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.

Chasing Down Heritage

I have a love/hate relationship with Topps Heritage. I love it because it's a fun set with classic designs and fun inserts. I hate it because it's always so blasted hard to find, especially when there's a hot rookie like Aaron Judge last year or Shohei Otani this year. Sure, I could go the easy route and go to the card shop and pay $4.79 a pack or I could just check out Target to see what they have. I chose Target (but I did stop at the card shop for an unrelated matter and bought some Donruss packs, more on those to come in a future post).

Since we were out and about by the local mega-mall, we had to stop at Target next door to it while we were there anyway. I peeked at the card section. Nothing, zilch, zero in the way of Heritage. As fate would have it, though, we actually had to stop at our local Target on the way home to pick-up an online order that was ready sooner than expected. Before picking up the order, I just had to look at the cards. They had a huge display of Heritage hanger boxes, but no loose packs or blasters. I bought two hanger boxes (as two of those pretty much equates to a blaster in terms of quantity and price) along with a blaster of Opening Day.

My first Heritage card of the year, Jean Segura of the Seattle Mariners. I'm making it a point to show off the first card of every 2018 product I open, be it baseball or otherwise, so I can do a fun little 2018 wrap-up post with them at the end of the year (that's if I remember to do so). Anyway, I like these cards ... a lot. The pictures are nice and crisp, it's a fun design just like the 1969 set, and the backs are super fun too. I'm definitely going to get more of this as I see fit.

Here's a pair of Dodgers pitchers that I know Night Owl is probably fond of. I think my first Maeda card from last year came from Heritage as well. 

Here's a trio of players I tend to enjoy collecting. The Carlos Beltran card is a nice sunset card as I don't think he had a card in Series 1, but I could be wrong. Alonso is a former Reds prospect who's finally broken out and shown the power that everyone knew he had. This past offseason, he signed with Cleveland and joined Edwin Encarnacion to form a nice power hitting duo up on the shores of Lake Erie.

Two of the biggest names in the game and the Giancarlo Stanton Yankees card that everyone is talking about. I found this to be a bit interesting as well and I'll explain why shortly.

Four Reds cards between the two boxes. Iggy's glove looks bigger than it should be.

I like this card simply because of the colorfulness of the Washington uniform. I've found that most of the uniforms featured on these cards are the regular home whites, not that that's a bad thing, so when an alternate top sneaks in, it's a welcome sight.

Each hanger box also provided one short print card. I think Kenley Jansen was a short print last year as well. I checked the microscopic code numbers on the backs of the cards as well and I didn't get any action variations, color swaps, or anything like that. 

I was absolutely thrilled when I saw these checklists because, honestly, when was the last time you saw an honest, old-school style checklist? These are just things of beauty.

Of course, there are the multi-player rookie cards. I find it curious that Topps gave Rafael Devers the rookie cup and stuffed it onto a multi-player card. Why not just give him a card all to himself with the rookie cup?

I always like the flashbacks inserts in Heritage, both the baseball and the news ones. The New Age Performers inserts never really did much for me, but this year's design is kind of fun and funky.

Remember what I mentioned earlier about the Yankees Stanton card being a curiosity? Well, here's my point. The All-Star card shown here of Stanton uses the exact same picture (minus the airbrushed uniform) and proclaims him as a Marlin, not a Yankee. While I see the point to doing this because it's an All-Star card, Topps maybe should have tried to keep him listed with one team or the other.

This picture is the stack of cards that came out of the second hanger box, and look, what's that I spy in the middle there?

Why it's a Giancarlo Stanton relic card! Again, as with the All-Star card, this card proclaims him as a member of the Marlins and we have the exact same photo as the base card. Hey, I'm not complaining. It's a hit from a retail hanger box and I never ... repeat, never ... have that kind of luck and if I do, it's usually not a name of this caliber.

So, overall, do I like 2018 Topps Heritage? Yes. As with any product, there's good and there's bad but so far, I haven't really found much to complain about. The 1969 design is a fun design, the pictures are much better and don't look as grainy as some past issues, and there are full-fledged, honest-to-God checklists! So far, this is my favorite product of the year.

Retail Repack Adventures #14

Rejoice! Spring Training has officially started! While I have been enjoying the hockey season this year, I'm ready for some baseball. Being that I haven't been able to pick up any 2018 Topps yet (that will probably change by the time you read this) what better way to start off the dawn of a new season than with another baseball repack. This time along, I've got the 4-pack, 50-card variety. 

If you're not familiar with these, then you get four packs, a 50-card mini box, and a "bonus". I tend to think of the "bonus" prize in terms of the prize you get from a cereal box, nothing spectacular but sometimes kind of neat. In terms of packs, there's a Babe Ruth Collection, 2016 Heritage, and two retail packs of the Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks. The Babe Ruth pack I've already earmarked for Dimebox Nick so I won't be ripping into that, but the others I will, at least the Heritage pack should be somewhat fun.

This was the bonus prize, a pack of Teeny Mates baseball figures. In the pack, there's two figures and two puzzle pieces. I'm not sure what good the puzzle pieces will do me but the figures themselves aren't bad. This particular pack had a Reds figure and a Mariners figure. 

Moving on to the 50-card mini-box. It's to be expected that there will be a bunch of commons from the late 80s and early 90s in these but a good 90% of the box was that. There was so much, in fact, that I had trouble finding cards from the box to scan, something that typically isn't an issue. I did manage to find a few gems, but not many. This was the top card of the stack, a 2013 Topps Toys R' Us Purple Parallel of Giancarlo Stanton, late of the Miami Marlins. 

The oldest card in the mini box, a 1985 Fleer Bruce Hurst. No, it's not some goofy rainbow parallel, my scanner just seems to hate 1985 Fleer.

Some recent and future Hall of Famers in Alan Trammell and Tim Raines. Good to see that Trammell is finally getting his place in the Hall. Now, if we can just get Lou Whitaker in there as well.

A few nice horizontal cards, including one of Juan Castro, who I'd completely forgotten about until I saw that card. Castro spent the middle eight years of his career (2000-2008) with the Reds as a utility infielder, playing mainly third and short.

Can't go wrong with this either, a Future Stars Billy Hamilton card with the Topps Rookie Cup on it.

Moving on now to the packs of Panini Prizm Draft Picks. These are a staple of these type repacks and never really do much for me.

Only four cards in each pack and nothing really here to write home about from either pack. Jack Flaherty is at least someone I've heard of. Some of these will be thrown into the trade bin, the rest, I guess, will reside in the collection for now or will be set aside for the Goodwill bag.

Finally, the Heritage pack. There's 9 cards here and since it's the 2016 version, that means it's the 1967 version.

There you have it, a few interesting cards but wait, what's that in the middle? Why it's a Chrome parallel of Mike Trout #'d to 999. Here's a close up of it ...

So yeah, I'd say that was a pretty decent pull from a Heritage retail pack. Anyway, that puts the bow on a another repack. I'd say this was pretty much a bust aside from what I decided to show. Hopefully the next one will be better.

Pack War: 2015-16 SP Authentic vs. 2016 Topps Update

Back at the end of October, my family and I visited my aunt and uncle up near Akron. While my wife, my mom and everyone else went shopping, my uncle offered me the invitation to head out to the card shops. I gladly obliged. The first place we hit up was Medina Sports Cards. There were really no singles to be had so I settled on some packs ... two packs of 2015-16 SP Authentic hockey and two packs of 2016 Topps Update. I've decided to match these against each other in a pack war of sorts. Let's see what is contained within ...

Since SP Authentic only yields five cards per pack, I'll just show everything. The first pack presented two Ducks, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins of the Oilers and Dustin Byfuglien of the Winnipeg Jets. The insert card was an authentic moments insert of the Islanders. Not the best pack, but not bad either.

The second pack of SP Authentic wasn't much either but these are still some nice cards to add to the hockey binder. The Upper Deck Update card in the middle threw me off when I saw it but then I realized they're insert cards in this particular product. 

Here's the best from the packs of Update. Aside from the gawdy All-Star jerseys, there's a few things of note here. The Mike Clevinger card is one of those fancy image variations and the Chris Capuano is a foil parallel. As far as the inserts go, I personally think the Franklin card is pretty much useless but I really dig the Mike Trout Fire insert. I could be wrong but I believe that was actually issued as one of Topps' last football products earlier this year.

These weren't the best packs but they scratched the itch to rip so I won't complain too terribly. As far as a winner goes, I'm going to call it pretty much a draw. SP Authentic, while only having five cards per pack, lead in the quality department with some really nice cards. Topps won in the variety department with the image variation, the foil parallel and the Fire insert.

One Super Shiny Pack of Topps Marketside

Back in the spring, these were all the rage amongst fellow card bloggers. I finally got a pack of these in with some breadsticks bought from the deli of the local Walmart. Everyone has seen these before so I won't go into great detail. Three cards per pack, so this will be quick. Let's see what I got ...

Giancarlo Stanton ... the 2016 Home Run Derby champion. 

Luis Severino ... not having a good year with the Yankees with an ERA approaching 7.00

And finally ... Buster Posey, one of the cornerstones of the Giants.

I really like the design of these. It's a simple design that wouldn't seem out of place as insert set in either the flagship sets or in Stadium Club. I probably won't be chasing these at all but if I happen to buy any more pizza or breadsticks that have these in them, I won't complain. 

As for the breadsticks that accompanied these cards, they were better than I thought, especially after you dress them up with a little extra cheese.