Ryan H. over at "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog recently held a break of 2 boxes of 2013 Topps Chrome Baseball. I bought the slots for the Blue Jays and A's, and my randomized teams wound up being the Brewers and Padres.
I got two base cards for the Blue Jays, Brett Lawrie and Jose Reyes. The set is done in the style of the flagship set from this year, but with a Chrome logo and the shiny Chrome treatment applied to the cards. You can't so much as glance at them without getting fingerprints and smudges all over them. I guess that's why you see people doing breaks on Youtube wearing cloth gloves. That being said, my cards from the break arrived in good shape, protected and minty-fresh.
I am vaguely aware of who these guys are. Kelly and Gyorko are rookies, so that helps to explain somewhat why I haven't heard their names much.
It is unfortunate that Braun had to be packed out in any sets this year. I especially loathe that the back of his card shows so many statistics in red italics, meaning he led the league in a category for a particular year. It's almost as slimy as the back of an A-Roid card. I know that licensing probably wouldn't allow for it but it would be interesting if instead of stats, the card-backs of outed dopers just had 'CHEATER' printed on them in big block letters.
I like Weeks' blue uniform in this picture, and at least I've heard of 3/4 of these dudes before.
I've heard of all of these guys. Cespedes is a big name, although of the Big Four New Guys (Puig, Cespedes, Trout, Harper) from the recent past he is probably the most overlooked. The rest are all decent pitchers, and I like the green and yellow of the uniforms.
I also got three inserts from the break. My randomized teams both came in with big fat zeros, but the A's netted one card and the Blue Jays had two. First up is a 1972 Chrome Refractor of Yoenis Cespedes. It's rather shiny, but there has sure been a lot of the 1972 design this year.
I also got a Brett Lawrie Refractor. This dude's tattooed arms always seem to really stand out on cards. Maybe it's his pasty-white skin or some inherent quality of the Blue Jays uniform that makes them pop.
Finally, I got this Die-Cut Chrome Connections card of Jose Reyes. The gimmick behind this set is that you can put the cards next to each other (make Connections) to make a bigger picture. The cards interlock. The other gimmick is that one of those points at the bottom will always try not to go into a penny sleeve that the first point has been placed in. It's like trying to put pants on a feral cat.
Along with the cards from the break, Ryan included a few cards from the 2010? Upper Deck set for each team slot.
That camo that Edgar Gonzalez is wearing looks awfully familiar...
...because I wore that pattern for a while a few years ago. Here is me and my dad in Iraq together in 2005. He lived a couple hundred meters from where I lived for part of my tour there, so we saw each other once or twice a week while we were over there. I think this picture came from a day when we took him out in our area on a mission with us. You might notice that I am carrying an M16 and not an M4. I didn't get my M4 until my second trip over there.
No comments:
Post a Comment