I again went with a retail box for series 2 in 1996 – because it was cheaper and the only difference I’d read about was getting two more Hobby only insert cards – Wrecking Crew. I’m not as concerned with the inserts, but for 10 fewer bucks I’ll just try to pick up those through trades or COMC / Sportlots purchases when I see a good deal.
I again had very few problems with damaged cards – just a couple cards in total, none of which were singles. This was the best year for that thus far – no lost singles, only a few lost doubles. I didn’t get the Andruw Jones / Vlad Guerrero prospects card – which seems like one of the bigger cards in the set, as it’s both guys first Topps card. That was one of only 7 cards I didn’t get – so I got close to the whole set. But for a 220 card set that still leaves me with a whole bunch of doubles!
Anyone collecting the 1996 set? I can help!
This box had far fewer inserts than the series 1 box. The Mantle reprints (6 per box) from series 1 were replaced with Mantle Finest reprints – but those were only 2 per box. I didn’t get any refractors of the Mantle cards – just my 2 per box standard. It’s funny – I was starting to get worried that I wasn’t going to get any of these, then they both showed up back to back in the 3rd and 4th to last packs.
The other insert was Profiles, which were 3 per box (I did pull the “expected odds” this time). The series 2 actually have slightly different finish compared to series 1 – it’s more of a foggy finish than the “chrome” finish Topps did for the s1 cards.
Between 4 less Mantles and no Power Booster – there’s quite 5 less inserts in this box. I actually liked the number of inserts in the first box – 10 out of 36 packs seems like a better number than 5 out of 36. That was something I learned while opening these boxes – when you get them, inserts are fun! Having 10-15 out of 36 makes it so you’re excited to see if you get it when you open the pack. But it’s not so prevalent that they don’t mean anything, and I still wanted to see what base cards I got and what they looked like.
As always, the numbers below don’t factor in the damaged cards – I’m tracking this to know what it would have been if I had bought the cards in 1996 when they came out. But, like the series 1 box – it actually didn’t matter here as I didn’t get any “lost singles” due to card damage.
Stats for the box:
36 packs per box * 12 cards per pack = 432 cards
154 doubles
43 triples
17 quads or more
213 of the 220 card set. (97% set completion)
2 Mantle Finest Reprints
3 Profiles
Including the first box:
411 / 440 of the base cards (93%)
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