Value Meal

The latest installment of the Nachos Grande Extra Value Meal Group Break Supreme. 

 

It's another day and it's another batch of group break cards from the Nachos Grande Discord break group. This batch of stuff mostly features cards from early in 2024 that you're probably sick of looking at by now, plus a couple of weirder sets from 2022. I'll keep this short and sweet, although you probably won't stop staring at that bizarre AI thing with Ted Simmons' name on it (numbered to 100!)

In 2022, Topps released Chrome Sonic, which I mistakenly thought was just another configuration of their regular Topps Chrome product, like Chrome Lite and what have you. I suppose that in some ways, it is. But this is technically a separate set in that all of the base cards are just slightly different than the base cards from the actual Topps Chrome set. Some of the cards find the Topps Chrome logo moved to the other side of the frame, but not all of them. The primary way to tell that these are Sonic (and not regular Chrome) is to go all the way to the fine print on the back and check the stupid "Code" printed in bold face.

This is a refractor Sonic card, which again only truly varies in the code number on the back. I also tend to get this set confused with Chrome Cosmic (or is that Cosmic Chrome), but that set is an entirely different thing with a different design. Did they continue this Sonic thing in 2023 or 2024? I have no idea and maybe don't want to know.

I haven't seen a lot of Bowman this year, but I'll occasionally spring for a blaster just to give myself some trade bait. People still like those Bowman 1sts, apparently. Travis Honeyman is no 1st, but he is a Honeyman (and also heavily Photoshopped.)

In case you haven't seen this year's Bowman design for some reason, here it is in a nutshell. Prospect card on the left, rookies/veterans design on the right. It's kind of a fun quasi-mirror image situation.

I did well in the Topps Heritage department, scoring a purple Chrome parallel of Jordan Walker. It's been a couple of years since I happened upon a purple hot box, despite my annual misguided attempts to build the set through retail boxes. (Don't ever buy retail if you're a serious set builder. That goes for all Topps products.)

I also landed a coveted short printed card of the ex-Cardinal Juan Yepez. Yepez hasn't quite turned into the latest in a long line of Cardinals outfielder castoffs to make it big with his new team, although he's also not really an outfielder. Still, a quick glance at his stats with the Nationals this year (Nats stats!) suggest that he's been a half-tick up from league average, which is more than he was contributing with the Redbirds.