Topps Bipped me!

So a few days ago my wife was nice enough to buy me a 72-card hanger of Series 1 from Target. I was at work, and was looking forward to opening it when I got home. I got home and ripped it open, and the first 6 cards in the pack were Matt Joyce, Chris Sale, Jared Eickhoff, Drew Pomeranz, Tyler Clippard, and JaCoby Jones, Not too bad, I got a guy from my Favorite Player Collection (Sale), a former Ray (Joyce), and a current Tiger (Jones). I could've done a lot worse than that. I sorted through the next dozen or so cards, and then I saw something familiar. It was another Joyce!  The next card was Chris Sale.  The next card was Jared Eickhoff. The next one was Drew Pomeranz. You know where this is going....It didn't stop until I had got past JaCoby Jones (again). Topps had Bipped me 6 times in a row!  This kind of pissed me off. I really don't remember too much about the rest of the pack, other than the fact that I got another PC guy (Jacob deGrom), and a few more Tigers. I realize that this happens from time to time, but is it too much to ask for the collation to be better? Surely they can get some kind of machine to 'shuffle' the cards or something. You can get 2 different packs from Walmart or wherever out of the same hangable pack dispenser and you could get the same 8 cards because the collation is so horrible. I'd be willing to compromise and settling with that happening in loose packs and chalk it up to luck of the draw, but for it to happen in a 72-card hanger where the cards are put into a single plastic wrapper that is sealed, I think it is unacceptable.

I was a little pissed off when I decided to try to contact Topps and voice my displeasure. I took this picture in hopes of finding an e-mail address. I didn't find anything except for a contact box to contact their customer service, and sent them a long message telling them how I thought it was unacceptable to get collation like that in a hanger box, as well as my displeasure of Steve Pearce (another PC guy) getting 2 cards picturing him as an Oriole in 2016 Update. I sent the message on Friday, and still haven't received a response. Has anyone else had an issue like this or had to contact Topps about an issue?  Is there an e-mail address I can actually use and send a picture to, or do I have to call the 800 number?   If Donruss/Panini could put out a 600+ card set, have better collation, and somehow get MLB logos on them at a comparable price rang to Topps, you better believe I would convert. Something needs to be done, and it's things like this that lead me to believe that sometime in the next 10-20 years that there will be a entry-level basic set made by a group of custom card makers that will actually be produced and sell to customers who are sick of not getting what they want from Topps and whoever else is around by then. There would probably be legal things to deal with after it happens and they may need to be backed and funded by sponsors or corporations in order to produce cards at massive level, pay off MLB to use logos and to fend off the witch hunters/lawyers by Topps For now though, we will have to deal with a ton of doubles and be happy with it. If anyone wants any of the 6 cards that Topps Bipped me with, let me know.
Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy 

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