2017 Topps

After much pain and worrying, I was able to get my hands on 2 jumbo packs of 2017 Topps. I thought I would run to Target while I was on break today, and just as I figured, they didn't have any. I had enough time to run to Walmart before I needed to get back to work, and they didn't have any either. Before I went back, I called a card store that was about 10 minutes away, and they said they had some, so after work, I went by and got the first 2 jumbo packs from the store. Here is my first card of 2017.

 Keon Broxton was my first card. I was kind of hoping for Sonny Gray, since he was my first card last year.  Up next are my favorite teams, the Tigers and Rays.  I got a sweet Logan Morrison, Kevin Kiermaier, Drew Smyly, and Chris Archer of the Rays, and Jordan Zimmerman of the Tigers.

 Overall, I think I got a good number of Rays, but was hoping for a few more Tigers. The good news is that I only got 2 Yankees in the base set, and 3 total. Not very many times you get more Rays than Yankees in a group of packs.
I only got 2 guys in my Favorite Player Collection, David Ortiz, and Steve Pearce (my classmate in Chemistry class in High School). Now I only have 2-3 more base cards of Pearce to go, and I will have all of his cards in the '17 Topps/Update set.

 On to the insers. I got some promo card of Don Mattingly where it advertised Topps Bunt and Topps Now on the back, 2 '87 cards (Clayton Kershaw and Roid-ger Clemens). I liked the '87 insert set. I think what I liked was the fact that they had the stamp on them and that they were regular sized and not a mini set like the previous '87 tribute set. I got a First Pitch insert of Deshauna Barber, an '85 Topps buyback of Rafael Ramirez (I kind of like the stamp on it as well), and 2 of those lame holiday or whatever inserts (Carlos Rodon and Stan Musial). The design isn't that good, and I don't understand the whole thing with the holidays, and how exactly they tie in to legends. I got 2 of the Bowman inserts (David Price and Buster Posey), and I really like them. I like how they have the Bowman rookie card on them, and also incorporate the '17 Bowman design in them. It's kind of weird how they don't have the inserts in Bowman and didn't make the inserts be a Topps-themed one, but I guess I'm ok with that. I got a rainbow parallel of Ryan Flaherty, and a gold parallel League Leader card of DJ LaMahieu. I don't care for how the League Leader cards don't have 3 players on them. Just another way for Topps to keep players out of the set. If they do HR, RBI, AVG, W, SO, and ERA for each league, that's 12 cards that could've been made of players who were left off of the set. Looks like I'll have tons of customs to do this year. Lastly, it wasn't an insert, but I included a World Series highlights card of Aroldis Chapman (I have a mini-collection going of season/postseason highlight cards).

Overall, there were some hits and some misses in the 2017 set, I'll probably get a few more packs of Series 1 like I usually do. I think as bad as cards are getting, it will still take a big thing to get me to quit buying packs. I don't like how the backs have all the wasted space, Twitter handles, and don't include the full career stats. For one, not everyone has a Twitter/Instagram account. I like how on cards like Paul Goldschmidt's, where the player doesn't have one, that they waste the space by putting Topps' Twitter/Instagram account info. Way to advertise!  Also, I'm not a fan of the stats on the back not having the complete career on them. I know I'm not the only one who's looking forward to pulling that sunset card of David Ortiz (card #350) with the last 5 years of his career on it. If my son was a little older and pulled the card, he would never know that David was the last Red Sock to hit 50 HRs in a season. In a few more years, if Topps keeps this up, he won't know that Miguel Cabrera was the first player since Carl Yastrzemski in 1968 to win a Triple Crown. People keep saying that you can look up the stats on your phone, but I don't see why a phone and baseball cards should intermingle. If I am looking at cards, the only thing I need my phone for is perhaps to look up info on another card, maybe looking up a roster if I am trying to pull cards to get signed at a game, or maybe see if a card was a variation or SP or something (if I was into that). Phones are great and all, but the back of a card is for stats and a btief bio. It's great that the internet has stats and that you can look them up on your phone, but let the cards have the full stats for when you are looking at the cards, and let the internet keep the stats so you can look at them when the cards aren't available. Enough said.
On the bright side, the Bowman inserts were great, and the '87 inserts and the buyback cards were a nice surprise for me, as well as getting a larger number of Rays cards than I would've expected. I hope everyone else fared as well on their first packs.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy