After making my retail purchases of 2013 Topps in Denver, I got home this weekend and had to do some more work. But I did make it to a Chicago area LCS and picked up a hobby box. I’ll highlight some of the inserts and hits from that over the next few days, but first up are the base cards. Here’s my overall thoughts on the set:
- Design. I said it yesterday, but I do really like the design for 2013. It’s very well done, and while they went with a white border yet again, I think it looks different from 2009-2012 despite the similarity in the white border. The way they’ve incorporated home plate and a baseball diamond into the corner of the card is very cool. The fact that the team’s cap logo is used as opposed to the more common team logo is different and neat. The subtle team color lines behind that team logo is cool, though I’d have added the position there as well. The card back is solid but not spectacular.
- Photography. The photos in general are also very good. I thought last year’s photos were excellent as well – most of them seem as if they’re in HD, with a lot of detail and some definite creativity. I think if I picked between the two, I’d go with 2012, but it’s close. See below for scans of my favorite cards. Many of these you’ve probably seen already, but they’re the ones I liked best.
- Parallels. Last year, Topps scaled back to a more normal level of parallels after the madness of 2011. In 2011 there were 8 full parallels if you ignore anything 1/1 (Diamond, Cognac, Blue Hope, Gold, Black, Red, Blue, Purple). Last year, there were 2 fewer, and it looked like 3 fewer until they inserted all 990 Gold cards into Update. Well, they are back to madness in 2012. Emerald, Gold, Camo, Black, Pink, plus the 3 retail color options, plus the Silver Slate cards available via the wrapper redemption. I guess it makes for some interesting rainbow possibilities.
- Inserts. Topps went away from the precious metal theme of the past two years (Diamond and Gold), except for a minor nod with the green emerald cards. The theme this year is “the Chase”. I’m really glad they removed the duo cards that compared players from different eras. You can only do that so much. Starting with the bad – the Chasing the Dream insert set is about as “blah” as you can be. The Chasing History cards aren’t bad, but they’re not great and they’re clearly built for patches and autos, which detracts from. And I don’t like parallels of insert sets, which those cards have in different retail holographic versions. But the rest of the sets are pretty nice. I like the 1972 minis, even if there isn’t a real great reason for them. The Greats is a nice looking insert set with thick card stock. The Calling Cards set is a group of great looking cards and tell some very interesting stories about the player depicted. And the Cut to the Chase die-cut cards are excellent. So I’d give Topps very good marks overall on 2013 inserts.
- Other. Obviously, I liked the hits I got in 2012. I got a pretty good one in 2013 (not the level of Hank Aaron, but neat). The awards manufactured relics are OK – I like them a bit less than the ones from last year (retired rings and World Series patches were cool). Topps didn’t do controversial team variations – they just photo shopped Reyes into a Blue Jays uniform instead of doing a variation like last year, and there isn’t anything like the Rally Squirrel, either. I never cared too much about these things – I don’t think they detract from the base set, but I also don’t have any interest in them. Celebration variations are replaced by “out-of-bounds” variations, which are kind of neat, too. I may try to buy the Jay Bruce one at some point.
These cards are the first and the last of the set – that guy in Washington and the previously mentioned Reyes photo shop. Reyes is card #331. But it’s a 330-card set. Why? Topps didn’t include Mantle as card #7. I find this very interesting, and by the way, I don’t think it’s intentional. Mantle isn’t just missing as #7 from the base set – he’s nowhere in the product. I don’t know, but I wonder if some sort of contract ran out last year. Or Topps could be saving some thing for series 2 and #7 will go in there. I think we’ll know better when 2013 Heritage comes out – if he’s not in an insert set there, it’s something contractual.
In addition to Harper, there are 6 more Rookie Cup cards in series 1. Steve Lombardozzi, Yoenis Cespedes, Wil Rosario and Wade Miley will be showing up in series 2. This isn’t a separate subset like last year – Harper doesn’t have a rookie cup card and a regular card. This is a good thing.
These are my 4 favorite base cards from the set. If I had to pick, I think I’d say the Barney card is my favorite, but the Reddick is right up there.
It seems like there are always a few cards showing the Wrigley Ivy in the background. I’m particularly partial with the Gregorius card because I was at the game. I had just moved to Chicago and went to all 3 games of the Reds-Cubs series. This was a Thursday day game (September 20) where the Reds started a ton of youngsters and still picked up Johnny Cueto’s 18th win. This play, where Gregorius is forcing out Darwin Barney, happened in the 9th inning.
There’s a “World Series” subset that really spans the whole playoffs. There’s a card for each of the clinching games in the Division and Championship Series, and I think one for each game of the World Series. This card is really cool – it’s when the Giants came back from 3 games to 1, blowing out the Cardinals. I remember the rain at the end of the game – it was 9-0, so nobody wanted to postpone the inevitable, and they played in much worse conditions than would normally be acceptable.
This card was also very notable – Adam Greenberg was given the opportunity to have one at bat last year (though unluckily for him it was against the NL Cy Young winner), and he got a Topps card out of the deal, too. I wish they’d have shown his MLB stats on the back, though – they show Minor League totals only.
Like I said, there are a lot of good photos. Here’s some of the better fielding pictures.
There are some good “sliding” pictures, too.
And there’s some celebration pictures in there as well. The Aceves and the Encarnacion cards are eerily similar.
Here’s a few more good shots. I always like Nyjer Morgan Topps cards!
And last but not least, here’s some notable players that I thought had decent cards as well.
Like I said – I’ll cover some of the other cards I got over the next few posts.