2010 Topps Series 2: Part of Your Complete Breakfast

Part two of my in-depth look at spending money on a popular retail product takes us to the Cereal Box. If you're anywhere near my age, you know that you used to be able to buy variety packs of cereal in the grocery store where the boxes would be shrink wrapped in little single-serving sizes. I think they still do this with bags of chips. Aside from being a complete waste of packaging, the entire thing was a huge money making scam as the sum total of cereal contents in one of these variety packs probably amounted to about a quarter of a regular box of cereal, yet you somehow would end up paying more. I was still ticked that my mother wouldn't buy these.

Are the Topps cereal boxes a similar scam? For $9.99, there are a lot of guarantees. There are 55 cards, slightly less than 5 retail packs will contain, but you get 1 of a series of 10 Gold Chrome Refractors. These also serve as a nice "insert sampler" as you get one of every regular non-serial numbered insert in here somewhere.

I'm continually impressed with the quality of photos of the horizontal cards in Series 2. I've yet to be blown away by the rest of the base cards, unless you count whatever it was that I was feeling about that Mariners Franchise History card.

Finally, a Cardinal! Chris Carpenter was held out of Series 1 for some reason, and his photo here is different from his Opening Day card.

I didn't collect cards from 1994 through 2005 or so, so it's fairly unlikely that my mother would have thrown out any Joe Mauer rookie cards. I know, I know... it's so easy to say. Topps just should have chosen more wisely with the naming of these inserts.

This is one of the Vintage Legends cards. The backs of these cards really annoy me, but I'll save that for another post. The thing that annoys me about this is that Topps logo that just doesn't work.

I have fond memories of the 2001 World Series, even though the Yankees ultimately lost in 7 games. On this particular night, which actually happened to be Halloween night, I was out celebrating my birthday with a friend of mine and got to rub it in his face that my Yankees won in dramatic fashion... even though I was never a big Jeter fan. And yes, they're my Yankees when it comes down to playoff time and a certain red birded team is out of it.

I always talk myself into getting cereal boxes because I know for a fact that there will be a Turkey Red card inside. Here's one to scratch from the set.

This isn't a bad side-by-side card. Both of these guys play(ed) ball in the same area for a living.

Do you know those Staples commercials? "WOW! THAT'S A LOW PRICE!" That's kind of how I reacted when I saw this. "WOW! THAT'S A COOL CARD!"

"I KNOW!"

If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I really won't subject you to it. Consider yourself blessed. Anyway, I love these cards and want to collect them. They're some sort of weird hybrid combo of the 3D revival craze and Sportflics, which is awesome.

And lest I forget...

A very curved Lou Gehrig. Two of the ten players are active players, Albert Pujols and Mariano Rivera. Clearly, you know who I am after. This does break the Cy Young streak I had going. I will try to keep flattening this one out and see if anyone is interested.

The Results:

Base Cards: 46

The Cards Your Mom Threw Out: 1 (No "Original Backs")

History of the World Series: 1

Legendary Lineage: 1

Million Card Giveaway: 1

Peak Performance: 1 (I still don't like these. I got Aaron Hill this time.)

Topps AttaxTown: 1

Topps 2020: 1 (Yes!)

Turkey Red: 1

Vintage Legends: 1

Cardinals: 1

Lessons Learned: Basically, you substitute a few inserts for a shiny chrome refractor exclusive thing and this is what you get for about the same price as 5 packs. The boxes are cool, too.

Next up: A blast from the past. From the future. Okay, fine, just a blast.