2013 Gypsy Queen box break #2 & 1887 comparison

On to my second box of 2013 Gypsy Queen.  I got all the hits I was supposed to this time, but no crazy kind of pull to write home about.

First up, here are the variation minis I got from the mini box.

And here’s some of the rarer minis I pulled in actual packs.

An old Red, a new Red, and my favorite non-Red player ever.  Pretty good selection!

Here’s the inserts.  I didn’t get any doubles from my earlier box, so I’ve got to be happy with that!

Here is the blue parallel I got in the box.  Coco Crisp in a pretty interesting pose.

And here’s the two relics.  To be honest, I don’t know if I could really do much worse from my own perspective.  An outcast steroid cheat who necessitated the rules to determine a batting champion changed midseason in 2012, and whose own team didn’t even want him back on their road to the World Series.  And then there’s Adam Dunn – the holder of the lowest season batting average in history!  My fantasy baseball team name used to be “trade Dunn for Coneys”.

And here’s the autographs.  Two pretty good pitchers.  I pulled a Jordan Zimmerman auto last year – he’s turning out to be one of the best in the game!

My base set collation between the two boxes was as good as I could ask.  I didn’t get any doubles from the SP’s, and I’ve completed the non-SP portion of the set.

I’ll deviate a little there.  Why?  Because this wasn’t easy to figure out.  Topps decided to mix SP cards throughout the set.  This is confusing to the collector / consumer.  And it means you can’t really collect just the non-SP cards.  I would collect them anyways, but not everyone is the same.  I think this probably hurts people wanting to buy the product – not sure why they do it.  Anyways, that’ my rant.

I’ll note one other thing I pointed out each of the last 2 years – PUT IN SOME KIND OF TRIBUTE TO THE ORIGINAL SET 😉  I really think it would do well for the product!!!!  It can’t be that expensive to get some of the player rights from the original set and I bet some reproduction would do well.

Collecting the Gypsy Queen set in 1887

I do this every year, but it’s fun to look at.  Collecting 1887 Gypsy Queen would have been particularly challenging!  First, you’d need to buy a lot of cigarette packs!  I don’t smoke, so I guess I’d just be doing this for the cards.  I have a coworker who smokes a pack a day, so maybe I would have cut her some kind of deal.  I’m not sure where Gypsy Queen was distributed, but I’m sure the east coast was a safe bet.  It doesn’t appear that they created any type of checklist – and card collecting was in its infancy.  As most of the Gypsy Queen cards were the same photos as Goodwin & Co’s much larger “Old Judge” set – it’s tough to know now if their even was a way to know which cards were printed as Gypsy Queen cards.

“Suffice it to say” #1 – it would have been very difficult to collect the Gypsy Queen!  There were probably more cards produced than the world today knows of.

“Suffice it to say” #2 – I do think it could have been done – what’s more likely is that card collecting was in its infancy and people just thought having a card of John Montgomery Ward was cool – they didn’t think – I should really collect the 149 others!  “Suffice it to say” #3 – if anyone had done so, their descendant could make a killing today!

Back to my 2nd 2012 Gypsy Queen Box

Below are the “stats” for the box.

24 packs per box * 10 cards per pack + 10 card mini-pack – 1 card because of one of the relics = 249 cards

182 of the 300 card base set (61% set completion)

6 Photo Variations

19 Minis (10 regular, 7 photo variation, 2 SP)

15 Minis Parallels (4 Gypsy Queen back, 4 Straight Cut Back, 2 Black Border, 1 Green Border, 1 Sepia Tone, 3 Mini Inserts)

2 Framed Paper Blue

8 Sliding Stars, 8 Moon Shots, 4 Glove Stories

1 Gypsy King

1 Relic – (Longoria), 1 Framed Mini Relic (Rivera)

2 Autographs (Cano Redemption, Zimmerman)

Including the first box:

261 / 300 of the base cards (87%)

**For comparison purposes, I only had 235 / 300 last year!

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