Last night I counted up the doubles from my box of 2008 Topps Series 2. There were 72 in total. If you factor in the dozens of (usually uninteresting) inserts, that means the box yielded about two-thirds of the series set. I'm still not sure if I should be pleased with the challenge or annoyed that it's going to cost more to build this year's Topps set.
On the bright side, I pulled a David Ortiz bat card from a jumbo pack of Series 2 that I bought the other day.
I picked up a box of the newly-released Topps Series 2 today at a card show for $39. Usually I don't break a box in one day, but today I felt inspired, partially because the first 32 packs did not yield an autograph or relic card (one per box).
From the 33rd pack I pulled a Chien-Ming Wang highlights jersey, and much to my amusement, the following pack contained an Albert Pujols jersey card. I'm not sure if this is typical or if I got lucky because of a collation problem.
Speaking of collation, the box yielded a lot more doubles than any other recent Topps box I've opened. At first I found this a little annoying, because I've grown accustomed to being able to build almost an entire series set from a single Topps box. But on the other hand, collecting Topps sets has become a lot less challenging than it was back in the 1980s and early 90s, when it took at least two boxes and a little trading to build a complete set. I don't necessarily want to buy four boxes (two per series) to assemble my Topps set each year, but I'm glad that I'll need to do some leg work this time around.
A couple other notable pulls from this box were a rookie redemption card - seeded one per box, I've learned - and an Adam Dunn Home Run Derby Contest card, numbered to 999. As a Topps loyalist, I don't have much experience with redemption cards (not since winning a complete BlackGold set back in 1993), but I'm looking forward to redeeming it, especially since I'll be able to do it online. And although Dunn won't be going to the All-Star Game this year, I like the idea behind the contest, as well as the relative scarcity of the cards, and wouldn't be surprised to find myself collecting others from the set (50 in total).
New in this series are the ToppsTown promo cards, as well as the Fathead discount cards, each randomly but plentifully inserted in packs. ToppsTown is an online community geared toward kids, and reminds me of the card-collecting capabilities built into the Madden football video games. I hope it's met with enthusiasm, although it's not really my cup of tea. As for Fathead, I'm disappointed that Topps is doing cross-promotional advertising in its base set. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of Fathead as it is.
The rest of the inserts were decent - there weren't any massive number-based sets like the Generation Now cards from last year, or Bonds/Mantle/ARod Home Run History, which are nothing short of awful. I'm hopeful that Topps is done bombarding its core collectors with junk inserts like those. It's lazy cardmaking and it punishes people who are trying to collect master sets. Besides, anyone who likes collecting multiple versions of the same card is free to collect Moments & Milestones instead.
In my opinion, Topps reached a high point in 2001, when it increased its set size, re-introduced the Gold parallel, and released a variety of interesting but attainable insert sets. Since that point - and especially since the introduction of Bonds HRH in 2005, Topps has missed the mark.
Topps has started to move in a better direction with 2008 Series 2.
