Monday, February 4, 2013

2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 Trading Cards Box Break Recap And Review

Reviewing Topps' flagship Baseball Card release is just an exercise in personal taste.  It is a given that any Baseball card collector should include Topps Baseball Series 1 & 2 in their collection each year.  2013 Topps Baseball is all about "The Chase" and that theme permeates from base to inserts to hits.  Everything about this year's version is on par with past releases, walking the middle ground when it comes to design which should appeal to a wide range of tastes.

For a detailed description of the cards with Everything You Need To Know About 2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 Trading Cards, use this link.

For the purposes of this review, we classify Series 1 as trading cards.  You can find Series 1 in a wide variety of configurations in both retail and hobby.  We opened a box hobby box which contained 36 – 10 card packs with a promise of 1 autograph or 1 relic card per box.
Here are some of the cards we pulled.





Base Set
Prince Fielder, front and back
Clayton Kershaw, Andrew McCutchen, R.A. Dickey
Starlin Castro, Joey Votto, Jose Altuve
Jered Weaver, Carlos Santana, Dan Uggla
Buster Posey, Ryan Braun, Adam Greenberg
Josh Reddick, Trevor Bauer, Jon Jay
Ricky Romero, Kevin Millwood, Yonder Alonso
Ryan Howard, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Joe Mauer
Mark Teixeira, Matt Kemp, Eric Hosmer
Jose Reyes, Shin-Soo Choo
Yadier Molina, Justin Verlander
Carlos Gonzalez, Brad Ziegler
Evan Longoria, Mike Trout
Bryce Harper, Yu Darvish, Anthony Rizzo
Manny Machado, Dylan Bundy, Jurickson Profar

Base Set - Record Chase
Roy Halladay, Alex Rodriguez
Andy Pettitte, Albert Pujols

Base Set - Playoff/World Series
Baltimore Orioles, Matt Holliday
San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals
Marco Scutaro, Detroit Tigers
Detroit Tigers, CC Sabathia
Pablo Sandoval, Madison Bumgarner
Ryan Vogelson

Base Set - League Leaders
NL Wins, NL ERA
AL Wins, AL ERA
NL Home Runs, NL RBI
NL Batting Average, AL RBI

Base Set Parallels

Green
Addison Reed, Norichika Aoki, Cameron Maybin
Brandon League, Jhonny Peralta, Daniel Nava

Gold #/2013
Jordan Pacheco, Scott Feldman
Michael Saunders, Bronson Arroyo

Inserts

Chasing the Dream
Jesus Montero, Mike Trout, Casey Kelly
Jarrod Parker, Drew Hutchison, Tommy Milone

Chasing History
Derek Jeter, Ian Kinsler, Johan Santana
George Brett, Kerry Wood
Babe Ruth, Warren Spahn
CC Sabathia. Don Mattingly

Calling Cards
Reggie Jackson, Brandon Phillips, Pablo Sandoval
Felix Hernandez, Prince Fielder

The Greats
Roy Halladay, Ted Williams

Spring Fever LCS Redemption
front and back

The Million Dollar Chase Code Cards
front and back

1972 Topps Baseball Minis
Evan Longoria, front and back
Jose Reyes, Ian Kennedy, Giancarlo Stanton
Joey Votto, Cliff Lee, Andre Ethier
Mike Trout, Lou Gehrig

Cut to the Chase Die Cuts
Derek Jeter. Roberto Clemente, Brett Lawrie

Out of Bounds Photo Alternative SP
Andre Ethier

The Hit
Ian Kinsler Chasing History Relic


Overall Look
I like this year's base card design, even more than the insert design.  Standout inserts for me are the Cut to the Chase die cut cards I'm also digging on these minis. Hit cards are rather standard design, what we've come to expect from Topps flagship.
Quality and Variety of Players and Subsets.
Topps has gone a long way this year to secure some of the best legends of the game which is fantastic.  The base set is as complete as you could expect. 


Do the hits hold up?
There is a wide enough variety of hits, autos, relics and manufactured that are desirable.


Will you want to collect them all?
The set is compelling enough this year to make collectors toy with the idea of going for a master set.


Rating

4 1/2 out of 5


2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 is great for both beginning and seasoned collectors.  Your Baseball collection is incomplete without them.


Review box provided by Topps

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