Friday, February 14, 2014

Late to the Party

As usual, I'm a week behind everyone with a new release. I've shunned purchasing packs/blasters for a while, so I'm at the mercy of JustCommons to ship me my Redsy goodness.

As far as the set, it appears 2012 Bowman and 2013 Topps had a baby, and that baby is 2014 Topps. It's ok. The foil is a lot shinier than anyone's scans are implying, so that was a nice surprise. I'm a bit upset at the lack of horizontal-ness in the Reds set, after some pretty great horizontal cards last year. Perhaps Series 2 will rebound. The only one in Series 1 is Billy Hamilton, which I did not pick up. Not in the mood to spend a buck fiddy on a flagship base card. I'm sure I'll find it in a quarter box soon enough.

And it must be noted, as we all know, Topps put WAR on the back with the 'traditional' stats. As a math person, I wholly approve. So big kudos, here.

Let's check em out.
Pretty run-of-the mill so far. We're pretty zoomed-in with these photos.

Arroyo: Gone. Choo: Gone. Thanks for reminding me, Topps. On a brighter note, this is the first Jack Hannahan Reds card.

Pitcher at the plate with Mike Leake. I know many of you enjoy this. I do not. 

Two Leader cards found Jay Bruce gracing their visages: RBI and HR. The first one is the 2013 Topps base photo. Both of them are less than flattering.

Had to snag a couple Golds, just because. Now I have two Hannys.

And a couple Red Foils. Three Hannys ah-ah-ah. These are closer to pink than red in most light.

These were the only inserts I picked up: Upper Class Joey Votto and Jay Bruce. Decent. Both these guys had excellent rookie years, which is the impetus for these cards.

Overall? 2013 > 2012 > 2014 > 2011. How's that for cutting analysis?

I'm looking forward to digging through boxes at shows to find some parallels. Because I'm a sucker.

Go Reds.

5 comments:

  1. $1.50 for a Billy Hamilton on justcommons....that's a rip off. I was able to land mine for $0.18 on sportlots. That's just crazy!

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    1. yeah. their free shipping more than makes up for stuff like that though. It's usually the RC's that are priced high while everything else is decent.

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  2. Aaaaaagh! Way too close and personal here. Broxton's left leg takes up nearly half the photo space! Some of these shots may have looked great if they hadn't gone crazy with the crop. Especially Aroldis in the Negro League uni; it would be great to see the whole outfit. As for the pitcher at the plate -- that strikes me as quirky. But I would be interested to see a card of an AL pitcher batting during inter-league. Know if any exist?

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    1. Nick over at baseballdimebox.blogspot.com is the leading source on pitcher-at-the-plate goodness. I'm positive he could rattle off dozens of examples.

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  3. Also, I had my fingers crossed all winter hoping to see Topps release a card with Choo getting pelted with a pitch.

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