2014 Topps Finest 51-60

Way back in August of 2014 I started posting about the 2014 Topps Finest baseball set, working through the checklist in groups of ten. I got four posts done between August and October 2014, then skipped over a year and posted about cards 41-50 in early 2016. I still have the scans in my folder, but I just never make the time to get them cropped and loaded into the blog. At this point, a base set from 2014 is maybe not the most exciting thing in the world. It feels weird to leave it incomplete, though, so I've got another couple of posts queued up. Today, I talk about cards 51-60. Today's post is pretty heavy on the AL East and recently-retired greats.

Taijuan Walker spent a couple of years being touted as a breakout candidate in Seattle, but never really got going there. He showed flashes, but they traded him to Arizona this year in a deal that included Jean Segura going the other way. He was doing pretty well for them, with an ERA about a run lower than he'd produced the last two years in Seattle, but recently landed on the DL with a blister.

Christian Bethancourt's story has become kind of interesting recently. He hadn't found much success with his bat over a couple of seasons with the Braves and Padres, so he is currently working on converting himself into a bullpen pitcher. He has struggled so far in the role, but I guess that's to be expected.

Here is a guy with plenty of controversy lately, as he continues to flip his bat and jaw with other teams. After a down 2016, Jose Bautista started off pretty slowly for 2017. He's turned things up a bit lately, though, so maybe he hasn't fallen all the way off the cliff in his age-36 season.

Although he retired at the end of 2014, Jeter still appears in the news so much that it's like he never left. The Yankees just recently retired his number, blocking any future Yankees from wearing any single-digit numbers on their jerseys. He'll probably waltz into the Hall of Fame when he's eligible, so he should remain prominent in the news cycle for a while still.

David Ortiz is another recently-retired player in the Hall of Fame discussion. If he does struggle to get in, it will probably be due to PED issues and the amount of time he spent playing at DH rather than in the field. I think he's popular enough that he gets in at some point.

Manny Machado is a guy I targeted in most of my fantasy baseball drafts this year. I didn't land him in any leagues, though. He's struggled (by first-round fantasy draft standards) this year so far, but he's still no slouch. His 162-game pace according to Baseball Reference is still 87 runs, 40 home runs, 95 RBI, and 8 stolen bases.

Felix Hernandez has been the ace for the Mariners for about as long as I can remember, but last year he started to regress a bit in his age-30 season. This year he made five starts, with his last start on April 25th ending after two innings with a shoulder injury and a DL stint. He might be back in June. I wonder if he'll return to his 'King Felix' form?

Adam Jones has been his usual consistent self this season, doing a little bit of everything. I used to pick him up in fantasy baseball nearly every year, but I didn't get him on any of my four teams this season. He has a reputation as being underrated, and it's come full circle so that now he's so underrated that he's overrated.

I picked up Schoop in a couple of my leagues, hoping for some power out of my 2B slot. He delivered in April, with 5 home runs and a good average. That has all disappeared in May, as he hasn't hit a home run this month and has only generated 2 RBI. Hopefully he can get back on track going into June.

Joe Mauer has been okay this year, although you definitely want some more production out of your 1B spot. When it comes to 1B-eligible players in fantasy, he barely cracks the top 50. His glory days are well behind him.

And that's another 10 cards knocked off the checklist of 2014 Topps Finest. It's still a cool-looking set, with all those crazy colors, but I'll be happy when I post the last ten cards and close out this series. At my current pace, I should be able to finish it in 2021. I'm going to dig deep and try to get it done by the end of this year, though.

Pack of the Day 150: Three Topps Holiday Wal-Mart Mega Boxes

I've seen quite a few posts about the 2016 Topps Wal-Mart Holiday Mega Boxes on the blogosphere, and I thought I would add the results of my break to the mix. I liked the idea of these cards, with 2016 Topps Baseball's 'fog' effect replaced by snowflakes, but I wasn't sure if it was something I wanted to buy into. I saw some posts about the product on the Blowout Cards forum, including one that said the poster completed the 200-card base set easily from three boxes. That and the promised hit in each box prompted me to pick up three boxes from my local Wal-Mart.

The box front lets you know that this thing contains 10 packs of cards, including one relic, autograph, or autograph relic card.

The back of the box shows all of the cool stuff that might be found in the box, as well as pack odds and NPN information. This product has a pretty basic structure. You get one parallel to the base set (about 5 per box) and a mix of hits and parallels to the hits, with the vast majority of them being your basic relic cards.

The pack design mimics the branding on the box.

The cards mostly feature the same photos as the flagship Topps set. Some players got different photos. I anticipated getting a full set of base from my three boxes, but instead I got mostly triples and doubles across the boxes and wound up falling very, very short of completing a base set.

Here are some of the horizontal cards, as well as a card back. I didn't go through and check or anything, so I am assuming the card backs are mostly identical to their flagship counterparts outside of the card number. I believe the prefix on the card number is an abbreviation for Holiday Mega Box Wal-Mart.

I got the expected 15 Metallic Snowflake parallels. As others have mentioned, this parallel was created by affixing glitter to the card in the snowflake areas. It doesn't scan very spectacularly, and it isn't really all that impressive in-hand. I got some decent names among my parallels, with the best two probably being Kris Bryant and Carlos Correa.

Here are some more of the Snowflake parallels. I think the Granderson probably has the best photo out of this bunch.

I don't know what to think of Puig anymore. I was lucky enough to pull and sell a couple of nice photo variations featuring him back when he was a hot ticket, but his star faded pretty fast. I think he's still probably a serviceable player that you would want on your team, but I don't think he'll be a superstar. I'll erase this paragraph in a few years when he hits 40 home runs and leads the Yankees to a World Series alongside Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, and a cybernetic replica of Brian McCann.

Here are the relics I pulled from my boxes. All feature plain white swatches of fabric. There are some pretty decent names among my pulls, but no one I really collect. The snowflake theme makes them kind of fun looking, so I guess there is that.

Here are the backs of the relic cards, for completeness' sake. Pretty standard stuff, with the usual congratulatory message and the small print disclaiming any real association between the fabric swatch and the pictured player.

That does it for this break. I was pretty disappointed with the collation, but I think that tends to happen in retail fairly often. The cards go in big runs without a lot of variation from box to box, and if you catch a bad batch of boxes you wind up with a lot of duplication. I found a base set really cheap on eBay a few days ago, so I guess now I have plenty of cards to send out in trade packages.

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.

Gint-a-Cuffs VII: Pack 18

+2 Starting Points
+2 A World Beneath Our Feet

Pack 18 Points: 4.00

Box Running Total: 103.60

Per Pack Average: 5.76

Box Pace: 143.89

Joe Mauer and Domonic Brown Members Only

Here are a couple more Members Only parallels I picked up from the 2014 Topps Stadium Club set over the last couple of months. I don't really have a lot to say about these except that I'm kind of surprised that the Joe Mauer card fell to me at a decent price and that I really have nothing to say about Domonic Brown. With most players I kind of have a feel for who they are, but for some reason I just can't place him anywhere in my mind. Apparently he was the top prospect in baseball for a while and an All-Star in 2013, but he is stuck down in AAA this year. That is kind of surprising given that the Phillies aren't exactly lighting the world on fire with their current lineup. Maybe I don't know him because he has never been overly useful in fantasy baseball for long enough that I had him on a roster. I do like that Topps made sure not to crop the ball out of the Mauer picture. It seems to add a lot to the photo, and I would like the card less without the ball included.