A Steal of a Retail Deal (Part 1)

I told myself I was going to stop buying stuff just to review on the blog. Well, that kind of went out the window with this purchase. Over the Easter weekend, Target had a whale of a deal on cards. Blaster were on sale for $16.99 each and hanger boxes were on sale for $8.49 each. Also, on the Cartwheel app there was a $10 off a $50 purchase coupon and there was a free pack coupon on each blaster of Heritage. To go along with this, my mom got me a $75 Target gift card as an Easter gift.

Naturally, I had to take advantage of this rare sale. I had come in search of some Gypsy Queen but they were well stocked with Heritage. I settled for eight packs of Gypsy Queen (four of which came out to be free thanks to the $10 off coupon and the free pack coupon on the blaster), one Heritage blaster, and two Heritage hanger boxes. Grand total for all this? About $48.

I'll focus on the Heritage cards here and share the Gypsy Queen cards in a follow-up post. I can't remember which cards came out of the blaster or the hangers so I've just sort of mixed and matched here.

First off, before I get to the cards, I wanted to take a moment and comment on the Heritage pack design itself. Since I'd yet to open any actual packs of Heritage this year, this was my first glimpse at what the pack itself looks like. I have to say, I kind of dig it.

I'm going to try and show cards of players I don't think I showed on my initial round of Heritage. I can't guarantee though there won't be repeats. 

Yay! Rookie Cup cards! It may just be me but I kind of think the Rookie Cups fit better on Heritage than on flagship.

Nice to see that the Mariners finally signed Ichiro. 

When Strasburg was a rookie, I had club seat tickets for a Reds game to see him against Johnny Cueto. That was quite the game.

Between the hangers and the blaster, I got four short prints (including two Lonnie Chisenhall cards). I'd forgotten completely about Brandon Phillips' stint with the Angels last year. 

The lone Reds card I got that wasn't already a duplicate and it's one of the baseball flashbacks insert. 

And here are the Target exclusive inserts. I think that Rhys Hoskins might be a duplicate but I'll have to go through my Phillies cards to make sure.

While these weren't the best boxes and I didn't get any variations, it was still a fun rip. I think I'm good on Heritage now probably until High Numbers comes out this fall. If I want any more singles or inserts, I'll probably dig for them at card shows or the like.

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.

2018 Topps: The "Wave" of the Future

I'll admit it, I may have gone a bit overboard on 2018 Topps.

However, in order to stretch the cash my wife fronted me as a Valentine's Day present, I had to make the most of it so I got as much as I could so I could get a nice sampling. I bought five loose packs, the last two fat packs on the rack, and a blaster box. I'll break down the highlights the same way. First the loose packs, 

Here's my first card of the year, Tyler Flowers of the Braves. As far as the design goes, I think I like it more in person than I did from the scans and pictures of it I saw on other blogs. It's a nice full-bleed photo and the graphics at the bottom are clean and simple and the team logo looks as if it's either surfing a wave or going down a water slide. I definitely dig it and if Topps can keep the design for the base set clean like this every year, all will be good.

Here's a few former Reds who are Reds no longer, of these Todd Frazier has changed teams, going from the Yankees to the Mets and re-uniting with former Reds teammate Jay Bruce.

Speaking of Reds, here's a few current ones. I pulled three of the Billy Hamilton cards so the dupes will be going in the trade box.

The horizontal cards are really neat and work a lot better than they did the previous two years. I picked these because they had the best photography and I love the way the A's green and gold just pops on these cards.

A few more base cards, again picked mainly for photography than anything else. I dig the throwback Giants uniform on Christian Arroyo though.

There were also inserts, lots of inserts. I can't say I'm exactly thrilled with the insert sets this year although the 1983 style cards are pretty neat. It looks like buybacks and the first pitch inserts have sadly been dropped.

Moving on now to the fat packs (or jumbo packs, whatever you prefer to call them), here's a few guys  who are now on new teams, Cutch with the Giants and Cozy with the Angels.

A few more cards with nice photos.

More nice horizontal cards. I was pretty hyped to pull an Ian Happ card considering he's a University of Cincinnati product. 

More current Reds. Tyler Mahle was a nice late season call-up for the Reds last year and did so well that he's a candidate for a rotation spot this year in spring training. He was one of the few bright spots of the Reds pitching staff last year.

The first foil parallel of the break and it's Dellin Betances of the Yankees.

Two of the hottest young stars in the game currently, Rhys Hoskins and Dansby Swanson. I would've been happy just getting these out of the fat pack but then came this ...

The much heralded card #1 of the set, Aaron Judge. I'd say just based on those last three cards alone, the fat packs were more than worth it.

Finally, the blaster. I've shown a lot of base cards so far but here are a few of my favorites of the 10-pack blaster. 

Two foil parallels and a gold parallel were found as well. I really like the way the gold cards stand out this year.

More inserts. I'm not really sure what the point is of the Opening Day cards, maybe they should've just been left for the Opening Day product itself.

I'm not down on these Jeter inserts as much as most people are it seems. Sure, Jeter isn't exactly someone I actively collect but still, these are nice cards in person. However, I know a few Yankee collectors that might appreciate these more.

More of the 1983 style cards. I can't really get enough of these.

And here's the guaranteed commemorative patch card. Manu-relics for me are pretty cool and I've got a few in my collection. For blasters and retail, I think they're fine but they shouldn't be included in hobby boxes and count as a "hit". Anyway, I won't really complain about in being an Evan Longoria card either as he's one of the better players from the list.

So that's my first experience with 2018 Topps. It was fun to break into these but after a while, the buzz wore off. I'll probably buy a few packs here and there at the card shop if there's nothing interesting and I feel the need to buy something to rip. As I mentioned, I'm not exactly thrilled with the insert sets except the 1983 cards but overall the base card design is really nice, the photography is good and everything feels fresh and new.