A Gallery of Birds

The latest #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax offers a conclave of Cardinals. 

 

Topps Gallery, the annual Walmart exclusive set, has brought us some of the worst artwork seen since the National Chicle debacle of 2010. It was a good move to switch back to using normal player photos last year, with Topps sticking to this in 2022. I signed up for another Crackin' Wax break in order to knock out a bunch of team needs, since this product isn't available at all locally.

This year there are two basic designs. Current players are featured on this simply, framed design that has a triangle pattern in the corner. If they had cleaned this up a bit, this could have easily worked as a flagship design. (I wonder if some sort of concept version of this was actually a rejected flagship design.)

There are plenty of retired legends to choose from, and they get a similar design which gives the framed more of a "deckle edge" or postage stamp look to it.

More Gallery cards means more Ozzie Smith cards to collect.

I could do without the foil parallels. It just doesn't serve this set well, or any set, really. These will always pale in comparison to chrome refractors, so I'm not sure why they need to exist.

Each player photo seems to be optimized so that the player takes up the maximum amount of possible space inside the frame. I'd rather see some action photos, but I guess this is Topps Gallery and not Topps Action.

I'm still not used to the numberless Photo Day jerseys the Cardinals started wearing when Nike took over. They just look wrong. At least Topps has stopped bothering with Photoshopping the jersey numbers onto the front.

This was my best pull of the break. The Private Gallery Issue (or Gallery Private Issue?) cards are numbered to 250. It's just a foil stamped parallel, but they only stamped a limited number of them. Let's hear it for scarcity!