All-Star Fan-Fest 2007

The All-Star Game. In San Francisco. What could be better? Well for all the Barry Bonds haters in the world, I am sure anything would be better. As a long time Giants fan however, I was in heaven. Not the kind of heaven that would permit me to drop a few thousand on a ticket or anything, but enough to join the festivities at Fan-Fest. So I bought my tickets on-line, told my Wife it would be the experience of a life time, hoped in the car and made the hour and a half drive to the City. I hadn't bought a pack of cards in years, probably about ten years to be exact, but I had read on-line that Topps and Upperdeck were going to have pack redemption set up at their booths, and that Tim Lincecum was going to be one of the cards available. Having loved collecting in the past, the thought of an exclusive Lincecum card only available to those at Fan-Fest really got me going. I guess it didn't matter to me that all the cards I still had in screw downs and top loaders were worth less then a tenth of what they were worth when I stored them away. I never really stopped to wonder why my $300 cards were worth $30. All I knew was this was true collecting. I didn't care about the worth of the card, or the rarity, I just wanted that Lincecum card.... for me. That is what this hobby was supposed to be about right? The cards you wanted cause they meant something to YOU. Not the card shop owner, or that nameless person on ebay, but cause you wanted it?

Anyway.... I was excited. We got down to Fan-Fest and made a mad dash to the Topps booth where we were informed that they weren't selling the packs, those needed to be bought from the dealers at the show, but we did need to open them at the Topps booth. So after scouting out a dealer and purchasing some (what I know now was overpriced) packs of Topps Series 2, we returned to the booth were we had to stand behind a guy opening a full box of Heritage and redeeming every five packs for a Mantle card (still the obsession with Mantle?). So after the Mantle guy got his 5 or so redemption cards (for himself I am sure, there is know way he was going to sell those right?) I stepped up with my few packs and went through the motions of opening packs I had no interest in, so I could hand the wrappers over for my prized Lincecum. Then something tragic happened. My Wife discovered opening packs could be FUN! After we got our first Lincecum card it seemed that our mission was accomplished, but the buzz of opening packs hung in the air and there were more cards available for redemption. Here is where the train jumped the track. Rather then buying some more packs and going back and getting my favorite player Barry Bonds one time redemption card, we went back for a second Lincecum so that we could try our luck on ebay, and thus the innocence was lost.