For the Same Price as 3 Topps Living Cards

For those of you who don't already know, Topps began releasing a set called Topps Living a little over a week ago. Basically, the set includes 3 new players each week and will not repeat a player unless they change teams. The cards are hand-drawn and printed in the 1953 Topps design

I contemplated buying the inaugural set, but I eventually decided against it for a number of reasons. 1. It's 15 dollars for 3 cards. 2. The 2 players other than Judge were Joe Panik and Nick Castellanos. 3. I knew I could find better cards on COMC.

So, I decided to go through with that and browse COMC for exactly 15 dollars worth of cards that I knew would make me more satisfied than 3 Topps Living cards. And I ended up spending $15.04, a whopping 4 cents over budget.

You already saw the Randy Johnson SP from 2017 Gypsy Queen above. These were 1 per hobby box last year, but I wanted to buy the Johnson solely because he was shown on the Expos. This card set me back $3.75, but no worries, I still ended up buying 5 more cards

If you count these as cards, that is. I've been eyeing these 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes Sportdiscs for a while now, especially after spotting one of Brandon Phillips when taking my player collection inventory. These unique looking cards/discs were available starting at around 80 cents a piece, but I knew I wanted to pick some up of players I collect, one being Andrew McCutchen.

The next 2 I picked up were of catchers, one of whom is shown fielding on the scan. Jason Varitek is a player who I've been collecting for a while because he's a Red Sox, but I haven't been able to add many cards to his collection due to him not being featured in many products. The same can not be said for Buster Posey, who is very prominent at the card show and especially in the dime bins.

Given how small the backs are, I think Panini did an excellent job with them. Although the scan didn't capture the back that well, they include the players stat-line in a couple of categories along with their position and number. Of course, they needed a lot of space for copyrights and all that, but the rest of the back actually looks pretty good for the little space they had.

I was very pleased with the couple of cards I had found thus far. But, I knew I wanted to find something special to make this purchase be better than any Topps Living card purchase.

And that, I did by picking up this serial numbered Red Sox autograph from last year's Topps Gallery set. Eduardo Rodriguez is not the biggest name, but he's a pretty young pitcher who has shown flashes of brilliance during his couple of seasons spent with the Red Sox. The autograph is a sticker auto, but it isn't that noticeable and actually looks very nice both in person and online. Best of all, although it's hard to see on the card, it's actually numbered 83/99 because it's a green parallel. Amazingly, this card was $3.75, the exact same price as the Randy Johnson SP. I know it's hit or miss in terms of buying this card of E-Rod, but I think this purchase can pay off in the future, and for $3.75, I'm willing to take that risk.

But even if E-Rod fizzles, I still believe this was a better value than Topps Living.