Pack of the Day 82: A Second Box of 2014 Topps Stadium Club

Shortly after I purchased my previous box of 2014 Stadium Club at what seemed like a pretty good price, Dave and Adam's made it one of their Daily Deals for $10 less per box. I was weak and ordered some more. These cards are beautiful, and they have a good feel to them when shuffling through a stack. I have most of a base set now, with just about 30 cards missing. There were some Black Friday deals on Stadium Club, but I couldn't justify spending more than I already had on Black Friday. There will be other discounts later. At $55 or less I like this stuff. At $65 and up it seems like less of a deal. I picked a few of my favorite base cards to show off first:

My player collections have seen a bit of a shake-up this offseason, but for the most part everyone's been shuffled to other teams I collect. I call myself an Astros fan and I do collect some specific Houston players, but most of the players I collect are Blue Jays, Athletics, and Royals. I guess that means I am lucky that Billy Butler went to the A's and Josh Donaldson went to the Blue Jays. Even though I like the guy, I don't know how good of a deal Butler is for Oakland. Maybe he'll find himself down there, or the roster shuffling they do will mask some of his weaknesses, It also seems a lot like Toronto won the Donaldson trade, but we won't know for sure until the season plays out. Alex Gordon tends to make some great faces on his cards. I wanted at least one older player for the scan, and Dawson was the best photo in the bunch. I showed off the Wilin Rosario Members Only card a little while ago, and I finally pulled the base card to go with it. I'm not a Boston Red Sox fan, but that celebration shot was too good to pass up, and I wanted to close things out with a couple of fielding shots.

Two of the three Rainbow Foil parallels from this box fit into my player collections. Max Scherzer is getting offers from the New York Yankees, and most folks seem to think he'll be in pinstripes before too long. I guess I'll still set his cards aside for my player collection. I got a Billy Butler parallel to go along with the base card. I'm not a Cubs fan, but that Castro card looks nice enough.

My Gold parallel for this box was CC Sabathia. This would have been a much better pull a couple of years ago.

I got three Field Access cards in this box. I got four in the last box because I got a parallel of the Joe Mauer card. Now I have the base insert to go with it. The Trout and Bench cards have decent photos on them, so no complaints there. I guess the Trout would fit into Dime Box Nick's Awards Show mini collection, while the Mauer would go well in the Kids on Cards mini collection.

My Beam Team for the box is Andrew McCutchen, which means I am having pretty good luck on the player collection front. I like the Beam Team The George Brett Legends insert is another double from the first box. I got one of the better Future Stars cards in Yasiel Puig. Stadium Club would be a fun set to collect all the inserts for, but I don't know if I have it in me to make that a collecting priority.

I pulled two Triumvirate cards, both featuring Dodgers pitchers. The Hyun-Jin Ryu card is another PC card, and is the base Luminous version that comes one per box. The Clayton Kershaw is the Illuminator version, which comes one per case and is made of transparent acetate. I tried interlocking them along the edge where they are supposed to match. They fit together along the bottom half, but up high the die-cuts fall out of alignment.

Here is how they look on the back. The base Triumvirate cards are blank on the back, with the player name and team down with the legal information at the bottom of the card. The acetate cards show the player's silhouette in white.

Closing things out is the three guaranteed autographs in the box. Charlie Blackmon is someone I've actually heard of, as he came seemingly out of nowhere to post an All-Star season. I was able to get in on some of his early big numbers in fantasy baseball. If I recall right, he tailed off at the end of the year, but those first couple of months he was on fire. I don't know much about Luis Sardinas. He played part of the season for the Rangers and may make the roster next year, depending on what happens with Elvis Andrus and Jurickson Profar. Andrew Heaney didn't have a great performance during his audition with the Marlins this year. I don't know anything else about him except that he is on the trade block. His autograph is the Rainbow Foil version and is numbered # 22 / 50. The Rainbow Foil autographs fall about 2 per case.

So I pulled a case hit in the Clayton Kershaw and a half-case hit in Andrew Heaney, as well as an autograph of a guy I've heard of and a few player collection cards from the base and inserts. Stadium Club isn't about the big money hits, so I'd say I did pretty well on this box. I would like to complete the base set eventually, and it would be fun to collect the full Triumvirate base insert set. I wouldn't want to chase down the Illuminator acetate set, but the Luminous base set wouldn't be too awful.