  Hit for power, had a decent average, drove in runs, and was also an excellent defender.  

Second autograph......

to long time Braves and Mets infielder Felix Millan.  I was actually a little bummed to see that this card was a redemption, but then there are actually live copies on Ebay.  It's a Mets card on a 1977 design.

Very nice looking card.  I have not even tried to send in a redemption card in a few years, but this one might be one that I take on, especially if there are live copies of the card already available online. 

I really hate shopping, but every once in awhile nice things happen while I am at the store.