Pack of the Day 76: Two 2014 Topps Chrome Value Packs

It seems like all the cool folks are busting open a little bit of Topps Chrome, so I thought I'd post the highlights from a couple of value packs (3 Retail Packs + 3 Orange Refractors) I opened. I chose a few of my favorite base cards, including an Athletic, an Astro, and a couple of Pirates. While I was working on the scans for this post I happened to be watching a game on MLB.tv and saw Grilli nail down a Hold for the Angels against the A's. It's nice when there is some sort of connection between the players on the TV and the players on the cards you're shuffling around.

These were the four other base cards I chose to scan. I've opened three Value Packs so far this year, and I have three copies of the Mike Moustakas card, two Jose Altuves, and two Hanley Ramirez base cards. That's kind of frustrating.

Here are all 6 of the Orange Refractors from the packs. That horizontal Josmil Pinto card really ruined the numbers for me to get even scans, so I just threw him in there sideways. I am thinking about collecting the Madison Bumgarner rainbow this year because of the Ugly Pitching Face he is showing off on that card. In my family we would call that look The Beav. Grumpy Pujols is grumpy. Maybe he saw this headline:

I got a couple of decent X-Fractors, with Andrew McCutchen and Anibal Sanchez. They scan pretty well, which is a bonus in the world of card blogging. It's better to have a card that looks awesome in scans than it is to have a card that looks awesome in-hand and looks like a dog turd after being run through the scanner.

I also got a base Refractor, a Dodger with a ridiculous name. I see that many R's and E's and my brain just shuts down. If I lean way back and look at this picture sideways, his last name looks like APPLEBANANA, which I think is a fine name. From now on, he will be known to me as Erisbel Applebanana.

The final card in this post is a serially-numbered one, a Sepia Refractor of Kyle Seager. He has been pretty good this year, coming in as the 6th-ranked third baseman in fantasy. But I don't think he really moves the needle as far as collectors are concerned. His card has a pretty decent photo, though, and from what I've heard it is hard to pull colored Refractors this year compared to other years.

It is numbered # 42 / 75. That's about it for this bunch of Topps Chrome. I probably won't be buying a lot of this stuff in packs this year. I am getting a little burnt out on baseball lately, probably because most of the guys who make up my key player collections aren't doing so well this season and thus aren't getting a lot of play in the new products. I did order a base set of 2014 Chrome from a guy on eBay, so I will at least have the set for my collection. I will probably miss busting all the packs, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of 'value' in Chrome this year unless you happen to hit something big from Jose Abreu or something. A lot of the low-numbered colored Refractors got skipped this year for some reason.