I found it tough to pass up a box of this stuff at $40. There are a couple of players whose cards are hot right now including Brandon Belt and Jesus Montero. Everyone is familiar with this card design by now. I like it and it works even better with the cool minor league logos.
Without even getting to any of the inserts, I was already happy since the box contained a second copy of Bryce Brentz for my collection. It wouldn’t have cost much to pick up another copy, but I’m glad that I don’t have to be bothered. This is a nice small set with no short prints. You’re supposed to get one relic card and two autographs per box.
This set has the usual parallels, but they are numbered to 369 and are a very cool shade of blue. I really wish that Topps would use this color on their flagship parallels. The best of the bunch has to be the Jesus Montero.
The Baseball America Tools of the Trade insert cards rate players on the back in each of the five tools associated with their position. The Lars Anderson is going right into my collection and the Britton card is a cool one considering that he’s currently up in the majors showing that he’s the real deal.
The Future Foundations cards are alright, but not spectacular. I could have done without them.
These are some of the largest jersey swatches that I’ve ever seen. I like that Topps increased the size of the swatch and kept the print run low. There also aren’t multiple versions of this card except possibly a lower numbered patch version.
There still aren’t a ton of interest in these jersey cards, but at least it’s something a little different.
No, this isn’t former American Idol contestant David Cook. This is Corpus Christi Hooks player David Cook.
I like the look of these autograph cards. They’re a little bit thicker than the regular cards and the autograph sticker is in a little recessed area. When you look at the sticker straight on, it appears clear, but it reflects the light when you look at it from an angle. These are the perfect stickers because they don’t draw your attention away from the rest of the card like the silver stickers do, but it still provides a bit of counterfeit protection.
I can’t say that I know anything about either of these players, but that could change in a few years. You have to be patient with sets like this to see if you pulled anything worthwhile.
If I’m pulling cards that I’m going to be holding on for a while, I want those cards to look nice and these cards do. In fact, these look nicer than the autograph cards in the flagship set because Topps was still using silver stickers on those.
Well, that’s it for this box. I’ve got my relic card and two autographs. Oh wait, what’s this?
It’s a Christian Colon cut autograph card. This is one of the rare situations where I don’t mind a cut signature of a living player. Topps had some of the Aflac cards sitting around that they couldn’t use so they cut out the signature and put them in a new card. That I don’t mind at all. Colon is a decent player and this is a nice card numbered to 200.
I ended up with 11 duplicates and 151 cards out of the 220 card set. For what this is currently selling for, I wouldn’t mind busting another box to work toward completing the set. I doubt the next box will be as good as this one though since I got my promised hits and the cut autograph card on top of that.
Even though I loved this box break, it’s another set where you have to bust at least two boxes to get close to a set. With how expensive many boxes are these days, that really annoys me. Most times, I’m lucky if I can bust one box of a product forget about multiple boxes. The main reason why I love busting Topps jumbo boxes is that most times you get a complete set without having to chase anything. As a set collector, card companies really make it tough to complete anything these days.
That being said, I really like this set and enjoyed the box break. The extra auto was great. I definitely think that a box of series 1 is in my future. Anything not Red Sox related is up for trade if you’re interested.
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