133 Card Rip Party

Give me all your Turkey Red! 

After a frantic search of several retail outlets last week, I finally found some of the new 2020 Topps that didn't get "ripped" by those dastardly rippers that Topps invited to their big party. Seriously, the huge crash has to be near if we're talking about Topps essentially bragging all winter long about taking at least a million of the cards off of the unopened market from Series One. Something is wrong with this picture.

I wasn't in love with the 2020 base card design when I first saw it, but rumors started to swirl that there would be a Turkey Red insert in every (retail) pack. Color me intrigued. I also hate to admit to the fact that I was intrigued by new cards of any sorts, as the latter half of 2019 felt especially slow and dull when it came to cards. I probably need to consider some new stategies.

I didn't "bust" any boxes" or "rip" any cases, but I did buy a blaster and a jumbo pack for myself to match the prizes I purchased for others from my bowl game contest. Let's check out a few of the cards inside.

Here was my first official card of the new decade. I had a hard time not calling him Pablo.

Tommy Edman was my first Cardinal. The Future Stars logo is back and different this year. It's less flashy, but I guess I'm okay with it?

As expected, the recent run of 35th (why?) Anniversary tributes continues into 1985. I have a weird feeling that this will not be coming back for next year, with the 1986 set not really being an iconic design. ('86 was my first year of buying packs, though, so I will sort of defend it.)

Turkey Red! My most anticipated moment on an Oscar weekend was to find out if Topps screwed up Turkey Red, having not even seen so much as a preview image. It did not disappoint! The cards feel a little weird and different, but not terribly bad. They do more than enough to distinguish themselves from the boring old thin with a glossy layer base and insert card stock, which is good enough for me.

That card number looks pretty weird, but it still works. Both of my first Turkey Red pulls were rookies that I don't really know much about, but that's not the theme of the entire set.

It seems like there's a lot of horizontal cards in the base set.

It turns out that Nolan Arenado did not get traded after all. It was fun dreaming about a scenario that would bring him to St. Louis, but this turned out to be a pretty quiet offseason for the Cardinals.

I totally glossed over this card when I first saw it, only noting that apparently Topps was going back to the well of horribly Photoshopped cards in the flagship Series One set. These are usually sprinkled around in the Opening Day set these days. Well, as it turns out, this is one of the seemingly hundreds of "short printed" varation cards in the set. Despite a stated odds of 1:43 packs for the "regular" SPs, I managed to pull 2 in the the same blaster. Upon further examination, the Cole card actually has a weird look and feel to it, like it was thrown together at the last minute. Even the back of the card feels a bit different than the base cards.

Hey, die cut cards! What is this, Upper Deck X?!

See, Turkey Red has star power AND rookies I don't know. Both kinds.

Home Run Challenge scratch-off code cards are back, and I still have no idea what to do with them. I've been treating them like cards not to be defaced. What is the best strategy here?

The one-per-blaster traditional manufactured relic card isn't so bad this year. It's a thick reproduction of certain players' rookie cards, complete with a tiny medallion of the RC logo. I just wish I hadn't pulled a Cub.

Here was the other, more obvious photo variation. I suppose someone might like this.

It looks like they kept the full stats this year (nice!) and toned down the social media marks even further. I'm guessing it became too much of a chore for the under/unpaid Topps crew to track down the social media accounts of every player, especially after some early snafus.

This fits with the Turkey Red theme of having various colored skies.

The Rookie Cup is alive and well.

Topps took a different turn with League Leader cards this time around, apparently. This suggests that the multi-player League Leader cards are no longer around. As much as I seemed to love them in the '80s, they seemed tedious in modern cards in a way I could never properly explain.

Okay, well, I don't need my Turkey Red cards to be Chrome'd, so I won't be collecting these. However, they do look nice if you're a player or team collector.

Here's another card that I completely missed the first time I opened these packs. This is what officially qualifies as a gold parallel now. Topps, please kill this off if you're not going to put any effort into it.

I'm sensing that the Decades' Best inserts are last year's 150th Anniversary inserts. Seeing a great player at a podium is kind of boring, though.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting, guys! Yadi is ready to get back at it!