Topps Baseball 2013

The release of the first baseball cards of the year always make me happy. Now that I have had a week to look them over and see what other collectors have pulled from packs, I can honestly say that this year's release is an A+.

Design: The card design is clean with the white border and the team color outlines and the team logo in the corner. It doesn't try to do too much and leaves room for a big photo on the card.

Photography: In past releases, I often found the photography of Series 1 to be lacking, but not this year. There are so many amazing photos on the the cards and a lot of great "in the moment" action shots that really capture why baseball is so great.  I started going through and pulled at least a dozen cards that demonstrate the great photography of this year's set.  Not only are the photos awesome, but the colors on the cards just really pop this year. Usually the Update series is the one full of throwback uniforms, players in their alternate jerseys, but 2013 Topps gives a great selection of photos. I almost can't say enough about how much I enjoy looking at these cards, but I will stop there and let the cards do the talking for themselves.

Exciting celebrations captured on cardboard

Turning Two

Web Gems 

Good looking swings

Sliding Stars

Picture Perfect Pitching

And a few more cards that just caught my eye

Topps Series 2

With the official launch of 2013 Topps Baseball, talking about 2012 Series 2 seems way past due. So I won't be spending a lot of time on either of them. The design of the cards isn't the worst that Topps has produced, but it isn't the best either. Series 2 was full of new inserts, none of which really excited me. The Career Day cards had the nicest design, but the concept seemed like a duplication of the Golden Moments insert set. A Cut Above and Mound Dominance really didn't do anything for me.
I picked up a jumbo box from my LCS the day it came out and a few blasters in the weeks that followed. I completed the set and have plenty of doubles for trade. All of the insert sets are also available for trade as the only one that I am looking to complete is the 1987 minis. As for my hits, I was happy to pull a Golden Moments Roberto Alomar relic. I especially like that the patch is black. My second hit was a Cal Ripken Team Rings card, it is a nice card, but its up for trade. My auto was a Golden Moments Jarrod Parker, who is starting to become a favorite of mine. I also pulled a Black Parallel of Parker's rookie card numbered 56/61. All in all it was a good haul.

It Has Been A Long Time

I can not believe it has been over two months since my last post. Between my new job, the holidays, and the lack of any new cards to talk about, it has been difficult to find the time to write.  I figure with the release of Topps 2013 Baseball coming up this week, I figured that I should close up my 2012 recap.
So this week, I will finish up the cards that I collected in 2012 with Topps Series 2 and Allen & Ginter.  Although, probably boring topics now, I want to finish them, so I can have some sort of closure to my 2012 collecting year. Now, just because I will have finished writing about 2012, it does not mean that I have finished  collecting those cards. I still have a few want lists that are unfinished, but I will be cleaning them up and getting them all in one place.
I also have been working on a post about the 2013 products that I will be collecting. Since I am getting married in August, I decided that I wanted to cut down the money I spent on baseball cards and this helped me to focus my collecting on the sets that I really enjoy collecting. Thanks for reading.

Group Break from The Home of the Toddfather

Back in early October, I grabbed 4 teams in The Home of the Toddfather's Group Break. I was late to the party, so I grabbed Astros and Brewers and was surprised to see The Red Sox and Royals left. So even though, I am a Yankee fan, I figured, that I could get some solid trade chips from taking the Red Sox and I was very right.
I want to thank Tim from Home of the Toddfather for doing this Group Break. It was well run and fun to do and I am looking forward to the next one.

Here are my highlights:

I like the Chrome refractor of Ellsbury and also added 3 Will Middlebrooks Rookie cards and a couple of the Sox's top prospects to my collection. I am a Yankee fan, so the Ellsbury is up for trade.

Tyler Thornburg from the Brewers organization and Jake Odorizzi from the Royals were my big hits from 2012 Pro Debut

This is one of my favorite base cards from 2012 Topps, just a great moment captured on cardboard.

My big hit is this auto of Ryan Lavarnway from Topps Chrome, it is a great looking card, but is in my trade pile for you Red Sox fans out there.

My biggest surprise hit was from my Golden Giveaway Code card with Will Middlebrooks on it.
When I put the code in... Jose Reyes Gold Parallel. 

Blasts from the Past - Topps Archive

Towards the end of May, Topps released Archives, which combined 4 different card designs (1954, 1971, 1908, and 1984).  I will say that this was my favorite product of 2012. The SP cards are cool and while they make it more difficult to complete the set, I still enjoy the checklist. I also like the insert sets that include 1967 Topps Stickers, 1968 Topps 3-D, 1969 Deckle Edge, and my favorite, 1977 Cloth. They add a little more personality to the the insert sets. The All-Time Fan Favorite Autographs cards were a great addition and while the checklist includes some stars, it is made up of players who were home town favorites. It's not the usual star studded checklist, but there are a lot of players, whose cards I think it would be really cool to have like Steve Balboni, Wally Joyner, Mike Scott and Ken Singleton.
I grabbed a box from my LCS and hoped for the best. I didn't get any of the star autos, nor did I get any of the players that I had hoped for, but I did end up with an almost complete set of the base cards, plus some other good stuff. I have since made some trades which have helped me acquire almost all of the base set (I'm still 4 cards short), a bunch of the SP's, and some of the 1977 Cloth cards. I also turned to Ebay to purchase some of the autograph cards that I wanted.
I am still looking to complete the base set with SP's, the 1977 Cloth Insert Set, and the Gold Stamped Reprints. You can check out my needs and what I have for trade: Topps Archives Needs and For Trade List