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.

Birthday Repacks

My birthday was last week, the 19th to be exact. So as a present to myself, I decided to try out some Walgreens repacks seeing that I haven't torn into one of them in a while. I won't break down each repack but I will cover some of the neater cards found within. I wonder if the new design on the box means a refresh of content?

The cover cards and both are 2018 Stadium Club. This is good because ... 1) I don't have much 2018 Stadium Club aside from the dime singles I picked up at the card show back in the fall and 2) Seeing 2018 cards right off the top should be a good sign, hopefully.

More 2018 cards! The Bowman design isn't bad this year to be honest.

The repacks had a plethora of 2016 Topps (probably 24 total between the two packs), these are the best cards from the stack. The more I see these cards, the more I think it's not one of Topps better efforts.

80s and 90s cards were prevalent too. How can you go wrong with cards of "The Cobra" and "Murph". 

I can always dig some 1987 Donruss. 

My favorite card from the literal gobs of 1988 Score that I found. This is just such a cool card.

A new card for my Dennis Eckersley collection that I'm pretty sure I don't already have. So weird to see him in a Cubs uniform.

Wait, early 80s cards in repacks? Unexpected but nice.

Vintage in repacks? Ok sure, why not? I can see a 1978 or a 1979 card winding up in repacks but a card from 1973? Hey I won't complain.

My favorites of the 1986 Donruss I found. I can't put a finger on it but there's something I really like about these cards. One of the cool things about most Donruss cards from the 80s, is that they use the team logo, which I always though added a neat touch.

I have to show the Reds cards that I got. The Rich Gale will be used for my 1984 set and the Score "Hot Rookie" Hal Morris is new to me as well.

Some newer cards. I can't believe that 2017 Topps will already be two years old this coming January when the 2019 cards hit. It's a design I definitely still like. 

Now on to the coolest cards of the repacks .... I did some research online and for the life of me couldn't find any information on this Nick Anderson character. It's neat to get a hit out of these but they're never really anything great.

What is this doing in a repack? It's a 2018 Topps Chrome 1983 Tribute of Giancarlo Stanton. I spent roughly zero dollars on Topps Chrome this year (as I do every year) but this is a really, really cool card.

And I also got these two Topps Chrome base cards. I must say that the 2018 design chromes up pretty nicely

So there we are, two repacks. When I opened these, the collation was pretty much the same and there were a lot of duplicates included, strangely enough in the exact same spot in each pack. While I did get some cool cards, these were largely a miss thanks to the sheer volume of junk wax cards. I did also get a pack of 1990 Upper Deck in each box, so there's that as well. I'll cover those in a future post.