Busting a 2020 Topps Chrome Blaster

Yesterday I had to take my car in for service, and afterwords I was planning to grab some groceries. While I was waiting at the auto shop, I chugged down my morning coffee, while drinking a whole bottle of water. The coffee ran right through me and I was hit with the need for a restroom before grocery shopping. I was passing a Target, so I decided to pop in to use the facilities... and take a quick stroll down the card aisle. 

I live in a metropolitan area, and there are probably five or so Targets within 20 miles of me. All of them are almost always dry on retail products, although I've had some luck at this particular store before. Upon arriving in the card aisle, I was met with one of my collecting fears: It appears that the card aisle is being phased out. The amount of self space that was reserved for sports cards was smaller than usual. Pokemon cards and Magic the Gathering cards encroached on the left side. Toys crept in on the right side. 

I've read some rumors on hobby-Twitter that claim retail stores are going to stop stocking cards, primarily because the product is becoming more hassle than it's worth. Flippers clearing shelves, grown men acting like children, phony returns, etc. I'm not sure if there's any truth to these claims, but I will say, it does appear that my two go-to Targets are phasing out cards. The display spaces have shrunk in the past few weeks and have been replaced with non-sports cards and tchotchke toys. 

Depsite all of that bad news, I was very fortunate to find a Topps Chrome blaster yesterday. I swear - when you go to the store to specifically look for cards, you don't find them. If you pop in for a different reason and swing through the card aisle, you'll strike gold. I hope this isn't the last time I'll be able to buy baseball cards at a retail store like Target, but I fear it may be my going-away present. Time will tell.

On to the cards...

Here's a look at the base cards. I was pretty indifferent about the 2020 flagship design but I think it translates really well to chrome. Chrome does a good job of blurring the background and putting a singular focus on the player, and they look great in hand.

Dustin May definitely has some great hair. It kind of reminds me of Pennywise the clown... and that freaks me the hell out. His young career if off to a great start this year.

I pulled three refractors, one of which is a prism refractor. Happy to see two rookies here, which will be stashed away. Civale will have plenty of opportunity to prove himself as a solid starter - you have to think that the Clevinger trade shows some confidence in him to step up. 

A cool Bo Bichette rookie.

My guy! This is the only Pirate I pulled but I couldn't have asked for better. This card was on my wantlist, and I plan to target some of the parallels of this card for the PC. 

When I felt my finger fall into the gap of a die-cut, I was surprised. I didn't know that Chrome had any die-cuts in it this year. This is a pretty goofy and unneeded card in my opinion. 1950's wool jerseys don't exactly blend well with the modern "X" die cut design.

A nice pair of 1985 inserts. 

We finish up with the sepia refractors. You'll find a pack containing four of these cards in a blaster, making them retail-exclusive. I'm not crazy about sepia parallels. They're... fine, however I like the look of this year's sepia parallels over past years. In older releases, sepia cards were short printed, I believe to 75. 

There you have it! All around a very successful and fun break. Aside from ripping a few packs of Series 2 and a few packs of Bowman, it's been a slow year for ripping packs so this felt really good. 

Thanks for stopping by.

Six Years in the Making: 2013 Topps Chrome Baseball Blue Parallel Set

Way back in 2013 , I chronicled my desire to build the entire 220 card set of 2013 Topps Chrome Baseball with a twist: Not only did I want to build the full set, I wanted to build it entirely of blue parallels which are numbered to /199.

I’m happy to say that I achieved that goal two years ago during my blogging hiatus when I finally hunted down Madison Bumgarner. I sat on 219 cards for almost a year before the Bumgarner card finally popped up an eBay saved search. I’m a huge fan of that eBay feature. 

Last week I pulled the set out and went through it card-by-card. Man, there are some memories in here. It was hell of a journey that took a lot of time and effort. To commemorate the journey, let’s hit on some random thoughts.

There were some cards that are a steal for the price, looking back:

• #1 Mike Trout
• #25, Hyun-Jin Ryu RC
• #65, Didi Gregorius RC
• #78, Nolan Arenado RC
• #179, Aaron Hicks RC

There were cards that I paid way too much for, looking back:

• #12, Manny Machado RC
• #57, Jurickson Profar RC – ouch
• #73, Trevor Rosenthal RC
• #138, Yasiel Puig RC – This was the most expensive of all 220 cards. I remember all the “mania’s” around certainly players when it comes to collecting (Darvish, Tanaka, Ohtani), but I think Puig-mania takes the cake. A lot of THREE of these cards sold for $7.50 on eBack in June. Brutal.
• #220, Bryce Harper

There are things about this set that make me really sad:

• #104 Roy Halladay, #88 Tyler Skaggs and #32 Jose Fernandez left us at way too young of an age.
• Christian Yelich did not have a base card in this set, only autos. It was his rookie year.

What the hell happened to:

• Evan Gattis?
• Allen Craig?
• Robbie Grossman?
• Mike Olt?
• Mark Trumbo?

There are some bonafide future Hall of Famers towards the end of their careers:

• #10, Derek Jeter
• #34, Felix Hernandez
• #68, Paul Konerko
• #79, David Ortiz
• #100 Miguel Cabrera
• #168 Alex Rodriguez

Now that the set is six years old, we have a very good idea of what these 220 players careers look like. The rookie class is strong with names like Machado and Arenado, and the Trout card has the “All Star Rookie” trophy stamp on it, so that boosts it’s value. Because of that, I sent these three cards of the Beckett for grading. Grading was never my plan necessarily -- but I guess that’s kind of the point of building a set and then holding onto it: Looking back and seeing what's changed. Digging up memories and preserving value.

I’m hoping the three cards come back with decent grades and further add to the intrigue of this set. Either way, I’m excited to place the set back in storage and pull it out in another two years.

This was a huge challenge but it's been fun and rewarding to build it up card by card through trades, hobby shops, COMC, and eBay.

What do you think? Should I try something similar again?

A Hanger Pack of 2014 Topps S1 and a Quick Puig Rant

A little late to the party, but not too late. Fashionably late, we'll say. I hope you're not sick of seeing these babies just yet.

Yesterday I picked up a hanger pack of 2014 S1 from the big blue box. From what I've seen and heard, this year's design is nothing to write home about. I decided to judge for myself:

It's nice to see a bonafide star gracing the cover, rather than a potential star. Let's get straight into the box contents.

Starting off the with base cards, they're not horrible. I've heard a ton from collectors about the design, and rightfully so. It's different, that's for sure. I don't have a huge problem with the wavy bottom, but it's the strange looking cut-out-tab looking thingy on the right side that really gets me. It's entirely unnecessary. In my opinion, one non-straight edge is plenty. It's also not necessary to have the team names spelled out on the right hand side when the logo is already in the bottom left. But I digress.

This was my only Pirate, which is disappointing. Better Cutch thatn no one though! I do like the Ripken insert, probably because it has the old-school look. Simple, colorful, effective.

Above is the new red sparkle parallels, which I prefer much more than the old emeralds. These look sharp. I also like the Upper Class inserts, which are also clean and effective. It's also cool to see Randy Johnson in a 'Spos jersey, about to hurl an 89 mile per hour slider (that will most likely break your knees).

And of course, the obligatory Puig insert. To be blunt, I am thoroughly sick of seeing this guy. I'm sick of seeing so much praise for a guy that hasn't even had 400 major league at bats. It's safe to say that I will root against this guy in 2014. Combine both his on and off-field antics with the fact he's completely reckless, and I've got plenty of reasons to dislike him.

The common rebuttal from collectors is often, "He's good for the hobby." Is he? Is he good for the hobby? Or is he good for Topps?

I'd argue the latter. Set builders in particular come to mind. It seems that set builders dread having to search for a Puig card to complete their set, because they're either too expensive or no will trade them.

Rant concluded. Moving on:

The top row is the good ol' blue Walmart blue parallels. Not much to see there. I also landed two canary yellow parallels, which are absolutely hideous. I will say however, that the Callaspo parallel looks excellent only because of the A's colors. I can't think of any other team that this would work with though; so A's fans, you've lucked out here. Everyone else: Sorry.

I was happy to see that the gold parallel was at least a relevant, everyday player. We'll see if Mr. Brown continue striking bombs in 2014 and stand out for reeling Phillies squad.

Every thing except for Cutch is for trade. Get in touch if you see something you like!

I'll be tearing open some hobby packs later tonight, so hopefully I'll have another post up sooner than later. 

Thanks for reading, 

Nate