Topps Big League ... Target Acquired

So Topps Big League has been all the rage recently and I decided to bite and grab some from Target during a recent excursion. I could've honestly come up with a witty title for this as well but I think most of the good ones have been claimed already.

Last year's debut issue was nice but I thought some of the pictures were a little dark, as if they were taken on an overcast day or something. That's just me though. This year though, I really like the design. It kind of combines the 1965 Topps flag design with the 1987 Topps wood background. The team logos look tremendous on the flag, although if I had one nitpick, it'd be to use a different color flag on those logos with darker backgrounds (like the Braves logo).

Of course, the allure of Big League is a "bargain priced" set but that's not to say that you won't find some gems. The photos on these cards are worthy of Stadium Club in my opinion. Also, the yellow cards come one per pack, much as they did last year.

Here's some cool horizontal cards as well. I can't get enough of Justin Verlander Astros cards.

With Big League being an in-season issue, there will be cards of players in new uniforms. This one will fall into the "short term stops" category with Jay Bruce having recently been shipped to the Phillies.

Here's another short-term stop and the main card I wanted from this set, especially when I saw that Matt Kemp was jettisoned from the Reds after only 20 games in favor of Nick Senzel. With the Reds, he hit .200/.210/.283 with only one home run and 5 RBIs.

More Reds cards. Scott Schebler was sent down to Triple-A when the Reds called up Nick Senzel and released the aforementioned Matt Kemp. Votto is slowly starting to come around and Jesse Winker has been a great as the everyday left fielder this year. 

Here's a bunch of dudes in old school style uniforms, which is one of my mini-collections. I think my favorite of these is Yonder Alonso in the mid-80s White Sox uniform.

I also got a fair amount of inserts. These are the two insert sets I really like. I didn't care much for the inserts with the caricatures. I set those into the trade box. The "Wall Climbers" set is really cool.

Since I bought a blaster, I got a bonus four-card pack of blue parallels.

Also, I managed to get one of these shiny parallels from both the blaster and the fat pack. The scanner doesn't do justice as to how cool these cards are.

All in all, I really really like this year's Big League offering. Lots of fun inserts, cool photography on the base cards, dudes in new uniforms, dudes in throwback uniforms, short-term stops, and more. I'll definitely be buying more of that.