Saturday, February 1, 2014

2014 Topps Jumbo Break-Base Set and Parallels

One of my measuring sticks of a successful Jumbo Box is the percentage of set completed.  Some people like to measure the doubles in the box, but that is really disingenuous to think that the dupe rate is going to be low when you are opening a box of 500 cards for a 331 card set.  Get real.  So, I sat yesterday afternoon and assembled my Series 1 set and came up with 327 of the 330 cards.  That's slightly over 99% of the set.  Yes, I do have a big stack of doubles.  Luckily, I had walked to Target and picked up a few rack packs on Tuesday.  I manged to land the three missing cards: Elivs Andrus, Martin Perez, and Jason Grilli.  

Looking for a reason to put together the 2014 Topps Set?  I have got five reasons:


1. Red Parallels


There are a bunch of different parallels like normal.  Camo, Pink, Green, Yellow, and these.  I like red.  Cardinals and NC State.  SEMO too (look that one up).  These are like the Emerald Green cards of last year, so I will have to put together a set of Cardinals for this parallel set.  They are not serial numbered and seem pretty reasonable on Ebay.  I landed this Mariano, so that's going to look good with my Cardinals set.  By the way, I got one card out of the Cardianls set done.


I like any Cardinals card with the retired numbers in the background too.  Wonder if Matt Holliday caught this flyball?

2.  Final Regular Cards For Helton and Rivera 


I am sure that Topps will put Helton and Rivera in plenty of sets in the near future, but it's sad to see them make their final regular card appearance.  Both players have been great for the past twenty years or so and have been regulars in baseball card sets throughout that time.  If I have more time to flip through the cards I am sure I can probably find more players making their final appearance too.  Dawg, where's Lance Berkman?

3.  There's No AIRBRUSHING!


You want players in old uniforms?  You got it.  Thank you Topps for not airbrushing players into their new jerseys.  Peralta is still a Tiger.  McCann is still a Brave.  Both cards look fine.

4.  Throwback Uniforms


Lots of cool old uniforms in the set.  Reds, A's, Brewers, and many others.  Always like to see some of these in every set.  Topps has been putting plenty of these cards in sets recently and this year's Topps I is no different.  
 
5. Coco Crisp's Hair


Kind of a throwback to the seventies.  Where's Oscar Gamble?  


4 comments:

  1. Topps has always been avoided airbrushing/Photoshopping in Series 1 for the most part. Series 2 is when they put the old faces in new places in the mix and start Photoshopping everything to death. Not counting the big names of McCann and Peralta, there are 3 guys that are now Rockies that appeared with their old team. Drew Stubbs, Brandon Barnes, and Boone Logan are all pictured with their old teams and I don't care one bit. They haven't played for the Rockies yet...I can wait until Update to get their first Rockie cards.

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    Replies
    1. I agree that the airbrushing gets heavier throughout the year, but if Topps can make through an entire set without airbrushing it's a miracle.

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  2. Glad Topps gave Mariano the red carpet treatment... both of his Series 1 cards are pretty awesome. But neither compare to Coco's hair ;-)

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    Replies
    1. Helton and Mariano both got treated well. I am not too big into the whole rainbow thing, but I already have the red and gold copies of the Coco card. Might have to go for it.

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