Opening Day Mediocrity

I decided to take a test drive on the Periscope app and needed a test subject to try out.  I picked up two blasters ($9.99 each) from my local Target to use as my muse.  I am not sure I have opened more than a pack of Opening Day since 2000.  In my opinion, Opening Day is just a cheaply made rehash of the regular Topps set with a flashy flag bunting and logo on the card.  I will go ahead and walk that opinion back a little bit, but not all the way.

Essentially the base set of the Opening Day product is a rehash of the base Topps set.  Same pictures, but limited run of players.  Opening Day has been this way for years, but Topps has added a few other features to the product to improve the quality just a little bit.  I actually really like the look of the blue parallels out of the Opening Day set.  I think I said the same thing about the gold parallels in the regular set.

I like these and pulled a total of four of them out of my two Blaster boxes.  I feel like the blue border just gives the cards a little bit of a different look than the regular Opening Day cards.  The color gives it a little bit more distance from the regular Topps set.  On to the inserts.....

In past years Opening Day did not have any inserts.  I went through and looked at some of the older sets and it looks like the inserts have been in Opening Day for the last five or six years.  I guess the inserts include autographs and relic cards though I did not pull any of them.

The two most common insert sets in the Opening Day product are the Hit the Dirt and Stadium Scenes cards.  I like both inserts for the same reason: unique players.  I like Ian Kinsler, good player, but when do you see him get an insert card?  Next to never.  These Hit the Dirt inserts are pretty easy to track down and I picked up six of these cards in my packs.  Should be easy to finish off.  

The Stadium Scenes cards feature pictures by fans.  A lot of the cards seem to feature players signing autographs like the Sean Doolittle card above.  Again, there are some unique players in this set.  I saw Sean Doolittle play for UVa back in the day and have enjoyed following his career.  Cool to see him on an insert.  I also landed a Jordan Zimmerman and a cool card of Yasiel Puig and the Gateway Arch.

The rest of the insert cards seem kind of blah.  The mascot cards are back.....

Does the White Sox card even have a name?  Not sure about that.  I think Opening Day has done mascots for a few years now.  It seems that a lot of the chatter surrounding this set involves these mascot cards.  I am not sure why.  I guess it was cool once or twice, but maybe the well is running dry.

Same with the celebration cards.  Weren't these a variation in the regular Topps set?  meh and a yawn.

Last two insert sets look like copies of Upper Deck insert sets from the 2000s.

These look a lot like something out of the 2001 Upper Deck 1970s Baseball set, but that product is a lot cooler than Opening Day.  If you read the Night Owl Blog he always has posts about that set.

This looks like the holographic cards out of the 2004 Upper Deck Vintage set.  Again, the Upper Deck set is much better.

Overall this is a real hit or miss product.  I spent $20 on 22 packs, but would have probably been better served just buying one or two of the insert sets off of Ebay.  The base set is a not so nice rehash of the regular Topps base set and some of the insert sets have gotten a little long in the tooth and are missable.