Completed insert set – 2014 Topps Fifty Years of the Draft

I finished up a 2014 Topps insert last month – and figured today would be an appropriate day to post the completion on this one.  The Arizona Diamondbacks are on the clock!

Info about the set:

Set description:  “Cards celebrating the 50th incarnation of the draft, with some of its most memorable past moments and selections.”  That’s the wording from the sell sheet.  I’m not sure why it says “moments” – it’s really just a set of 10 players who were drafted in the past year.  The cards have a white border with an inset gold border.  There are 4 home plates in each corner, which makes for an interesting effect.  The bottom has a “logo” for “50 Years of the Draft” above the player & team name. The back has an argyle background design with a write-up on the situation surrounding that player’s draft.

Set composition:  10 cards, 1:18 odds (2014 Topps Series 1)

Hall of Famers: 1.  Only Johnny Bench.  Though Derek Jeter and Ken Griffey Jr. will join him soon.

How I put the set together:

• 3 cards from my HTA jumbo box
• 4 cards from trades
• 3 cards from Check Out My Cards

Card that completed my set: #50YD-2 – Gerrit Cole

I got this via a COMC purchase last month.

Thoughts on the set:  This is a great idea, and I really can’t complain all that much – this is the type of set I think is great for an insert set.  It’s got a specific theme, and commemorates the draft in a year it’s coming up on its 50th anniversary.  Also, I like that they have the right team on the cards – it would seem out-of-place if Adrian Gonzalez was shown as a 30-year old in Dodgers attire for this set.  I tend to assume Topps won’t do something like this correctly, so kudos to them for that!

I actually wish the set had 10 more cards and was included in series 2.  I would have maybe split it and put 10 #1 overall picks in one series and then had 10 cards of guys drafted in the first draft.  Other than wanting more cards (which is the opposite of what I usually say in this section), I would have put the draft year and the draft pick number on the front of the card.

Highest book value: #50YD-7 – Derek Jeter

Best card (my opinion): #50YD-1 – Joe Mauer

This is the only card that was really from the draft.  This was taken at a press conference in Minneapolis the day after the Twins picked Mauer #1 overall in 2001.

Best card (my opinion): #50YD-10 – Johnny Bench

Obviously the only Reds player in the set, and this is a picture of Johnny Bench that has been shown many times before.  But this is also the only card

2014 Topps Update HTA Jumbo box – the hits

You get 3 “hits” per box when you get a hobby jumbo box.  And one if them is a manufactured something or other.  They tend to be World Series related, and that means they tend to be Yankees.  I got a Lou Gehrig last year – this year I got a World Series Trophy of Whitey Ford.  I always kind of like these things, and this one is no exception.

Next up is the autograph.  Another Trajectory Autograph, after I got Matt Adams in series 1, I got this dude Colabello in Update.  I’ve never heard of him, but apparently he had 27 RBI in April.  Maybe I’ll be hearing more about him in the future!

I saved the relic for last.  You’d think the relic wouldn’t be the best one I’d pull – but I got a super rare one.  A double jersey of Kershaw and Puig – can’t beat that!

This card is #’d out of 25!  Anyways, that the hits.  Not too shabby!

2014 Topps update HTA Jumbo box – inserts

On to the inserts for my next post on the HTA jumbo box I bought.  As usual, I’ll go in the order of “least favorite” to “most favorite”.

Topps has done 2 150-card insert across all three series the past few years.  One has a retro theme, and the other tends to be my least favorite.  Last year it was Chasing History, in 2012 it was Golden Moments, in 2011 it was Topps 60, and in 2010 it was Peak Performance.  All these sets have one main coincidence – they’re clearly made to “fit” relics and autos.  The set that was continued this year was “The Future is Now”. For this one, the design wasn’t nearly as relic driven – in fact, the relic or autographed versions for this set have a horizontal orientation.  And this set is only 90 cards, but each player has 3 cards, which I think is kind of silly.

The Update versions aren’t consecutively numbered – they are numbered as “CY1, CY2, CY3”.  This differs from series 1 and 2, which went 1-30 and 31-60.  As I’ve said many times before, I don’t like the “lettering” as opposed to the traditional “numbering”.  As a collector – it’s just annoying.  These cards aren’t bad, through, from a design standpoint.

The 1989 minis follow up the 87 and 72 minis from the last couple of years.  These have a die-cut theme that also makes the actual border colored instead of the white border that the original 89 design had.  I like the idea of the die-cut, though the 89 design is far from iconic in my mind.  The scanning doesn’t work out perfectly with these cards – it cuts a lot off here.

Fond Farewells is the next insert set.  These are obviously tailored for a relic, and I don’t like how much they’ve cut off the right side of these players to make that work.  But the theme is very cool – a look at how some of the best players finished up their career.

There’s another cool postseason insert set.  Last year it was postseason heroes, this is a 50-card World Series Heroes set.  Again, they went through with the lettering instead of numbering.  That particularly bugs me with this set, which should be numbered chronologically.  They should also sure as hell just add Madison Bumgarner to this set!

The next card is a remake of the old Topps Gold Label cards.  It’s kind of weird to take a set from 2000.  Is a remake of a card from 2000 a retro set?  Anyways, this is a framed variation.  It’s a gold bar with a front and back kind of glued on.  I don’t know if I like that feature.  It’s pretty cool to hold this card, as it’s very thick.  But the way the front and back are “glued” on makes it seem somewhat cheap.  Overall, very cool though with the crisp pictures here.

I like the next insert set the best – it’s called Power Players.  I just like the design here.  Topps had Power Players parallels in the first two series, and I have no idea if these are the guys who won each week or something.  But the bottom line, I like all the colors in his design!

2014 Topps Update HTA Jumbo – parallels

A quick post today – here’s the parallels from my Update Jumbo box.

Red Hot Foil

I got 10 of these, 1 per pack – which is what the odds say.

Topps Gold (#/2014)

Same thing with Topps Gold – 1 per pack.  It’s interesting – I think you get more Topps Gold when you buy a hobby box than a Jumbo box.

Black (#/64)

I didn’t get any camo, pink or clear parallels – but I did get a black parallel of former Red Drew Stubbs.  Former Red who hit a game winning home run against my team this year, that kind of started their slide after the All-Star break.

I also got quite a few variations.  All 3 you can find in fact.  The first is the sparkle variation, that I wish they hadn’t brought back from 2011.  If you can’t see it – the sparkle on this Tepesch card is on his belt.

The next variation is of Dice-K – who I had forgotten was still in the major leagues!  His regular card shows him pitching, this version shows him attempting to lay down a bunt.

And last but not least is Collin Cowgill.

You can’t tell the difference from the front of this card.  It’s a saber metric variation, with all kind of crazy stats on the back!  What did I take away from this?  Cowgill had a really low BABIP when he was with the Mets.  That means his batting average on balls he didn’t strike out on was unusually low.

Unlike other in the blogosphere, I like the last two variations.  I wish they were combined, though.  You don’t need so many types of variations, and the statistical ones are really easy to miss.  Having a card with the sabermetrics on the back and the different photo on the front would be cool.  I think the Matsuzaka is a good example of a picture variation to employ.  Unfortunately, there’s no theme to the picture variants.  Past years have had specific themes (i.e. – celebration), so you can tell when it’s a variation card without looking it up online.

I got one other card worth showing here – that’s the 75th anniversary buyback.  Another fairly unnecessary insert.  At least 76 Topps is pretty cool.

2014 Topps Update HTA Jumbo box – base cards

Along with the series 2 hobby box I bought last month, I also got a Jumbo box of Topps Update.  Here’s my first post for that – taking a look at some of the base cards.

As always, there are a bunch of the same subsets – the first one is the Checklists.  There’s 5 of these cards, and they showcase events from the 2014 season.  As usual – a few are questionable, meaning they just exist to get more cards of certain guys into the set.  The Tanaka and Abreu cards are particularly weird – they have a Rookie Debut subset and a checklist card for making their MLB debut.

• Albert Pujols: 500th Home Run.  Excellent choice.
• Miguel Cabrera: 2,000th hit.  Another good choice.
• Yu Darvish: Fastest to 500 strikeouts.  Interesting choice – and one I approve of again.  I didn’t know he’d broken a record held by Kerry Wood.  By striking out his 500th batter in 401.2 innings, he broke Wood’s record of 404.2 innings.  He also did it even quicker if you look at batters faced – he struck out 500 in his first 1,659 batters, while Wood did it in 1,729 batters (Baseball reference is great for things like that).
• Masahiro Tanaka/ Jose Abreu: MLB debut.  I think the reason for these is that both guys are international stars who debuted.  But it’s a bit unnecessary with the Rookie Debut subset.

I would have rather seen something commemorating the 100th anniversary of Wrigley Field.  Or maybe the games the Dodgers and Diamondbacks played in Australia to open the season.  Or one of the no-hitters by Josh Beckett, Clayton Kershaw or Time Lincecum.  Or Jimmy Rollins breaking the Phillies’ all-time hit record.  Or David Ortiz hitting his 450th homer.  And any other events that I didn’t think of.  There were probably a few other things Topps could have honored.  Man, even a Jeter card would have seemed better than these!

Speaking of Jeter, this All-Star card could be his last Topps card.  I’d hope he has a 2015 card, but who knows.

These could also be the last cards for these three guys.  I didn’t even know Bobby Abreu had signed with the Mets.  And I wasn’t aware Ibañez had signed with the Royals until I started seeing him in the dugout during the playoffs.  Along with Giambi, they’ve all had pretty nondescript ends to their careers.  But they were solid careers, for sure.

Topps thankfully removed the Home Run Derby subset – it was such a waste to do cards for the Derby and then the same guys would have All-Star cards.  Here’s the subset of All-Star players.  I think every photo is either from the All-Star game or from Monday’s festivities.  That’s pretty cool – even with the unabashed Gatorade advertising from the Chapman and Gomez cards.  I wish they had a more distinct design however, to separate them from the rest of the set.

I found these two All-Stars interesting.  Same player, but shown in different teams since they were traded for each other!

That’s the thing Topps Update does.  It used to be new guys who had signed in the previous offseason.  But starting about 6 or 7 years ago, they started being even more up-to-date, with traded players in their new uniforms who had actually moved in the regular season.  This is a good thing.

And just like 30 years ago – Update is still a great source for players in new uniforms who moved in the offseason.  Though now they sometimes make it into series 2 that way.  That is not a good thing in my opinion – I like the base set to be representative of the previous year!

Here’s some of the more notable names in the rookie debut subset.  This isn’t a “base card” – a player could have a card in this subset and a regular card.  Though Tanaka and Abreu made it into series 2.

Of course they do have the standard rookie cards in the Update set.  Here’s George Springer, who hit 20 homers in less than 300 at bats this year.

He would be right up there in the Rookie of the Year running if the Astros were still in the National League.  Instead, Jacob DeGrom will probably win that award.  He went 9-6 with a 2.69 ERA in 140 innings.

Oscar Taveras was fairly underwhelming in his debut season, but he did hit a pretty big postseason home run in the NLDS.  I actually wrote this post the night his death came out.  I have written much about my unabashed hate for the Cardinals – but that’s very sad.  He had a lot of promise, and it’s sad when the baseball world loses someone too young.

Mookie Betts was much better in his call-up, though he had nearly as much fanfare.  however he

I’m pretty surprised they didn’t get Javier Baez into the set – kind of weird.

Anyways, finishing it up, here are some of my favorite photos from the set.  The first two cards are not celebration variations or anything like that – just the way the cards fell.  Joba makes this list for Update for the 2nd year in a row.   I can’t tell what that ring is for David Ross – it doesn’t look like his WS ring – anybody know!

2014 Topps series 2 hobby box – inserts & the hit

The last post for my series 2 packs is the inserts and the lone hit.  One thing I noticed in this series – there were fewer inserts than in series one.  That’s a good thing by my book!

As always, or at least “as usually”, I’ll go in the order of “least favorite” to “most favorite”.  My least favorite cards are these buyback things.  I would rather have pulled two more base cards or two more inserts.

The “Upper Class” insert wasn’t continued (yay!) – so my least favorite this round was “The Future Is Now”.  This isn’t a bad design, and I kind of like the darkening effect put into the photos.  But the thing I don’t like – it’s a set of 30 cards but only 10 players.  Each player has 3 cards.  They also have random quirky phrases on the front. I like that there are no retired players; they tend to overdo that.

Replacing the Rookie Cup inserts from series 1 is Saber Stars, which is a fairly cool insert.  This set goes over the newer stats and how those players stack up – like “fielding independent pitching” and “UZR”.  The design is kind of so-so, but these are interesting reads to me.

Topps did 1987, 1972 and 1971 minis over the past few years – this year they went back to the 25 years ago idea and created a die-cut version of the 1989 set.  The scan is pretty challenging on these – oh well.  These are up there, but not my favorites from series 2!

Replacing “Before They Were Great” as the thicker inserts was “Future Stars that Never Were”.  This gives a Future Stars design at different old Topps sets.  I love this idea, and kudos to Topps for thinking up cool ways to incorporate this into various older designs.  These are tough pulls – you only get 2 per box.

I also pulled the gold version of the Jose Canseco – there are only 99 of this insert parallel.  This was a pretty decent pull – 1:387 odds.  I think this is a bad card in this set.  First – it’s from 1987, when Topps had Future Stars.  So I don’t really think doing it in those years makes sense.  Second, more importantly, this one has the All-Rookie Team cup – it just doesn’t seem right to make a card that has both of those subsets!  Go ahead and throw it on Jose’s 1986 Traded card, that works better for me.

The main reason I usually go for the HTA jumbo box is that you’re guaranteed to get an auto, a relic and a manufactured relic.  Well, as expected, my hit was a relic – Jacoby Ellsbury from the Trajectory relic set.  In fairness – I like that this set is only available as a relic or autographed version.  I didn’t like how Topps was just creating inserts where the design was so clearly built for relic swatches.  I’d rather keep those concepts separate – otherwise the non-relic inserts just don’t look very good.

2014 Topps series 2 hobby box – parallels

The last post was the base cards from my hobby box – today are the parallels.  There are a big old boat load of parallels this year, which isn’t new.  But there are even more this year than previous years because there are yellow and green ones available via certain retail packaging.  I did a count for series 1, and there were 15 different types.

Red Hot Foil

I only got 6 “red foil” parallel cards – I was surprised these were less plentiful than the Gold parallels.  Looking at the backs of the pack, however – that’s the odds.  These vampire cards come one every 6 packs! I mentioned it with series 1 – but I’m not sure why they didn’t call this with “ruby” to go along with the previous years’ gemstone themes.

Topps Gold (#/2014)

Topps Gold came much more frequently; I actually got 11 of them.  I think this may mean that series 2 was produced in much lower quantities than series 1.  I would guess Topps keeps unnumbered cards like Red Hot Foil at the same odds through all series, so the cards numbered out of 2014 come more frequently in the smaller production run.

Obviously the Abreu is the one I’d be most excited about here.

Power Players

This is a partial parallel of the set, totaling 220 cards (110 per series).  There is a code on the back that you can get some kind of prize.  I never tried them out this year.

Camo (#/99)

Back for its second year are camouflage inserts.  I got one in series 1, and I got one in this box.  I guess it’s of this year’s NL batting champion!

Black (#/64)

Topps has had these for as long as I’ve been back in the collecting world.  Unlike series 1 – I did in fact pull a card in this box!  And, just like the Morneau camo – it’s a pretty good player.

Pink (#/50)

This box was a cornucopia of parallels – I got a pink card, too!  This wasn’t a recognizable guy.

I didn’t pull a Silk (#/10), Clear (#/10), Platinum (#/1), Printing Plate (#/1).  And of course I didn’t get any of the 5 retail-only versions.

2014 Topps Series 2 hobby box – base cards

I finally ponied up and got boxes for the rest of the Topps 2014 flagship product.  I got two boxes last month – one for series 2 and one for Update which had just been released.  I got a Jumbo HTA box for Update, but a regular hobby box for series 2.  That’s usually against my mantra – I think the jumbo boxes are much better values.  But series 2 seemed to be much pricier than Update, so I went with the cheaper option.

In series 1, Topps included cards of 2 HOF-caliber players who had retired the year before, so you got their full career statistics.  I noted they were missing one other retiree who was on that level – and in series 2 they did include Roy Halladay.  His final stat line includes 203 wins, 2,117 strikeouts and 3.38 ERA.  I think he’s HOF-worthy, though I really wasn’t expecting him to fall off the map so quickly in 2012 and 2013.

Topps also included 2 other recent retirees – though these 2 teammates retired at the end of 2014.  This could be Konerko and Dunn’s last cards, though I hope they have a final card in next year’s set.

Topps always likes to get some of the rookie phenoms into series 2, and this year the top two Rookie of the Year candidates in the AL were guys who had played professionally overseas.  The National League equivalent, Jacob Degrom, made his way into the Update set.

Funny how I’ve shown 3 White Sox first baseman in the past two photos.

Topps also finishes up the Rookie Cup cards in series 2 – after 6 cards in the first series, there were 5 more in this product.

About 15 years ago, Topps started getting a lot of the new free agent signings into series 2, as opposed to Topps Update.  I think Clemens may have been the first one back in 1999.  Here’s the biggest names in new uniforms this year.

New this year but back from series 1 is the Future Stars subset.  There were 10 guys in series 1, and 12 (at least) in series 2.  That’s too many Future Stars for my liking!  I liked the 5 players from 87/88/89/90/91!

Celebration was a theme of this set in both series 1 and series 2.  There’s a few in this series as well.

Here’s a few action shots I liked – funny how all of them are horizontal action shots.  The Lorenzo Cain is my favorite, but the Russell Martin is particularly interesting since that’s now an outlawed play!

And there are also a few really good non-action photos – two of them from my Reds squad.  Gotta love Great American Ballpark shown in the background!

The other thing that’s included in series 2 are all the award winners.  I miss the days where subsets looked more distinct from the base sets.

Last but not least, series 2 is one half of the regular set – so it naturally has some of the better players in the game for, well, regular reasons.

2014 Topps series 1 HTA jumbo – inserts

I forgot I had one more post to finish up my Topps series 1 HTA jumbo box – the inserts!

First, there’s one thing to mention that isn’t in packs.  Last year there was a trade-in card called Spring Fever that you could (if they played by the rules Topps set up) take to a card shop around now and get a 5-card pack Spring Fever cards.  I actually went a few days late last year and the card shop near me still honored it.  He played by the rules, not giving it out to all the eBay prospectors.  This year, the card is listed as a redemption on the packs, but it wasn’t actually inserted.  I’ve read speculation that this was an error by Topps and that Topps pulled the cards because of abuse.  Regardless, it’s weird that there are odds on the packs for cards that aren’t there.

As always, or at least “as usually”, I’ll go in the order of “least favorite” to “most favorite”.

My least favorite is the insert set called “Upper Class”.  The premise of this is to discuss the players’ rookie class on the back.  The design is made to look like a picture frame.  I don’t know, it just seems kind of like this is a “filler” insert that Topps could have done without.  And it’s 50 cards deep!  Plus, it scans poorly!  I got 10 of these in my box.

The rest of the inserts are pretty decent in my opinion.  The Future Is Now is a 30-card insert set of 10 players.  So each player has 3 cards.  You can tell from the two Profar cards below.  I got 10 of these in my box, but one was a dupe of the Shelby Miller.  The cards here have a bit of darkening effect, made to look like a bit like a painting.  They also have random phrases on the front, such as “one batter short of history” for Yu Darvish and his near perfect game.  These don’t look too bad – if this is the second worst insert set, Topps did pretty well compared to previous years.  I like that it’s all current players.

Next up is the Rookie Cup inserts.  These aren’t too bad.  I would say not much better than the previous insert set, except it’s only 10 cards which is a good thing.  The premise for this insert set is the top players from the Rookie Cup team history.  This is based on their rookie season, but the problem with doing a set like this is that it’s limited to who Topps has signed to a contract.  They put Ken Griffey Jr. on the team.  Now I’m a big Griffey fan – I named my dog after him – but he doesn’t have one of the best three outfield rookie seasons out there.  Jim Rice is on there, yet his rookie season was the same year as teammate Fred Lynn’s historic ROY/MVP campaign!  

For what it’s worth – I’d go with Ichiro, Lynn and Trout as the best outfield seasons.  Also worth noting – Topps did a team like this as a subset to 2011 Lineage.  Seaver, Sabathia, Bench, McCovey and Morgan are the 5 guys on both teams.  Sabathia, Trout and Pujols are the two current year players on this team.

Next up are the super-thick cards called “Before They Were Great”.  This is kind of like “Upper Class” – except better done.  These are nice looking cards, and the type of insert you get excited when you pull.  Ryan and Cabrera are great examples – the picture matches the theme of the card, as they’re shown when they are really young.

My favorites from two years ago were the 1987 minis.  Topps did 1972 minis and a series of 1971 minis as inserts last year – kind of inexplicably.  This year they went back to the 25 years ago theme.  And they die-cut the cards.

Finally is a 10-card insert set that I do like just because it’s well done and is a good idea.  It’s just 10 cards.  Thank you!  We don’t need 50 card insert sets.  We don’t need 30-card insert sets with 3 cards for each player (though I prefer that to 50).  That’s too much to collect.  But this 10-card set is reasonable to attain, it has a nice design, and most importantly – it’s got a real theme.  The history of the MLB draft.  Seven of the 10 guys in this set are first overall picks.  The first exception is Johnny Bench, who is in the set because he’s one of two Hall of Famers drafted in the first ever draft in 1965 (not sure why they didn’t include Nolan Ryan).  The other are Yankees. Don Mattingly – who was drafted so late that it was noteworthy.  Mattingly’s card back discusses the fact that he was drafted behind Dan Marino and John Elway.  Coming in at the tail end of Mattingly’s career was Derek Jeter – who would have been the #1 overall pick except he had too high of an asking price and Houston passed on him.

Overall – I’ve got to say, I think Topps has improved the inserts over the last two years.  There are actually a few less, which is good in my mind.

2014 Topps series 1 HTA jumbo – parallels

Yesterday the hits, the day before the base cards – today the parallels.  The big buzz this year are just how many parallels there are in 2014 Topps.  There’s a lot.  I’d read 14 or 15 – so I figured I’d try to count them up myself.  First are the cards that I got from the HTA jumbo box.

1) Red Hot Foil

You get 1 “red foil” parallel card per pack out of the HTA jumbo box – so I got 10 of those cards.  Last year they were called Emerald Foil.  The year before was Gold Foil.  The year before that was Diamond Foil.  Not sure why they didn’t go with “ruby” this year.  Anyways, I got 10, but they come 1:6 in regular hobby packs.

2) Topps Gold (#/2014)

Topps Gold here in different forms since 1992.  These are numbered out of 2014.  Just like last year was numbered out of 2013.  These came 1 every other pack – which seems a little less frequently than last year.  Which makes me think that 2014 Topps had been produced more.

3) Power Players

This is a partial parallel of 110 cards.  There is a code on the back that you can get some kind of prize.  I’ll try them out at some point.

4) Camo (#/99)

Back for its second year are camouflage inserts.  Fairly rare, but not the rarest out there.  I did pull one of these in my HTA jumbo box.

5) Black (#/64)

Topps has had these for as long as I’ve been back in the collecting world.  This I did not pull from a pack.

6) Pink (#/50)

Also back for a second year.  I didn’t pull one of these either.

7) Clear (#/10)

Also known as acetate.  These are bad-ass.  I didn’t pull one of these – but I do want to buy one!

 

8) Platinum (#/1)

Retail Exclusives

9) Green (I have this one – comes in rack packs)

10) Yellow (don’t have any of these – they come in hanger packs)

11) Red (Target exclusive and I own about 20 of them)

12) Wal-Mart Blue

13) Toys-R-Us Purple

14) Printing Plates (#/1)

15) Silk

Yep – that’s 15!!!