I've seen quite a few breaks of 2011 Topps baseball in the last few days now that it's out. There's been a great number of blog and forum posts showing the results of hobby (including jumbo) and retail boxes, plus some loose hobby and retail packs. Here's a few:
So there's a few to look at for those of you that haven't seen these already.
Why my question, then, "What's the big deal?"? Well, what IS the big deal? I know this is the Topps flagship set, and I know it's something we all look forward to every year, but color me unimpressed this year, enough that I'll likely snag a hand-built set at some point or another, instead of dropping a ridiculous amount of money on a mediocre box experience. My take:
Pros:
1. This is the flagship set that signifies the start of the new card year. I've always believed that Topps makes a pretty solid base set, and this year is no different.
2. Silk cards. These have been around a few years now and I'm glad Topps hasn't discontinued them because I think they're a pretty cool insert for a non-"hit".
3. Wrapper redemption: in some ways this seems like a negative to me, but ultimately it increases value for the consumer, so I give Topps credit here for doing it, although having to snail mail some packs to a company that's already been questionable about redemptions seems suspect.
4. Some cool autographs: personally I've thought it was cool to see people pulling guys like Mark Fidrych and Al Kaline. The overall lineup seems kind of weak and they are sticker autos, but I give them a pass here.
5. Minis: I'm cool with these, not a big collector, but having them show up in a base Topps product is pretty cool.
(UPDATE) 6.
Here's one of the nicer hits I've seen pulled so far, a pretty nice plus.
Cons:
1. Right off the bat: I HATE the new manufactured "leather" cards. Tell me you like the way this looks, I DARE you:
That's one of your jumbo box guaranteed "hits". I'm definitely not necessarily against the manufactured stuff--the bat barrels last year were kind of cool, as were some of the manupatches, but this is literally a name stitched on a leather piece that doesn't really resemble anything (at least the bat barrel cards looked sort of like bat barrels). If something like this isn't actually game- or event-used, no big deal, but give me something that wasn't just mailed in.
2. Your non-autographed "hit": oh boy, more boring jersey and bat cards.
Yawn. A boring square piece of bat or jersey on a terrible card design.
3. The Diamond parallel: I liked the gold cards, and instead I get this crap:
'Nuff said. Moving on...
4. Diamond Givewaway = MCG 2, craptastic boogaloo. MCG soured me on the whole experience (I still haven't posted scans of what I got, but I wasn't terribly thrilled at the condition in which they arrived) especially the extremely flawed site design. I'm taking a pass on these as well this year, so more for you guys, I guess.
5. Inserts: same-old same-old or craptacular otherwise.
Topps 60 = craptacular
Yo Mama cards redux
Legendary Lineage (which I already didn't like) redux
ToppsTown (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TOPPS, GET RID OF THIS SHIT)
6. Where's the value? The prices for hobby boxes are astronomical right now--
$73 hobby and $123 jumbo on Blowout--and those are literally twice what they should go for. Yes, I know this is the first week of release and they'll come down, but what happened to Topps flagship boxes starting at even $50 or $60 on release? Considering the crap you get, the value is terrible. Collation already sounds like a problem with the jumbos and the hits aren't worth anything, meaning you need to hit an SP or get something out of your wrapper redemptions (sometime next year, I'm sure) to make boxes worth it right now. I want to be clear that I don't mean that in the sense that an average collector is buying a box hoping to make his money back--I'm referring to paying $120+ and getting a partial base set, a couple worthless hits and a bunch of doubles of inserts. I'm not even going to go more in-depth about
what's come to be expected of their quality control, though that should make upcoming breaks even more fun. If you couldn't tell, this is my biggest problem with the boxes this year and the reason I'm avoiding them in favor of buying a set second-hand.
My apologies for what amounts to a fairly negative post, but I'm just curious how that many people are excited about a pretty mediocre set this year. What do you guys think? Have your experiences been good or bad so far?
