It's that time of year again. I always get excited for new baseball and baseball card season. Series 1 is always a little special as it really marks the start of both. I stopped by my LCS Bosco's trade night last night to pick up two jumbo hobby packs and one regular pack to start the set off right. I also stopped by my Target and picked up 4 jumbo hanger packs. Let's have a look at what I pulled from those packs.
Here are the odd for all three packs, they are slightly different and so is the NPN address if your into trying for some free cards.
Hobby pack odds
Jumbo Hobby pack odds
Retail Jumbo hanger pack odds
Once again the base card photos are great. Some are definitely better than others, but overall capture the players very well. Here are a couple of my favorites and some of the subsets.
This Austin Hedges card is great and I love the intensity with pieces of the turf flying. I was torn with the design and while not my favorite it's not bad and allows for some great action shots, plus the players names are in order this year, that's nice.
There are some product specific inserts this season. Lets have a look at the inserts I got.
Topps continues it's celebration of sets from 35 year's ago, for some reason, with this 85 tribute.
The overall theme of the set, is celebrating the decades so we get a bunch of decades inspired inserts. Each of the decades featured have their own design.
Next up are the Decades of Dominance die cut inserts. I got some old timey Yankees guy.
And lastly Topps also celebrates those players posed to dominate the next decade. Would be a fun insert to revisit in 2030 and see who actually made the cut.
This year Topps brings back it's Turkey Red homage with another insert set featuring the vintage set. Topps put out three sets from 2005-2007 and then had two inserts sets in 2009 and 2010 Topps. These Turkey Red inserts are a retail only exclusive and I'll say this right now, I'm all in. I've put together the 2010 set and I'm almost done with the 2009 insert set, so I will bite and chase this down. Each jumbo hanger pack comes with 2. It's a big insert set with 100 cards and I'm not sure if Topps will continue it into Series 2 or Update.
While I didn't find any relics or autos in my packs I did pick up some parallels and a couple of the sp variations. You can tell which cards are variations, but the code on the back. SPs end in 284, SSPs end in 285, and advance stat variations end in 283. All other base cards end in 269. It wold be nice if Topps marked this a little better maybe with a note by the card number.
Speaking of Harper I also hit his sweet Memorial Day Camo parallel #/25
I've found the parallels can be subtle at times and easy to miss if your just speeding though your cards so be alert and vigilant my friends.
I must be on a Phillies hot streak because I also hit this Independence Day team card parallel.
And lastly and very anti-climatically there are the foil parallels. This year Topps adds a twist with an unnumbered Gold Foil parallel as well as the rainbow foil parallel that are easy to miss unless you have both right next to each other. I just pulled regular rainbow foils, I think.
There you have it my first taste of 2020 Topps flagship. Anyone pull anything good? I will probably stick to retail jumbo packs trying to build my Turkey Red set, plus it's a better overall value for me. That being said I will probably pick up at least one tin if I can find them. I've also heard rumblings on twitter that hobby boxes are already jumping in price so retail is a nice alternative for someone who doesn't give a crap about chasing rookies.
