Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em...

I won't make a habit of posting on the weekends but I thought I'd share my most recent pack buying/busting experience.

I was talking cards with Matt from over at Once a Cub at work on Friday and we decided to go check for some Opening Day on our lunch break. Normally, I am a pretty frugal collector and don't buy blasters. I like to open the occasional pack but would much rather pay for just cards I want.

We are both interested in completing the set, and at half the price of any other blaster, we each picked up two figuring we could swap our dupes. Well, that was the plan on the way to Wal-Mart. We ran out of time on our lunch break and didn't get a chance to open anything up.

A little more banter at work led to Matt automatically claiming any Cubs I pulled and me claiming his Nats. I upped the ante a little further and asked if he wanted to play pack wars, winner gets the whole blaster. Neither of us had done anything like this before.

We didn't have a Beckett or anything to declare a book value winner so we decided to make the pack winner measured by something concrete. Highest base card number won the pack. Most pack winners claimed the other's whole blaster box.

As you may be able to ascertain by the lack of photos in this post, I didn't win. Either box. I didn't keep track of the finals scores but I believe I lost the first box 7-4 and the second box 6-5. The second box was especially close as one pack I lost was initially a tie when we both pulled the same high card. But his next highest card was higher than mine. That box could have gone either way.

Oh well. Twenty bucks down the drain. It was kind of fun though. I probably wouldn't have done it with a regular $20 blaster. And I don't know that I'll do a winner take all again but I would be open to a pack vs. pack showdown. At least then I could have walked away with a couple of packs.

Rather than waste any more money, I'm going to head on over to eBay and just buy the complete set.

Anybody else have other ways they play pack wars?