Pack of the Day 121: 2014 Topps Update Series

This next pack from the repack I've been working through is more typical of the stuff you'll find in these repack products. It's a 12-card pack of 2014 Topps Update Series. It's also one of those packs that you open and scan and think,"I have nothing to say about these cards at all." But I need posts and this will help to pump up my numbers.

This Carlos Gomez card is probably my favorite one of the bunch, but that's not really saying much. He was a Brewer at the time but he got traded to my team, the Astros, in the middle of the 2015 season. He's a bit too demonstrative for me, but I guess that's not a super horrible way to be. I think baseball needs to have some emotional guys around to keep things interesting. His antics have contributed to some bench-clearing incidents over the last couple of years. I hope he can produce for the Astros in 2016.  

Like I said in the opening paragraph, this was a pretty slow pack. It's nice to get a couple of pictures where you can actually see the ball in play, like that David Murphy fielding shot or the Leury Garcia bunt.

I've heard more chatter recently about the NL moving to a DH format, which I personally would like to see. Let the pitchers pitch and the hitters hit. Maybe I'm just bitter because Adam Wainwright was one of my higher picks in fantasy baseball last year and ruptured his Achilles tendon while batting in April. Besides, adding the DH to the NL means 15 more potential big bats to chase for my fantasy rosters. I say let it happen. The only thing we'll miss out on is the comedy of errors that is Bartolo Colon at the plate.

My obligatory insert for the pack was a Gregory Polanco Gold parallel. That's a pretty decent card to pull as a parallel, given the many middle relievers and platoon players that appear on the checklist. I think it should be a rule of some kind that only even numbers of horizontal and vertical cards should be placed in packs so that I don't have to do these funky scans with 3 or 5 cards in them.

R.A. Dickey 2014 Topps Future Stars that Never Were

This isn't a particularly rare card, but it seems like when it pops up the asking price is more than I want to pay. This time I got it for an agreeable number from eBay. It comes from 2014 Topps and is from the Future Stars that Never Were insert set. It's actually a Gold parallel of the insert set, because it's not enough to make parallels of the base set. The thing that surprised me the most about this card was how thick it was. It's not relic-card thick, but it's definitely thicker than a regular card. I wasn't expecting that. The set highlights popular players of today who never appeared in Future Stars subsets.

The Gold cards are numbered out of # / 99, and this one is copy # 94 / 99. It talks about how Dickey missed out on prospect buzz and only really found success after switching over to throwing the knuckleball. He kind of had a rough start to 2015, but since the start of June he has really turned things up a notch, with an ERA under 3.00 through those 2-1/2 months. I would like to see the Astros make a deep run in the playoffs this year, but I would also like it if Dickey could make the playoffs with the Blue Jays and put up a good start or two. I haven't really focused on my R.A. Dickey player collection lately, but I do manage to pick something up for it here and there. I'm glad I finally tracked this one down.

Jon Singleton 2014 Topps Pink and Josh Reddick 2014 Topps Mini Pink

I've had a couple of pink cards in my Drafts folder for a while, so I thought I'd knock them out in one quick post. Most of the stuff I have in my Draft folder has been there for so long that I don't really remember the circumstances under which I acquired it. I will rarely pass up a chance to acquire a Pink parallel of a player I collect if the price is right. This first one is from the 2014 Topps Update Series and features Jon Singleton. It is numbered # 14 / 50. A few weeks ago it looked like Singleton might be called up from AAA, but Chris Carter has begun to hit the ball a little bit and that doesn't leave much room for Singleton. Maybe he'll get a chance sometime during the year, but it's far from a sure thing at this point.

Josh Reddick has had a pretty good 2015 so far, although the same cannot be said for his team, the Oakland A's. They sit in last place in the AL West, 9.5 games behind the Houston Astros (this may or may not be true by the time this post goes live, but it'll probably be close). You'll have to look elsewhere on the club for answers as to the Athletics' woes, as Reddick has been solid so far. While this card looks very similar to the one above, the serial numbering is different, reflecting a print run of only 25. That's because this one comes from 2014 Topps Mini, and the smaller Pink cards come with a smaller print run. This one is numbered # 21 / 25.

I've really been battling the pack-busting itch lately, just wanting to open anything. So far it's been limited to the blaster of Archives I opened the other day. 2015 Topps Series 2 releases in a couple of days, and I'm wondering if that might be the thing to scratch the itch. It's a relatively cheap break, and the flagship set is one I will always put together anyway. I'll have to look into it. I've been saving* a lot of money over the last little while by buying sets outright instead of trying to build them through pack-busting, but I still miss the whole ritual of peeling the plastic off the box, opening the packs stack by stack, and sorting through all the cards.

* It's not saving money if you didn't need the stuff you bought! Saving money would be putting it into an investment or under the mattress!

Two 2014 Topps 1st Edition Parallels

A while back a bunch of these 2014 Topps 1st Edition parallels popped up on eBay. I am a little wary of stuff like this, because I've seen one or two cases where a guy stamps a bunch of random cards with his own personal foil mark and calls them a rare collectible. It turns out that these cards were a legitimate issue from Topps, though. Cardboard Connection says that they were a prize from a special box loader inserted into 2014 Topps Series 1. Each person who redeemed their ticket got a full factory set of these cards with the little foil 1st Edition stamp, so these are theoretically a pretty rare find.

I was able to pick up parallels of a couple PC guys from the same seller, who appeared to be selling off his set. I got a Josh Reddick and an R.A. Dickey. The R.A. Dickey card has a gouge in the foil 'swoosh.' It's a little bit annoying, but I guess I can live with it. I've only seen one other copy of the card up for sale, and the Buy It Now price is a few times what I paid for my copy.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 8: Jon Singleton Patch Auto and the Replacements

As part of the Just Commons order I started talking about yesterday, I grabbed a couple more cards for my Jon Singleton player collection. This was the main attraction. It's a Clubhouse Collection Autographed Patches card from the 2013 Topps Heritage Minor League Baseball set. Even with a sticker autograph it's a pretty cool card. I do wish the photo and the relic swatch were a bit bigger, but Topps had to put all kinds of other stuff all over the card.

The back of the card shows the serial number, which makes this card copy # 03 / 10. In addition to the information reminding you that the relic can't be traced to anything specific, the card features a cartoon on the back. Informative and entertaining!

I grabbed these because they were cheap and I was pretty sure I didn't have them yet.

Ditto for these. 

These too.

In January I posted about a previous order from Just Commons and some Jon Singleton cards that were destroyed by some combination of my dog and my kids. I replaced those cards with this order, and added a couple of other shiny cards to my collection, too. The new cards are the Bowman Platinum in the upper right and the Blue Refractor in the lower left. I think that die-cut in the lower right is a duplicate that I probably bought because I wasn't sure. Now I have two of them.