The $10 Retail Challenge: The Man on the Box

The spokesmodel for Topps Series 2 happened to throw one of the game's most dominant no-hitters tonight, just in time for the conclusion to this series.

Hanger boxes are kind of a cheat. There are no shiny wrappers to peel open and the anticipation is only as great as you make it. You open the box, slide out the contents that are thinly wrapped in clear cellophane, and everything you will ever get is just laid out before you. A lesser person could easily toss chunks of base cards at the wall. (This is probably something that those crazy bulk case breakers actually do for fun.) I was really enamored with the little cereal boxes when Topps first introduced this concept, back in 2009, but it was more about looking at the little boxes with the legends on the cover than what was inside. It was a novelty idea. Topps soon made them look all gangly and uninteresting so they could do something functional like hang on a metal rack, and here we are.

In truth, however, if you're willing to sacrifice the thrill of opening several little packages for one big one, these are a good value.

I didn't manage to get a single Target exclusive red parallel in any of the loose packs I opened, so it was nice to see these make a return here even though they were all but promised to me on the outside of the box. I don't think the jumbo packs were Target exclusives (I think maybe they don't come that way) and I forgot to check the odds on the wrappers anyway, so maybe I wasn't super unlucky.

I was unlucky in that, for the third time, I pulled the a double of an insert. Not cool, Topps. Not cool.

Gone are the shocking yellow parallels that most people seemed to love and in their place are these hideous orangey brown things. eBay users are calling them "brown", but they don't really look like a real color that exists. Who am I to argue with eBay people? The yellow cards actually seem to cost a fortune, but I bet these won't quite hold the same value because they couldn't possibly be attractive to anyone. Plus, the two that I pulled have very slightly fuzzy corners anyway.

Hector Sanchez gets the award for being the Guy That's Been in the League For Four Years Who I Still Have Never Heard Of.

Here's another new insert featuring an extremely unflattering photo of a player that seems to be a bit of a shock that he ranks among the league leaders in anything. I guess that's probably the point here, though.

Here's the man of the hour. Tower of power.

Another red hot red card of a player for a red team.

Motte plain.

Motte gold. Much better! It's always nice to get a Cardinals "hit". And yes, this is what I consider a hit. Stop laughing.

Remember when everyone was scrambling to get one of the only cards that was printed of this Puig guy? I'm pretty sure that Topps Update is going to be nothing but 330 Puig cards, and only the inserts will have other players -- posing with and/or getting a bat flipped at them by Puig.

Okay, you know what? I'm not above this after all. These are turd parallels. In 2011, Topps had shiny chunky vomit colored parallels and now they're just churning out turds. Sorry, guys, I really tried.

I'll end it on a good note with this Michael Wacha Future Stars card.

So which configuration reigned supreme? I'm going to go with the hanger box, despite the "orange" parallels that I'm really not fond of. This whole experience seemed to have a heavy Dodgers feel to it, however. I don't feel great about that.

UPDATE: Well, this is awkward. It seems like I pulled one of those ridiculously silly sparkle variations as well. I should probably head off to eBay with this.

The $10 Retail Challenge: Jumbo Pack!

Previously on The $10 Retail Challenge...

The rack pack, as we knew it, is essentially dead. In the glorious days of junk wax, you could sometimes find the three-pronged packs of Topps at a specially marked value price, complete with an exclusive insert card. They were easy to search and the insert card was usually on the front somewhere. People actually would put these things away as collectors items when their favorite player or someone they perceived to be of value was showing on the front of one of these things. I know little of what happened with Topps during the dark years of 1994 through 2005 or so, but I was happy to see that the rack pack was still alive and well when I returned to collecting. The 2006 set contained "vintage" cards to commemorate some sort of anniversary, while the 2007 set had the expected exclusive insert cards as they used to in the '80s.

And then, suddenly Topps went a different direction. Jumbo packs have more or less replaced the old rack pack, and they've essentially become larger, slightly cheaper-per-card packs. There are inserts by the dozen and a little more mystery than we're accustomed to. No more exclusive inserts, however. In my day, you got your glossy All-Star card and you liked it. You barely even knew what an "insert" was.

Here's part two of the series, where I will judge the contents of two jumbo retail packs largely on their insert contents. I'm a hypocrite.

Series 2 is one big Photoshop frenzy. If I had more time on my hands, I would try to track down the source image for this card. It's pretty closely cropped, however, so it might be tough.

Minty green rack pack parallels have returned as unannounced as ever before. This set has an alarming amount of parallels, as if Topps somehow became savvy with social media and read that player collectors like to collect a rainbow of their favorite players. Ah, crap, I guess that's what is happening.

You may remember this card from such posts as last night's post. There are three different cards for each player in this insert series, but I had to go and pull the exact same one of Freeman again.

I got a green parallel in each pack. I think that's what is supposed to happen. Hochevar went from failed top prospect to superior reliever last year. The next logical step was, apparently, Tommy John surgery.

I suppose this is the key rookie card of the set. He's not going to be cheap, but the nice thing for Abreu supercollectors is that he doesn't have several thousand different Bowman cards to chase before he ever set foot on a major league field.

Here's an insert that is new to Series 2. It's a little busy.

And... I got two of them. Great.

Last year, the Cardinals were heavily represented in Series 1 and then nearly frozen out of Series 2. I'm glad to see the distribution across the two series a little bit more even this time around.

Soto hasn't played yet this season due to injury and hasn't really been what you could consider a good player in something like 4 years.

I'm happy to report that this is Shane Robinson's first real card since 2009. Huzzah! It's almost like Topps forgets about your fifth or sixth outfielder!

I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that Wainwright's mild elbow tendinitis is nothing more than what those words literally mean.

All in all, these were good packs for a Cardinal fan, at least.

The $10 Retail Challenge: 2014 Topps Series 2

A fun little experiment that I like to do.

I've done this a few times in some form or another with the Topps base set, and I'm going to try it again. For my first dip into the 2014 Topps Series 2 waters, I decided to buy $10 worth of cards in the three different configurations available on the retail aisle. Love it or hate it, retail packs and boxes provide a somewhat affordable option for the budget collector. Let's face it -- I would not be a card collector today and you would not be reading this blog if you couldn't buy an occasional pack at a retail store for a couple of bucks. Hobby shops are an awkward and completely off-the-beaten-path experience in my city, and on the rare occasion that I do seek one out, I am reminded that they have steep rent to pay and have to set their prices accordingly.

I picked up 5 loose packs, 2 jumbo/rack packs and 1 hanger box of the new stuff. Tonight, I'm going to take a look at what I pulled from the loosies. These guys are already at a disadvantage as there will be fewer cards (60 vs. 72) than the other two options. Still, strange and wonderful things have occasionally been known to happen to a random loose pack, at least ones that haven't been tampered with. Oh man, now I'm already starting to get sad.

I'm only scanning and talking about the non-base cards, unless they are Cardinals cards. I like Cardinals cards, you see. All the non-Cardinals from these posts are up for grabs, although I do typically earmark certain cards for people I trade with often. Also, if you're building a set or just want to trade, feel free to leave a link to your want list in the comments.

This boring insert set is an unwelcome holdover from Series 1, which means there's an extremely good chance it will be around for Series 3... er... the Update Series. (Seriously, if they started calling it Series 3 and numbered the cards accordingly I would be a very happy person.) There are several of these per player once again, and two more Cardinals are featured.

Gold cards fall at 1 in 7 packs now, which seems to be a significant increase over past years. I don't remember if it was the same for Series 1, but it probably was. I really wish they still had the "X Years of Collecting" tag on these cards somewhere, because that made them a little more special than just another border variation. There are too many border variations, by the way. Far too many!

Yawn. I'm so bored of these.

I didn't pull very many Red Hot Foil parallels the first time around. I did end up with tons of the Emerald parallels from last year, though. I guess they are roughly equivalent.

This is a great card, though it's a little disappointing that Holliday isn't participating in High Socks Sunday. This is one of my favorite rituals, and another thing to love about Jon Jay. I'm always conflicted about Jay. He is a fun player to watch, but an example of someone that you can be frustrated by when his numbers or his defense aren't up to par. This team has a lot of options.

More Red Hot Foil. The Astros are starting to really build up an impressive stable of young talent, aren't they? It's almost like the guy that helped completely turn around the Cardinals farm system is in charge of their rebuild. Oh wait... he is?

And that's... it. It seems like there's usually a deluge of inserts and parallels in every Topps pack, but these ones were pretty lean. Maybe Topps wants people to be able to put together a set on their own after all.