Some of My Favorite 2023 Topps Stadium Club Photos

I bought a set of Stadium Club cards on eBay a little while ago, and flipped through the cards a bit to look at the pictures. Stadium Club would be a fun set to build through packs, but I can't justify the cost of building sets that way when I can get a base set for so little compared to busting a handful of boxes. The hits you pull rarely make up the difference, especially as most breaks I've seen of Stadium Club this year feature a whole lot of no-name autographs. I thought I'd post a few pictures here of cards I liked when I looked through the set.

That Yogi Berra photo is pretty cool, with the lounge chair, the big TV, and the neat cart in the background. The Joc Pederson photo hit me with nostalgia, as I collected the Chevron cars pretty hard when they first came out. After I had kids I opened all the packages and let my kids play with them, so they were all pretty well destroyed after a few years. I don't regret doing it, though.

Next up are a couple of intimidating fireballers, in Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. I love that particular Astros uniform, and Johnson looks as intimidating as ever in this photo.

Not much to say here, just a nice shot of a play at the plate and a good wide photo showing the catcher and umpire at work.

This is about the most 90's pair of cards you could come up with. That Frank Thomas photo could have been a poster sold at the Scholastic book fair.

I had to get a picture of the home team in here with that Jeremy Peña card, and the Starling Marte photo features a beautiful sky as the afternoon turns to evening, a perfect time to be at the ballpark.

Closing things out is a silly photo of Joey Votto and a pic of Xander Bogaerts signing autographs. These may not be the 12 greatest photos in 2023 Topps Stadium Club, but they are 12 that stood out to me as I flipped through the set.

Haven't been feeling the blogging vibe lately, so it's been a few days since I posted anything. I'm trying to stick with it, but sometimes I don't feel like I have anything to say. I'd like for the blog to be more than just a showcase of what I've picked up lately, but sometimes it feels like those are the easiest posts to write.

Pack of the Day 188: Two Collector Boxes of 2018 Topps Fire

I was in Target the other day, and I saw that they had Collector Boxes of the new Target-exclusive 2018 Topps Fire Baseball on the shelf. I had to give it a try.

Each box has 20 packs with 6 cards per pack. There are 2 hits promised per box, with one of those hits guaranteed to be an autograph. The store had 3 boxes on the shelf. I bought one, then went back a couple of days later and saw that one was still left, so I bought it, too.

Here are the pack odds and NPN information from the box. There are several tiers of parallel, 6 different insert sets, and a number of autograph and relic sets.

The pack design mimics the box design, with Kris Bryant being chosen as the cover boy for this product.

The base cards are certainly colorful. There are 200 cards in the base set, with a mix of stars, rookies, and retired players. In the first box I pulled 99 / 200 base cards, and in the second box I pulled 96 / 200 base cards. Even with perfect collation, you're not going to get a full base set out of two boxes.

While I did not get doubles within either of the boxes, nearly every base card in the second box was a duplicate from the first box, so now I've got 102 / 200 in the base set and a whole lot of doubles. That was kind of disappointing.

There are a number of parallels in the set. My first box yielded 8 parallels. The most common are the Flame parallels, falling at 1:4 packs. They are not numbered. The Billy Hamilton and Miguel Andujar cards are Orange parallels, which are numbered # / 299 and fall 1:13 packs. The Victor Arano card comes from the Green parallel set, numbered # / 199 and falling 1:19 packs.

The second box game me 9 parallels, with five Flame parallels, Orange # / 299 parallels of Bob Feller and Cody Bellinger, a Green # / 199 parallel of Noah Syndergaard, and a Purple parallel of Ralph Kiner. The Purple parallels are numbered # / 99 and fall 1:39 packs.

The Cannons insert highlights players with strong arms. Most of the inserts in the product are seeded 1:14 packs, so you'll get either one or two from each insert in each box.

Fired Up features players who are stars. It's a pretty colorful set. If you like Yankees, this product is good for you. Most teams have 20-30 names on the total checklist, but the Yankees have 39 cards in the checklist. The only other team with more than 30 is the Cardinals at 32. The Blue Jays and Rangers bring up the rear, with 3 and 5 mentions in the checklist respectively. Other teams with less than 10 cards in the checklist are the Brewers and Padres, with 9 each. 

Flamethrowers features (mostly) pitchers who are known for throwing the ball hard. The back of the card lists the pitcher's average fastball velocity. Chapman and Syndergaard have appropriately gaudy numbers, but I don't know if Greinke's 91 mph heat really moves the needle here.

Hot Starts inserts feature players who had a good start to the 2018 season.

These cards are called Golden Sledgehammer on the packaging, but the card numbers have a 'PP' prefix and the checklist on Cardboard Connection lists this insert as being called Power Producers. Either way, this set shows off players who hit the ball hard.

The last insert is Speed Demons, a checklist full of players who are known for being fast. Billy Hamilton shows up here, along with guys like Elvis Andrus, Jose Altuve, and Dee Gordon.

The first hit from my first box was a basic relic card of Dominic Smith. He hasn't exactly been setting the league on fire.

The second hit of the box was more impressive, a dual autograph of Oakland's Matt duo, Olson and Chapman. Between the two of them, they've got 10.6 WAR so far in 2018. The card is numbered # 07 / 20, and dual autographs fall 1:4,559 packs, or once every 228 boxes.

The first hit out of the second box was a base autograph of Paul Blackburn, another Oakland player. He's on the 60-day DL with elbow trouble, so he's not quite having the season he'd like to have. Base autographs are a 1:29 pack pull.

The second hit of the box was another tough pull, and a bonus autograph to boot. It's a Fire Autograph Patch card of Royals catcher Salvador Perez. He's been injured recently, but is still having a decent year, and has been on the All-Star squad for 6 straight seasons. This card is numbered # 09 / 25, and these are a 1:518 pack pull, or once in every 26 boxes.

Outside of all the base doubles, these were a pretty fun break. I feel like you get a decent value in a box for your money, compared to products at a similar price point. The card design is fun, and there are plenty of shiny parallels and inserts.

June 2018 Loot Locker

I got my baseball Loot Locker for June a couple of days ago, so here's my monthly breakdown. As usual, I ordered the Triple Play locker instead of the All-Star. The Triple Play costs a little more, but also includes a couple more packs. There is also a high-end Grand Slam option, as well as similar options for the other major sports.

Loot Lockers ship in a 400-count card box with a locker-themed sticker on top to advertise for the company and their partner, collecting supply company Ultra-Pro.

Here is the line-up for June. I got the usual pack of Ultra-Pro top loaders and sleeves, a little bag of candy, 2 packs of 2018 Bowman, 3 packs of 2018 Topps Series 2, and 3 packs of 2018 Topps Pro Debut. Let's break down the estimated cost of the included packs, to see if $30 + $5 shipping is a good deal for this month's Loot Locker. My method is to take the hobby box price from major online retailers, divide by the number of packs in a box, and then multiply by the number of packs in the locker.

2018 Bowman: $152.95 / 24 packs = $6.37 x 2 packs = $12.75
2018 Topps Series 2: $64.95 / 36 = $1.80 x 3 packs = $5.41
2018 Topps Pro Debut: $69.95 / 24 = $2.91 x 3 packs = $8.74

$12.75 + $5.41 + $8.74 = $26.90

That number is on the low end of the values I've see over the 6 months I've been keeping track. It can probably be attributed largely to the drop in prices on boxes of Bowman recently. They went from $7.50 a pack in May to $6.37 per pack in June. If you go with the $7.50 value for Bowman, this box is right about where my calculated average Triple Play Loot Locker 'value' has been over the last few months.

The two Bowman packs yielded two 2018 RoY Favorites inserts and not much else. Rafael Devers is struggling a bit so far in 2018, and Francisco Mejia seems to be fighting with the Indians over playing anywhere but catcher, which seems to be delaying his move back to the MLB roster from AAA.

The Pro Debut packs gave me a couple of Pomo Night Uniforms inserts, a MiLB Leaps and Bounds insert of A.J. Puk, and a base card of Ronald Acuna. Nothing else from the packs really jumped out at me.

The 2018 Topps Series 2 gave me a short-printed Greg Maddux variation. This photo variation card is the type that falls approximately one per box. I also got an All-Star insert of Frank Thomas, a Gold parallel of Jonathan Lucroy, and a Topps Salute insert of Austin Hays.

That wasn't the greatest break ever, but busting packs is a lottery. I am tempted to skip July, but the pack lineup for July includes Allen & Ginter, Stadium Club, and Optic. That's a hard group to pass up. I guess we'll see.

Topps Finds Another Way to Disappoint Me

Like many collectors, I was pretty excited today about the release of 2017 Topps Series 1, the real celebration of a new year for many of us. I stopped at Target on the way home from work, not finding any of the new cards. Later in the evening I told my wife that I needed to go to Wal-Mart, and off I went on my search for a fix. They didn't have 2017 Topps Series 1, either, but that's not how Topps disappointed me today. They don't have control over when the retail stores get their new cards.

While I looked at the Wal-Mart card aisle, a couple boxes of 2016 Topps Archives 65th Anniversary Edition caught my eye. This product pretty much passed me by when it released, but today I thought it looked like something fun and new to break in the absence of the new 2017 cards. I was pretty much choosing between this, some NASCAR stuff from Panini, and some WWE Divas Revolution cards. This won out, because I hadn't opened it before and I was in a bit of a baseball mood.

Here are the pack odds. Each box contains one pack, with 16 cards in the pack. There is a shot at some parallels and stuff, and one card in each pack is guaranteed to be an autograph.

The card fronts are all reprints of significant Topps cards of the past. There is one for every year that Topps put out a set, or 65 cards total. The backs are all the same design. I don't know vintage Topps well enough to tell right off the bat whether these are based on an actual historical card back. The card stock is relatively thin. It's got a halfway rough texture, like someone thought about making them feel vintage, but got distracted and kind of half-assed it.

Here are some more of the base cards. There are some pretty decent names here. I like that Fernando Valenzuela card. I like the Harold Baines, too.

These ones all go way back in time. The original Koufax predates the birth of my parents, and the original Maris and Simmons were printed before my parents turned three. 

WHAT. THE. HELL. I guess I should have read the reviews of this stuff before putting my money down on this stuff. Apparently most boxes of this product had doubles in them. But I didn't know about that when I was opening this box of cards in my car in the Wal-Mart parking lot. All I knew was that Kent Tekulve was the first card in the box, and the last card in the box. I actually checked the plastic wrap to make sure it was the original Topps wrapping. Then I checked to see if any of the doubles were parallels of some kind. Nope. Somehow Topps was okay with packing doubles into a single $25 pack of reprint cards. Why do I give this company my money?

This was my autograph card. It's a $1 + shipping card on eBay, but I'm not particularly disappointed with it. Sparky Lyle has an interesting nickname, a nice signature, and he's an All-Star closer with a nice mustache, a reputation as a prankster, a Cy Young award, and a couple of rings. No, this autograph doesn't disappoint me, but those doubles sure do. I guess Topps wanted to pay homage to the junk wax era, when you might expect to pull doubles out of a single pack of cards. Ultimately, it's just a couple of base cards, but when I am plunking down $25 on some cardboard, is it too much to ask that all 16 cards in the box be different from each other? I guess one of the Tekulve cards was a little different from the other, as it had a big ding on one corner.

Ugh. I guess I'll keep looking for some Series 1, but I was pretty disappointed with my substitute purchase. Buying packs is for suckers, and I definitely feel like one tonight.

Pack of the Day 135: Blaster Box of 2016 Topps Archives

I've looked at quite a few breaks of the new 2016 Topps Archives set on blogs and forums, and there have been some pretty good pulls posted. Archives is traditionally one of my favorite products, although it has gone downhill quite a bit (in my opinion) since the 2012, 2013, and 2014 sets, with 2014 being the beginning of the slide.

I haven't been able to get a Hobby box yet this year, but I did order a Retail blaster box from an eBay seller. I had to wait over the weekend for it to arrive, but even with shipping I saved about 7% off of what it would have cost me at the local box store.

Yu Darvish was the first card out of the box, so he is my first Archives card of 2016. I like Darvish well enough, but not right now when there's an Astros-Rangers series going on. The Rangers took the first game of the series on a walk-off double by Roughned 'Facepunch' Odor.

The base cards done in the 1953 Topps design are probably my least favorite in this set. They're not horrible, but they're not great. Some of the headshots look pretty weird, and sometimes it looks like a low-resolution photo was blown up too big and forced into the design. Some of them look all right, though.

I like the 1991 Topps design. I guess it's my second-favorite design used in this set, although I'd really have to rank them card by card. I wish that Billy Butler could get himself back together, but it looks like maybe 2009-2013 was his peak and he might not have another good run in him. He still looks good on cardboard, though. That Hunter Pence card is pretty sharp. He's out for a couple of months with a hamstring injury.

I haven't gone back to look, so I have no idea how closely the card backs match the originals. I know there has been a lot of chatter about changes to the team name on the card fronts, specifically the inclusion of the city name. I am not really bothered either way, if I even end up noticing the differences.

The 1979 Topps design is my favorite one used in this set. Again, I don't know how accurately it mimics the originals, but it looks good to me. That Biggio might be my favorite base card in this blaster.

The card backs for the 1979 and 1991 designs carry full career stats, which is something that several people have brought up. I think in past products the stats for some players have been cut off.

As far as inserts go, I got exactly what the odds said I should expect. I was hoping for a parallel or an auto or something, but the insertion odds were against me on that. These 1969 Topps Super cards are inserted at a rate of 1:4 packs, and I got two in my eight packs. I'm not a huge fan of either player, but I do like this card design. Like others have said, for me it calls to mind the Mother's Cookies cards of the 1980's and 1990's more than a Topps issue from well before I was born.

I pulled one of these 1985 Topps Father-Son cards, which are seeded 1:8 packs. It's a cool idea. It is unfortunate that the autograph versions only feature one signature, as it would be cool to get the father and son autographs on one card. The text on the back seems wrong to me, as some information is included for the father, but the same information is not included for the son, and vice versa. It bugs me. 

These Bull Durham inserts are the big tie-in for this year's Archives set. Like the Will Ferrell and Major League inserts of the last couple years, these are not my favorite thing in the world. They add expense to a product without offering something that is valuable to me. I haven't seen Bull Durham, so this set doesn't carry any nostalgic value for me. I'd rather see Topps revisit a couple more insert set designs from past products than tie-ins to movies I haven't seen. But these things are undeniably popular and maybe they push sales enough for Topps to justify continuing producing Archives. Is this a product that would succeed without the big pop culture tie-in? I don't know.

This last card is a 1985 Topps #1 Draft Pick insert of Alex Rodriguez. It's a decent card. It would be nice to see some more variety in the Archives product, like the Firebrands, Gallery of Heroes, Deckle Edges, Stickers, and other designs that were used in previous Archives products. Heck, even a return to the foilboard parallels from 2012-2014 would be welcome, at least for me. I had a lot of fun chasing the Gold parallel foil sets from 2013 and 2014. In 2015 Topps moved to a couple of bland bordered parallels, and this year the borders are more colorful but still don't have any shine to them. I have to wonder how much longer this product will survive, as Topps seems bound and determined to suck all the fun out of the baseball cards while relying on the media tie-ins to carry the sales. I'll probably still try to build the base set this year, but that's about it.