The Wizard on a Wrapper

Wonders never cease.

I am not typically a fan of the Gypsy Queen line, but while on vacation last week I saw a familiar face on the cover of the pack wrappers of the latest Topps issue. I don't recall ever seeing Ozzie get the center stage treatment before in a baseball card product, so it was enough to convince me to allocate some of my vacation spending dollars on something I normally stay away from.

I picked up one of the 3-pack Value Packs and was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps it was heavily influenced by the fact that the first card in each pack was a Cardinal (never hurts!), but I am actually liking this year's design. I can't really say why.

There's still not much of a chance of me actually collecting this set, but I may be convinced to pick up a few more packs before the whole thing gets stale. At the very least, there's still a ton of Cardinals cards that I need and that always keeps me interested.

Matt Carpenter has been on fire to start this season and is resembling the MVP-caliber player he was in 2013 so far. This is just my 34th unique card of his. He was never really a top prospect, so the man just doesn't have very many cards.

Each Value Pack comes with a bonus pack of retail exclusive white framed quasi-parallels. I'm always a sucker for framed cards.

I could probably be convinced to trade these away.

I wonder what prevents Topps from integrating retired player cards into its base product without making it a gimmick or part of an insert concept. Tradition? They seem to toss in guys like Mays into many of their other products.

Here's one of the inserts. I don't like the Giants.