Pack of the Day 192: Two Boxes of 2018 Topps Archives Snapshots

I ordered two boxes of 2018 Topps Archives Snapshots. I was going to order more of it, but I watched some breaks online and they were mostly pretty brutal. That prompted me to stick with a 2-box break.

Each box has 12 cards total, with one of them being an autograph. There are a number of parallels available, as well as parallels of the autographed cards.

The cards are packed in a clear plastic bag. The box promises a look at photos from the Topps Vault. That means a lot of posed shots. If there are cards with action photography, I haven't seen them yet.

You do get a mix of rookies, veterans, and retired players in the checklist. I like the design of the cards, although I like cards better when the player's position is somewhere on the front.

The cards have a glossy front, which goes well with the photographs. I was happy to see an Astro in this first box, with an appearance from Carlos Correa.

I think the Black & White parallels, like that Amed Rosario card, are one per box. Tyler Mahle doubles up in this box, which gives a look at the difference between the base cards and the autographs. Having on-card autographs is nice. I think stickers would look pretty tacky on this set.

Starting off the second box is a bunch of retired players. John Olerud shows what the backs of the cards look like.

Pretty cool to get the Shohei Ohtani card in this box. Rick Ankiel is an interesting addition to this set. He is attempting to make a comeback as a left-handed relief pitcher. He was the first player since Babe Ruth to win 10 games as a pitcher and hit 50 home runs as a batter. Ohtani has 4 wins and 22 home runs. I wonder if he will make it to 10 and 50?

There are some pretty nice cards here, with Gleyber Torres and a Black & White parallel of Rafael Devers. The autograph in this box is Paul DeJong.

So that's the break. I like the base cards enough that it would be fun to collect the whole set. I don't think I would like to build the set through opening boxes, though. You get ten base cards per box, so you need at least 5 boxes with perfect collation to build a set. It is likely that you would need many more, because collation is unlikely to be perfect.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 8 - 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball

One of the big-ticket items on my Cyber Week order was a box of 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball, the patterned acetate offering with a new packaging scheme for this year. While the previous incarnations held just a few cards per box with one guaranteed autograph, this version has 40 cards in a box and promises two autographs. I scanned the cards in based on their background patterns, with the most numerous in the box first. I would imagine that the collation in my box does not necessarily match the collation in the overall print run.

These all have the same background pattern, but my scanner likes to add some variation in the coloring. Not a lot stands out to me in this foursome, but I do like that jersey Moncada is wearing. There seems to be a decent mix of rookies, veterans, and retired players in the checklist.

I also pulled four cards of this pattern. I think I read somewhere that the patterns are broken out by positions, so you have two different sets of patterns. One of them has pitchers, catchers, and outfielders (PCO); the other has all other infielders (AOI). That seems to hold true throughout the cards in this box. This pattern is probably one of the more common PCO patterns.

This group of four cards belongs to the AOI group, and is again probably one of the more common patterns. That's a young-looking Jeter there in the bottom right.

This last group of four is another PCO group, with Kluber making his second appearance in the box. I also like the Ichiro and Trout cards, with Roger Clemens rounding out the group.

I only pulled one group of three cards, which included Mike Trout's second appearance in the box. I guess I should try giving cutesy names to all of the patterns, but I think I tapped out my brain power coming up with the PCO/AOI designations. I'd honestly just like to figure out how rare each tier is and call them PCO 1, PCO 2, PCO 3, and so on. That's a lot easier to remember than Tek Prism Clockwise or some other name.

Each of these patterns had two examples in the box. It was nice to see Jim Thome in here, as well as a couple of star Astros. So far I am pretty happy with this product's player selection.

There are three patterns that had only one example in the box. The Bryant is a nice pull. Even though he got a little overshadowed this year by the hot new rookies, he still put up a 6.1 WAR season and got a decent share of MVP votes.

You supposedly get four of these Blackout parallels per box. I guess maybe that solves the question of which patterns are the 'base' patterns for each group. The pattern on top must be the PCO base pattern, with the pattern on bottom being AOI base. These are some pretty nice cards, too, especially the Aaron and Koufax up there.

You also get one of these second-tier patterns of the Blackout parallel per box. I got lucky with mine and landed another Altuve card for my collection of Astros cards.

There were four serially-numbered parallels in my box of High Tek. The top two cards appear to be the basic version of parallel, probably a Diffractor of some kind. The Kluber (his 3rd appearance in this box) is numbered # 007 / 250 and the Bogaerts is numbered # 101 / 250. Then there are a couple of colorful parallels, a Blue and a Green. The Pedroia is numbered # 42 / 75, and the Clemens is # 07 / 99. Not too bad, although this is a bit too much AL East content for me.

You get two promised autographs per box. Mine are both base versions, and I assume there are also parallels out there. Both of these are decent pulls, the Lindor probably more than the Fulmer. Lindor's signature is a little more faded than I'd like, but that seems to happen fairly often with these acetate cards.

What's this? My box had a third autograph inside. This Ben Zobrist autograph is a parallel of the TwiliTEK insert. I guess maybe this spot would normally be occupied by a regular insert card, but I got lucky and pulled a third autograph from the box. This is a pretty good one, numbered # 10 / 50.

This was a pretty fun break, although it's a bit pricey to bust a box of this stuff. Moving up from a handful of cards to 40 cards in a box really feels like an added value when opening this product. I am happy that Topps listened to the consumer on this one and boosted the number of cards per box. This set is really about collecting pattern variations, and it was harder to do that a few cards at a time. As it is here, High Tek is a little over my price range for box busting, but if they dropped an autograph and $20-30 from the price tag I would find it very hard to resist.