While I would love to provide all of you the most complete, extensive, and up to date information, circumstances prevent me from doing so. Therefore I’m happy to send you over to Cardboard Connection for previews of:
and
2013 Topps Finest (including some pretty sweet throwback inserts)
I live in Tucson. As such I do not suffer from an affliction called spring fever. I never wish an end to the winter, because an end to the winter means triple digit temperatures and a literal hell on earth. I guess I suffer from the inverse, fall fever, where around November I wonder why it is still 90 degrees outside. I do, however, look forward to spring, much like all baseball fans, because it means baseball season is starting. Living in Arizona I usually intently follow spring training, reading team previews and going to at least a few games. This year, however, I am pretty busy with work and I’m not able to keep up with the festivities like I have been in the past (a resurgent Arizona Wildcats basketball team is also competing for my time). This is probably the first spring in a few years that baseball is not the dominant force for me. I’m hoping that by the time mid-March rolls around I will be able to devote some time to baseball, if for no other reason to keep me cometitive in my fantasy league. In the meantime Topps has reminded me that Spring Training has begun through their Spring Fever redemption program.
Topps inserted one Spring Fever redemption card in each hobby box. The card is good for one pack of special Spring Fever cards redeemable at your local hobby shop (this is my local hobby shop). The cards are only redeemable from February 20 – February 28, so get to your shop soon. The packs contain five cards and autographs are randomly inserted. Check out the checklist here.
Since I only bought one box of Topps, I only get one pack. Here were my pulls.
As you can see no autograph and my only decent pull was the Griffey. I won’t complain, though, because it is a free pack. The design is highly stylized and shiny. As far as shiny cards go these aren’t so bad. They are more high gloss, with some foil, than they are chrome. The spring training theme is evident with the palm tree design. I do like the team color coordination. Given the limited availability I anticipate they will have some decent ebay returns.
Topps is offering another on-line exclusive product, this time around it is Topps Turkey Red Baseball. Details can be found on the Beckett blog and at the Topps Shop. Topps is selling boxes of 11 cards for $20 a piece and each box includes an autograph. Topps is also including parallels and printing plates. The auto checklist is not necessarily a who’s who but there are some big names like Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera. You can begin pre-ordering tomorrow and orders ship on the 18th. I’ll pick up and few boxes, given the price point, and provide my impressions when it arrives. I will say now that if I end up with four or five Drew Storen autographs I will be sending my cards back for a full refund, especially because they are sticker autos (cmon Topps, step it up).
I recently realized, though I’m sure others have long before me, that Topps releases at least one baseball product a month over the whole year. While market saturation is not to the levels of the 90’s, it doesn’t bode well for future value when so many products are released in one year. Think about it, how many different Bryce Harper autos were released last year? Without looking it up I’m guessing that most of the Topps releases contained some form of a Bryce Harper auto, meaning that there are probably a lot of Harper rookie autos. I’m probably the millionth person to bring this up, so rather than bore you with economics I will talk about Topps January release, 2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 or “that new newness.”
First, I must commend Topps on a solid base design and a solid “base” design. (See what I did there? The cards have a stylized home plate on them, so…yeah). Topps went simple this year: a white border, team accent colors, a team logo, and a stylized baseball diamond. The baseball diamond/home plate is reminiscent of old Upper Deck designs that utlized base paths on different edges of the cards, but is done with a little more flair and in a little bit less of a literal way. The cards really shine, though, because of the focus on photography. Topps is giving us nice, large action shots, often with interesting poses or catching the players in mid jump or throw.
Topps provided quite a few cards featuring players wearing throwback uniforms, adding a little variety to the set and also featuring some cool uniforms from the past.
For the first time in a long time Topps has provided me a base design with little to nothing to complain about. Kudos Topps.
Topps, keeping up their habit from the last few years, gave this set a theme: The Chase. Each cards contains a little blurb about a record that each player is chasing, even if that record does not make sense.
This makes the theme a bit contrived in the base issue, however Topps uses it a little more successfully in the insert sets and for this years on-line game which is called The Million Dollar Chase. (The Million Dollar Chase seems to be Topps take on the MLB.com’s Beat the Streak where you pick a player to get a hit each day in hopes of getting a 57 game hit streak.)
In regards to the inserts, I must again tip my hat to Topps this year for showing restraint. Topps limited the inserts, sans paralells, to only a handful of sets. The most appealing set, to me, is this years mini edition. Topps chose the 1972 design, which is a solid design.
A close second to the minis are The Greats, a thick cardstock set of all-time great players. Topps utilized an understated design and inserted them infrequently enough to make them chase cards.
I also enjoyed, much to my own surprise, the Chasing The Dream inserts. This set features young up and coming players on some sort of futuristic looking background. While I don’t love the design as a whole, I do love the silver, pixelated text used for the names. The hit from my box was actually a Chasing the Dream Tom Milone jersey card, which means that Topps has failed me yet again in their base product when it comes to hits. You better hope Tom Milone wins a Cy Young, Topps, otherwise this is on you for including a Tom Milone hit in my box. Jerks.
Also of mention is the Calling Cards set, featuring players in signature poses, the infinitely boring Chasing History set, which is interchangeable with Golden Moments or whatever set featuring old players that Topps did two years ago, and the mega-hideous die-cut set with the punny title “Cut to the Chase.”
I would like to comment on the autographs, but I can’t because I didn’t get one. An autograph hit should be standard in all base products. I can accept a relic as a bonus hit, but autographs are where its at and Topps should guarantee one in all base boxes. A Tom Milone autograph, as infuriating as that seems to write, would be much less disappointing than a Tom Milone jersey. Fortunately, Series 1 is selling at around $60 a box, so the pain of a relic hit is tempered by a decent price point.
Finally, Topps would not be Topps without parallels. This year Topps is bringing back gold and black and hitting us with a green sparkly parallel that drops at a few a box. Target and Wal-Mart have their store specific red and blue parallels. There are also camo and pink parallels floating out there, but they are pretty rare apparently so you can figure that I didn’t see one. There may be other parallels but I’m too lazy to go look, so you do it. While parallels are not particulary exciting to me, I do appreciate the value they add to a box with blacks going for between $5 and $10 for commons on eBay.
I thoroughly enjoyed breaking a box of 2013 Topps. The cards are refreshingly simple with great photography. I was not overwhelmed by inserts and actually found myself liking them, more or less. The parallels are helping me recoup some of the box cost, though that cost is reasonable. As mentioned above, better hits would appreciated but maybe tough hits are a good thing in the long run. Overall, I am looking forward to spending a year with this design and maybe I’ll even run into an autograph or two on the way. 4/5.
I picked up a couple of packs of Prizm basketball and…well…I don’t have much to say. As has been made clear I’m not a fan of chrome cards and this doesn’t change when you call them Prizm. I find the design to be boring at best and kind of ugly at worst. I believe it was Mojo Beardy who mentioned that they have a Topps Finest vibe, and I would agree. However, my nostalgia for Finest, which I loved as a 9 year old precisely because it was shiny and new, is lost here. Making a card shiny shouldn’t obviate the need for good design, but in most instances I think that card manufacturers thinks it does.
I do appreciate Panini limiting the number of inserts in the set and providing a solid checklist of on-card autographs which have a good mix of rookies, legends, and current stars. However, the design is so boring and lazy that I can’t see picking this over Panini Threads.
As for my packs themselves I pulled a Kyrie Irving rookie and legends cards of Isaiah Thomas and Wilt Chamberlain. I didn’t pull any inserts or autos and the rest of my cards were commons.
Recommended for chromies and auto chasers but no one else. 1.5/5 (almost completely because of a solid autograph checklist).
Rick Barry.
Ha! What’s up with that stance?
Look at his face.
Double ha.
Say it ain’t so Bowman, say it ain’t so. While I accept your Chrome cards, your Platinum effort, and the always hideous Sterling as a price to be paid for a solid base product, I can’t get behind this new thing you’re doing. Inception? Why? Why do we need another ultra high end product? I’m getting very tired of single pack boxes (if there is only one pack, it is called a PACK!) that sell for exorbitant sums. We have enough of this with Topps Tier 1, Triple Threads, Museum Collection, etc. It is unnecessary to expand this idea to the Bowman line. I don’t want to drop $150 (or whatever it may cost) on the opportunity to get a couple high end cards of prospects who may or may not pan out. It is one thing to give me the opportunity to get a Pujols or Mays autograph or a Ruth relic, but the chance to get a 1/1 Dylan Bundy is not selling me on the high end product. The point of prospect collecting, at least in my eyes, is to invest a reasonable amount now for a potential profit later, if I’m investing a lot now I want immediate returns.
Not to mention this awful design. What’s with the clouds? Is it raining prospects? Are they supposed to be angels? Bowman, you’ve abandoned all trappings of good design. You need to rethink this.
Here is an interesting piece on case breaking ROI (return on investment). It seems like good information to have if you intend on investing in new products. Remember, though, past returns are no guarantee of future performance.
I love lists. That may be an admission of sloth or my simple nature, but I love lists. They are so easy to digest and they save me from reading a lot of “words.” Therefore, without further ado (adieu?), here are a few Pack a Week year end lists for your enjoyment.
Pack a Week Hits of the Year (aka my best pack pulls):
1. 2012-13 Panini Threads Anthony Davis Autograph
2. 2012 Topps Archives Yu Darvish Autograph
3. 2012 Topps Target Exclusive Red No-Name Error Mickey Mantle
4. 2012 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Black Michael Wacha Autograph
5. 2012 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Aflac All-American Michael Zunino Autograph
Honorable Mention (not a pack pull but I love it):
1997 Bowman Derek Jeter Autograph
As you can see, my year was back loaded with hits. Other than the Mickey Mantle error, all of my best pulls came in the last two months of the year. That is not to say that I didn’t have fun the rest of the year, but the last two months reaffirmed my love of busting boxes.
Tops 5 Products of the Year:
1. 2012 Topps Mini Baseball
Mini baseball, from a design perspective, is no different than the Topps base set this year other than the fact that they are about 1/3 smaller. While I thought that the Topps base was fine this year, the design is not the reason that I give Mini the product of the year honors, it is the restraint, value, and fun that give it the top spot. This product, reviewed here, contained a limited number of inserts and the parallels had very limited print runs, meaning that when you pulled an insert or a paralell it felt special, which is something that many products lack: a feeling that you pulled something special. The product was also limited to, apparently, a few thousand boxes, making everything more valuable on the secondary market. The limited print run also made pulling printing plates, numbered 1/1, a much easier task. Boxes were available only through the Topps on-line store and cost, a reasonable, $50. Mini seemed like a reward to the fans and the collectors and it was fun; I appreciate Topps for doing it.
2. 2012 Topps Archives
Archives is all about nostalgia and it delivered on nostalgia. Topps split the base set into four separate, classic designs (the most pleasing, if you ask me, is the 1984), they brought back the fan-favorite autographs, including autos of super-hyped, super rookies Bryce Harper and Yu Darvish, and gave us box-toppers of Billy Zabka (sweep the leg!!!!!) and cut-autos of Vanna White. What more do you want you greedy jerk?
3. 2012-13 Panini Threads Basketball
I’m a notorious Panini hater, I usually think their designs are busy, the inserts are ridiculous and ugly, and the autos are sticker drops. Threads fixed most of this. The design was solid and harkened back to the classic Upper Deck designs of the mid-90’s and the autos were on-card (wood cards for that matter). The inserts still suck (you can’t win them all). The set also includes rookie cards from the last two draft classes due to the lock out, however all the rookie cards are autos and therefore super, ultra, mega chase cards (see Anthony Davis above). While I haven’t had much of a return on these cards on the secondary market (sans Anthony Davis), I like these cards enough just to keep them. Collecting for the sake of collectin, go figure.
4. Left Field Cards
Design-wise, this is my favorite product of the year. These are hand made, letter-press printed baseball cards (though they double as postcards). My review can be read here. They can be ordered here. Since it is my favorite design, you may be asking why they are fourth? It is really only because they lack the chase aspect of normal cards because they are purchased in series and you know what you are getting ahead of time. (I’m a gambler at heart and love the thrill of the chase). But don’t get me wrong, I’m still excited about these cards, especially to see what future series have in store.
5. 2012 Bowman Baseball (+Draft Picks and Prospects)
What can I say: prospects, prospects, prospects. Bowman delivers with another solid design, good crop of autographs, and some good inserts and paralells. Nothing sets this apart from years past, but the product continues to be one of my favorites every year. Kudos.
Letterpress baseball cards, postcard-size.
Musings of a Card Collector
Analyzing reality TV, and the world, at the same time
Pack A Week 