um, yeah. update is live.

i swung by the target near my work at quitting time to see if, by chance, they had any 2012 topps update lying around.  they sure did.  i picked up a blaster and a rack pack.  i was lucky enough to pull this card out of the rack pack

that's one of those pesky short print variations.  it's ichiro and it's a yankee, so i scanned the back as i knew i wouldn't be owning it for too long

sure enough, it sold about two hours after i listed it on ebay.  it's too bad that it wasn't the matt kemp or clayton kershaw sp, though.  or even the cc sabathia one with matt kemp sitting next to him.  still, ichiro covered the costs and then some of the cards i picked up, so that means all of these were free.

here's a red parallel of kershaw's regular card in the set

 as well as a red version of fellow lefty scott elbert's card

 i also pulled the regular version of elbert

i did pretty well as far as dodgers go, which is a change for me.  one of the reasons i stopped buying packs was because i wasn't getting any dodgers.  literally.  i'm glad i lifted my self-imposed moratorium today.  because, otherwise, i wouldn't have been able to show you the jerry hairston card i pulled.

it's still weird to see number 6 out there.

here's matt kemp's home run derby card

kind of a checklist waste, but whatever.

shane victorino as a dodger

i am still not a fan of that trade at all.

i also got a juan rivera gold card

i thought rivera was in series 2.  wasn't he?  yes he was.  not sure what's going on here.

that's a pretty good dodger haul, but there was more.  there were a couple of dodgers lurking, like bobby abreu on cody ransom's card

 and dee gordon on former dodger ryan theriot's card

 and, i should have had another dodger had topps realized that randy choate

 was included in the hanley ramirez deal.  they've got hanley in dodger blue, and nathan eovaldi

in marlins colors, but i guess they forgot that choate also changed teams.

there were a couple of cool double play cards in my packs, too.  i really like this jamey carroll card

it's better than this john mcdonald card

even though the photos are very similar.

i wasn't really looking for bryce harper, although he was there on rick ankiel's card

seems like an excuse to get harper on another card, if you ask me.  ankiel was released at the end of july.  typically, that would mean he wouldn't make the final checklist cut.  but, with harper in the picture, anything is possible.

i did pull a harper card in one of the last packs i opened.

pretty sure that's dodger stadium he's playing in, which would make sense since he debuted in la on april 28.

as luck would have it, i pulled two gold parallels of that card, too.

each blaster comes with a manupatch again, and while i didn't get the hanley patch, i did get yu darvish

this will probably go the way of the ichiro unless someone out there is interested.

overall, i'm pretty happy that i stopped at target.  take a bow, ichiro, for providing me with some free cards.