2013 Score Football rack packs (x4)

I've been searching high and low for 2013 Upper Deck football packs at my various local Meijers, and while I haven't found them yet, I did turn up some racks of 2013 Score today instead.  From what I'd seen get pulled from these, they were worth a flier, so I nabbed four of them for $4.99 each.

Score promises 52 cards in each pack, which appeals to the set-builder in me, though to be fair, a ton of those are rookies.  Here's the pair of Wolverines I picked so I can show off vertical and horizontal fronts:

I like the design again this year (as usual), which actually incorporates foil for the first time in a while--that can be found in the bottom score logo and designs around that part of the card, though it comes up darker in the scans.  I don't love how the name/position/team/logo bars come out when oriented vertically on horizontal cards because they just look dumb, and I also think they take up too much real estate overall, but those nits aside I think Score did well here.

Here's a look at a card back.  Quite a few look like this due to players having been in the league for quite a while, but kudos to Score for getting every year on there.  On cards where space isn't at quite so much of a premium, the card numbers appear in horizontal ovals.

One thing I tend to love about Score is that the way they arrange their sets, and as is standard, teams are grouped and sorted alphabetically, starting with the Cardinals.  This year, they incorporated a few subsets, two of which used to be (lame) inserts:   "Franchise" and "Future Franchise."  "Airmail" shows off top QBs while "Road to the Super Bowl" focuses on last season's champs.  Cards 1-220 are normal base, the Airmails fall 221-252, Road to the Super Bowl 253-266, Franchise 267-298, and Future Franchise 299-330.  Again, I love how these are grouped instead of strewn about the set all willy-nilly (TOPPS).

This year's set features some truly outstanding photography.  Topps usually seems to have some nice enough photos, but these are just crazy good--look at that action!  This is where the horizontal cards especially shine, and shots like those are enough to overcome the terrible layout of the components next to them.

I pulled 13 "regular" rookies, and you see the first nine here.  As is traditional, these are card #s 331-440, making for a huge rookie set.  Every image appears to be a close-up shot of a player in his (airbrushed) college unis, and while the lack of logos is a downer, the throwback to Score's old rookie design is a plus.

I included the back of Fisher's rookie here, plus the other four normal rookies, a pair of Blue parallels, and the two other inserts I pulled, "Hot Rookies."  I don't understand why inserts have the "RC" logo on them, but if someone wants to believe that's what they are, more power to them.  I didn't really care about the relative dearth of inserts here because I appreciate the base set more, and Score's inserts have traditionally been pretty low-end anyway.

Out of my four packs, I pulled 161 base cards of the first 330, plus an additional 13 rookies, for a total of about 40% of the set--not too bad from four racks.  I also ended up with 31 dupes, which isn't awesome, but not quite Topps bad either.  I'm thinking I may grab a few more of these, maybe if I can wait until Meijer has cards 20% off again.  I would like to finish up the set, though I'm sure I'll take my time with the rookies as they surely won't come cheap.  You know I'll want to grab Denard Robinson's soon, though!

Here's a quick summary of what I thought was good and bad:
+ Pros:  GREAT photos, pretty good design, nice backs, solid player selection, very few lame inserts, set grouped by team and subsets, pretty good value.
- Cons:  Horizontal design is weird, bottom/right portion of card takes up too much space, TOO MANY ROOKIES.

The four inserts are available for trades as well as my dupes, some of which will head out in future trade packages.  Don't forget I may have more in the future as well!  If you're working on this set now, though, please feel free to shoot me a wantlist.

While I'm talking about Score, I also picked up some 2008 clearance racks in the last couple of weeks and you can find my current wantlist on the football wantlist page.  I also have a TON of extras from those and would love to trade!