2018, Basketball, Hobby Box, Stadium Club, Uncategorized

2018 Topps Stadium Club Hobby Box Break

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I really like the Stadium Club releases.  It focuses on pictures from the game, without having to rely on gimmicks to sell the cards.  It has its share of inserts and parallels, but the picture quality is still king.

The set can be a little daunting to put together from packs, however.  A hobby box contains 16 packs with 8 cards in each pack, with the base set consisting of 300 cards.  It features mostly current players, with some legends in the mix as well.  Each box advertises 2 on-card autographs, as well.   The autograph checklist is fairly big, but there are still some big names like hot rookies Gleyber Torres and Ronald Acuna, as well as many other stars of the game.

This box contained:

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2018, Box Break, Jumbo Hobby Box, Topps

2018 Topps Series 2 Jumbo Box Break

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The Topps series two release continues on much of the first release of the year.  It features base cards 351-700, along with many new and familiar insert sets.  It comes at a time when the top rookie from the beginning of the season, Shohei Ohtani, is out with a potentially season ending injury.   He’s still heavily featured in this product, and we see his first flagship Topps base rookie card.

As the season has moved on, other top rookies have emerged.   This has led to some rookies that may be able to replace Ohtani for hobby prominence.   To partially solve this, Topps issued SP variants for a couple of the top guys in Acuna and Torres, rather than include them in the base set.   These SPs join alternate photos along with many legends as extensions to the set.  This seems like a reasonable compromise to me, to get these players in, without making them part of the set.

This is the normal jumbo box configuration, consisting of 10 packs of 50 cards each, including three hits. On release day, two additional silver packs were included, containing four 1983 Chrome cards each.

This box contained:

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2018, Box Break, Hobby Box, Star Wars, Topps

2018 Topps Solo A Star Wars Story Hobby Box Break

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A new Star Wars movie means a new Topps release.  This time, it features Han Solo’s origin story.  It’s a fun movie, but it’s a little bit of a departure from the recent releases.  The card set, however, seems to follow a similar pattern.  The base set contains 100 cards, along with many familiar insert sets including Icons, Silhouettes, Stickers, Patch Cards, Sketch Cards, and Autographs.

The base set is a fun design featuring the Millennium Falcon along the edge, and numerous parallels.  I question the black parallel, however.  It looks much more grey than black.  If you have the black and silver together, it is easy to tell which is which, but apart, it may be more difficult.

Maybe it’s just me, but many of the insert designs seem to blend together, as well.  I guess they’re easy if you know what you’re looking for, but they don’t seem quite so obvious at first glance.  The different insert sets are displayed below, so you can judge for yourself.

This box contained:

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2018, Box Break, Hobby Box, Topps WWE

2018 Topps WWE Hobby Box Break

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The 2018 Topps WWE release once again features superstars of the WWE on the current year’s flagship style release. The 100 card base set makes some interesting checklist choices. It’s clear they’re holding back some of the bigger names for the fall release. At least the superstars featured on the box are represented in the cards available.  You will find superstars from Raw, Smackdown Live, and NXT, as well as announcers and others in this base set.

The release feels pretty light on inserts. There is one main insert set, Evolution, which shows various wrestlers over the years. There are also three tribute sets, exclusive to different types of releases. All the rest of the inserts are variations of hits. You also see a regular assortment of parallels.

This box advertises 24 packs of 7 cards each. Each box contains two hits, including one autograph.

This box contained:

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2018, Baseball, Blaster Box, Bowman, Box Break

2018 Bowman Blaster Box Break

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While 2017 was the year of Judge, it didn’t start quite as early as it has this year.  2018 has seen Ohtani being even more sought after.  We saw it a bit with Heritage, but now with the Bowman release, Ohtani-mania is in full effect.  Normally, we’d have a hobby box to break, but we’re seeing prices double and nearly triple the normal price around release time.  That’s way too out of hand, for what is essentially hoping for the lottery ticket of an Ohtani autograph.   That one card is the only way to really have a chance at getting value out of a box.

 

Retail is still the regular price, if you can find it.  As a result of Hobby being so expensive, even retail is getting scooped up and often resold at a higher price.  You have a lot tougher odds on inserts and parallels, but for many, retail is going to be the only option to open Bowman packs this year.

There are other rookies available as usual in Bowman, but they all seem overshadowed this year.  This release is pretty standard fare for Bowman at this point.   You have a 100 card base set, featuring some veterans and some rookies, along side the prospects paper and chrome insert sets, which is the meat of the release.  These feature 150 prospects.   Some are well known, and some really aren’t.   I guess that’s part of the beauty of Bowman.  You won’t really know how good a release it was for a few years.  Which future stars may be hiding in this release?

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