2012 Gypsy Queen box break #1

I pre-ordered two boxes of Gypsy Queen and they came in last week.  I liked this product last year – but, hey, I like almost all retro products out there!  2011 Gypsy Queen stayed true to the original as far as design.  The 2012 design is a little more colorful, and I kind of like the change.  I don’t know if I like it more than last year – but I just like that they changed it up.  Finishing this set should be a lot easier than last year – because there aren’t really SP cards in the set.  Instead, there are photo variations with the same card number as the regular set.  Here’s the 6 photo variations I got.

Griffey!!!!

It’s great to be able to get some cards of Junior.  And while I did pull his regular card, it was damaged in the lower corner.  That was one thing about this box that pretty much sucked.  More often than not, the back card from the pack was damaged (it looks like 16 of the 24 packs).  Usually, this was a bent corner for some reason.  Also, this made me realize that the back card tends to be a “retired player” – so these are some of the better cards in the set.  I was sad to see that first post-retirement Griffey card I’ve pulled had a dinged corner.  This kind of thing happens when I’m doing my lifetime Topps project – I can’t expect all the cards from 25 years ago to be in perfect condition.  But for this year’s cards, it’s not too much to ask!  I’m going to send these in to Topps later this week – from what I’ve read, they are actually pretty good about fixing this, but it stinks I’ll have to pay for shipping and waste my time.

The box itself is again pretty nice.  You get 24 packs and a mini box with 10 mini cards.  I didn’t do particularly well with this box.  After some of the crazy luck I’ve had pulling cards over the past year or so, I can’t complain.  I got two low-level autos – which are still on card and very nice.

I got one regular relic and one mini framed relic.  I am awesome at pulling Kevin Youkilis relics – 2011 & 2012 Gypsy Queen as well as 2011 Allen & Ginter have yielded Bobby Valentine’s favorite player for me.  Getting Phillips as the regular relic was a bonus for me – because I’d be buying or trading for it otherwise!

I didn’t get anything like I did with 2 stamps in the 2 boxes from last year’s product.  I basically got what you’re supposed to get as far as inserts – which is good as far as I’m concerned!  I got no dupes, and I generally like the product and I like what Topps has done.  And I like that there’s no SP’s for this product – sometimes I like having that added challenge, but I’m ok with it for GQ this year.  The dinged corner thing bugs me, and I do think they’ve gone a little bit cheap on the card stock for GQ.  Comparing a Gypsy card to a Heritage card is like comparing the Ritz Carlton to a Marriott.  There’s nothing wrong with the Marriott – but it doesn’t compare to the Ritz.

Here’s the Mini cards:

Here’s some of the inserts.  I got what I’d consider the 3 best “Glove Stories” cards – the Mays over the head catch, the Jeter flip, and Griffey crashing into the wall (though he unfortunately broke his wrist after this play).  The Moon Shots card of Pujols is kind of funny to me – at the time of me writing this, he still hadn’t hit an American League home run yet.

I really like the framed paper cards, but this is one area I wish they had kept as is.  The framed paper cards are numbered a lot lower (599 instead of 999) compared to last year.  I like these cards, they’re really nice.  And they must have produced a lot more GQ, because I got just 1 framed paper card this year instead of the 6 you’d get in last year’s box – the decrease in numbers per card doesn’t account for that much of a difference.

Below are the “stats” for the box.

24 packs per box * 10 cards per pack + 10 card mini-pack = 250 cards

185 of the 300 card base set (62% set completion)

19 Minis (11 regular, 7 photo variation, 1 SP)

12 Mini Parallels (4 Red back, 4 Straight Cut, 2 Black Border, 1 Green Border, 1 Sepia Tone)

3 Mini Inserts

1 Framed Paper Blue

8 Moon Shots, 8 Sliding Stars, 4 Glove Stories

1 Relic, 1 Framed Mini Relic

2 Autographs