Pack of the Day 46: 2013 Topps Archives Hobby Box

I am getting close to finishing my posts on the stuff I got at the 20th Anniversary Party at my local card shop. This box of 2013 Topps Archives was one of the two boxes I won in the drawings for prizes. In my chase to get a full set of the Gold parallels and most of the other insert sets I have accumulated quite a few base cards. I know I have one full base set, and there is probably at least one more in my card boxes. I didn't think I should go without posting a scan of some base cards, though, so I flipped through the stack and picked one of my favorites from each design in the set.

Mini Tall-Boys - 5 - Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Dylan Bundy, Robinson Cano, Roberto Clemente

These were all doubles for me. I do like this set design, but they are a pain to store in card pages. I haven't found any pages designed specifically to hold this size of card.

Fan Favorites Short-Print Base Cards - 6 - Fred McGriff, Kent Hrbek, Tim Salmon, Paul Blair, Charlie Hough, Otis Nixon

I am pretty sure the McGriff and Hrbek were new ones for me, but the others were all doubles or triples. I may have four or five of the Otis Nixon cards now. I guess 2 out of 6 isn't too bad, but these short-prints are a pain to collect. I am down to needing just five more of them to complete that part of the set.

1969 4-in-1 Stickers - 3 - Williams/Robinson/Yastrzemski/Cabrera, Cobb/Mays/Griffey Jr./Trout, Baylor/Parker/Davis/Strawberry

I think these were all doubles as well. 

1983 All-Stars - 6 - Bryce Harper, Jim Rice, Giancarlo Stanton, Fred Lynn, Pedro Guerrero, Leon Durham

These were all doubles for me, too. It is a little disappointing that Topps reuses so many photos, even within a set. Fred Lynn is the offender in this case. His SP base card uses the same picture, if I am remembering right.

1972 Basketball Design - 1 - Willie Stargell

I think I had at least two of these already. This is one of the insert sets I haven't yet completed from 2013 Archives. It is a bear to get them out of packs, and their prices on the secondary market are a little higher than I'd like to pay.

1998 Stadium Club Triumvirate Design - 1 - Josh Hamilton

This is another of the insert sets that I haven't been able to complete yet. Hamilton was one of the cards I needed for the set, so this was a decent pull for me. Only 16 more to go!

Gold Parallel # / 199 - 2 - Will Middlebrooks # 060 / 199, Wade Miley # 128 / 199

These were both doubles for me, although any Gold cards I happen to pull are extremely likely to be doubles. I only need 6 more out of the 200-card set. I may have a lead on one of those six if I make some time to respond to my e-mails and blog comments, but the other five continue to elude me.

Fan Favorites Autographs - 1 - Hubie Brooks

I've put together a few of these autographs, but I am not going to pursue all of them. Relic and autograph inserts don't usually make the cut for me when working on completing a set. I don't have any real attachment to the Brooks, but I like the execution on these autographs, with them being on-card in nice blue Sharpie. Brooks kind of went out of his way to avoid the whited-out portion of the card where his signature was supposed to go.

Framed 1973 Mini Auto # / 25 Redemption - 1 - Frank Robinson

Well, this is a pretty decent card to get out of a box of Archives, assuming Topps is able to service the redemptions. A few searches of eBay seem to suggest that none of these cards have actually made it out into the world, so it remains to be seen what they will actually look like.

The promotional material from Topps has the cards looking something like this:

I guess we'll see whenever Topps decides to ship the card out. I am sure that when it arrives there will be a blog post all about it.

Overall this wasn't too bad for a 'free' box of cards. It wasn't really as free as I'd like to think, as you had to buy stuff in order to get tickets for the drawing, but I left with two boxes of cards more than I bought, so these were free enough, I suppose. It will be nice if I can finish this set in time to start working on 2014 Archives.