I don't feel much like posting tonight, but I don't want to lose steam on this blogging thing before I even really get restarted. I've been thinking today about my hobby goals moving forward, trying to find a direction before I let the wind take me too far off course. Kind of surprising to me, the most compelling projects on my mind involve vintage cards, such as completing my Wally Moon master set and building the rest of my Allen & Ginter Prize & Game Chickens set. I haven't thought of a lot that I'd like to accomplish with current products. I think the prices on current wax have got me a little down on modern cards at the moment. There are still fun products to be had, though, like my annual dive into the Topps Holiday Baseball set, which takes a stars and rookies approach to the current year's Topps design and adds snowflakes. I acquired 3 boxes of it to open. Here are the highlights.
The Metallic Snowflake parallels fall about 5 per box. These were 6 of my best pulls from the lot. Nothing really notable as far as my collecting interests go, but I guess that's what you get when you bust packs sometimes.
These were the best of the holiday photo variation cards I pulled. Again, nothing too astounding. I think my favorite of the bunch is Bobby Witt Jr in a Santa hat. I recall him absolutely killing the Astros in a late-season series that they needed to win last year. Or at least in one of the games I watched it seemed like he was hurting them every time he was involved in a play.
It seems that 99% of the time you pull a base relic as the promised hit in these boxes. I'm not too concerned about the hits in this product, as I mostly enjoy collating the set each year. I did pull a Santa hat relic one year, which is the best hit I've gotten out of Holiday across at least 30-40 boxes over the years. If I recall correctly, it was a Kris Bryant card numbered /25. Arguably the hit of this break is the Gunnar Henderson relic card. The Orioles made some noise last year and might be on the upswing while some of the other AL East teams flounder a bit. Maybe. I'm no baseball analyst.
Plenty of duplication among the base cards mean I am far from a base set still, which is my primary goal when it comes to Topps Holiday. Luckily the boxes are relatively cheap and often plentiful, so I may be able to fill this checklist out before too long. If I were more ambitious I'd chase a Metallic Snowflake parallel set as a challenge, but that's probably a step too far for what is essentially a gimmick winter release.
I have a good bit of dupes, lmk what you need. I try the impossible every year collecting the variations and relic cards, not completed one yet.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm good for now. Collecting all of the relics and variations would be quite a project.
DeleteI liked the let’s-murder-the-Snowman relics best, a couple years back now. I will end up owning more of those.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall which set that was, but it sounds exciting.
DeleteTopps Holiday is a fun break. Picked up a few boxes, but haven't opened them yet. I built the 2019 Topps Holiday relic set, but doubt I'll ever attempt something like that again. It was sort of a money pit... and that was before the pandemic. It was pretty cool to discover a short print (Nolan Arenado) in that set that hasn't been documented anywhere.
ReplyDeleteMost set builds these days are money pits. There are a lot of things I used to collect every year that I just can't afford to anymore.
DeleteIf those other projects are what you feel like you should be doing/want to do, than you should probably look into working on them a bit more. Have you added any more Wally's to your collection since that last blog post?
ReplyDeleteI think I've got a few Wally Moon cards that I haven't shown off on the blog yet, but it's hard to know where everything's at these days. Our move a couple of years ago was pretty disruptive to my collection, and I don't know what I have or which box it's in.
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