The Ripper's Dilemma

What do I do with this? 

Over the weekend, I hit up the monthly card show for the first time since the end of April. As usual, most of my time was spent poring over the nickel/dime/quarter boxes, and since the summer is over, the retail guy was there in full effect with his discounted blasters. I picked up just my second Allen & Ginter blaster of the year, along with a brand new 2016 Heritage High Number box (more on that later this week) and a 2015 Stadium Club package marked all the way down to $12. Not bad. I also made some other pack and blaster purchases that were less notable, and I even took a shot at a $5 hobby pack of of Allen & Ginter from a box that seemed to still have all of its contents in tact. This netted me my first ever "rip card".

I don't know what to do with this card. From my recollection, there's absolutely no correlation between what is contained inside the card and the player on the outside, hence there's likely no Jose Altuve lurking inside Keuchel's protective shell. There could be metal or wood (or fiberglass or dirty needles), although I'm guessing it's not going to be anything heavy based on its weight. I could just crack this thing open, as I'm not a Keuchel fan or an Astros fan really, but it might have something even more dire waiting on the inside. I watched a couple of YouTube clips with people opening these things up and it pretty much made me cringe. I don't have a single mini A&G card from the "extended" set and I just assumed a long time ago that the whole rip card thing was not for me, so now I'm just stuck with this weird card that I'm not sure what to do with.

The blaster, on the other hand, continued my dumb run of cards that Cubs fans like. I didn't do so well at the bargain boxes looking for Cubs trade bait (because 8 out of every 9 that email me about trade offers seem to love this team), so I guess this is fitting. Lester isn't one of the promising young dudes on the team, but he pretty much destroys the Cardinals every time they face him, so I'm sure these guys love him just the same.

I have been half-heartedly stealth collecting last year's Stadium Club set for awhile now. It would probably be more accurate to say that I've just been waiting for prices to come down, because there's only 5 cards in each pack. I pulled this Mets auto (which is up for grabs), plus some base cards and a few parallels. There was also an insert that I will add to my trade bait box that I forgot to scan. I think I'm just going to go with base cards and parallels for this project.

Here's one last card that I bought on purpose at the show. I paid five bucks for this, which is a Huge Deal for me, because for some reason I just can't talk myself into spending anything more than pocket change on single cards. I passed up a Wesley Matthews Blazers auto in favor of this. Strickland's time with the Blazers was a bit underrepresented and a bit underappreciated. Plus, this is a snazzy die cut (around the right edge of the ball) and has a serial numbered print run. I'm glad Panini continues to make cards of past NBA players, especially for those who aren't the Shaqs and Jordans of the world.