It seems like it's become a tradition to open up a hobby box of baseball cards on my birthday, something I don't usually do unless it's around Topps Heritage release time or the holidays. Other than that, I try not to make too many expensive hobby box expenses. Instead, I attempt to stick to retail when I have an itch for fresh wax.
Last year on my birthday, I went for a bit of an older box and opened up a 2014 Topps Gypsy Queen hobby box with my Dad that eventually proved to be quite successful. This year, as hinted in my post on Sunday, I planned on doing the same thing as last year, this time with a jumbo hobby box of 2018 Topps Chrome.
Though my actual birthday isn't for another couple of days, I figured splurging for the Chrome jumbo box back on Saturday would be better than later this week solely because of the fact that I might not have enough time to go to my LCS any other day.
For those of you who don't know, a Chrome jumbo box consists of 12 packs with 13 cards per pack and guarantees you 5 on-card autographs. Let's see how I did.
Considering most of what one pulls out of a box is going to be base cards, I was glad that I was able to find some, including these 2 rookies, that I need in order to complete my 2018 Topps Chrome base set. With the addition of the J.P. Crawford and Dominic Smith cards, among others, I'm officially down to just 3 remaining cards to complete the base set (Miguel Gomez, Gleyber Torres, and Aaron Altherr).
Due to the jumbo pack format, you also receive 1 refractor card per pack for a grand total of 12 different non-numbered refractors throughout the entire 12-pack box. While I wasn't so lucky as to hit a big name rookie refractor, I did end up pulling a couple nice veteran players like Aaron Judge shown at the top of this post as well as Justin Turner, the Dodgers' heroic 3rd baseman from game 2 and Kyle Schwarber, a player I collect.
Similarly, the non-numbered prism parallels are also relatively common in hobby boxes, falling at 1:2 packs as opposed to the 1-per pack refractors. Though I have never truly liked these refractors and have always thought of them as a way to incorporate more cards into the product, I happened to hit 6 pretty decent players, including an awesome card of Richard Urena and a rookie card of one of the Dodgers' many hot young players, Alex Verdugo.
Negatives are another example of a non-numbered refractor/parallel in Topps Chrome that I could do without, though they do happen to look insanely cool. The silver coloring throughout the card looks far more apparent in-person, and even though I didn't hit a huge name Negative refractor, I happen to find these cards some of the coolest looking cards in the entire Topps Chrome product, and that's definitely saying something.
As for the numbered refractors, I must say I had higher expectations than what I actually pulled. I ended up pulling the same number of numbered refractors out of my regular Topps Chrome hobby box at The National, so I was hoping that a jumbo box would at least deliver 3 numbered refractors, if not 4.
The green Lucas Giolito is numbered to 99 and the purple Raudy Read is numbered to 299. There are definitely better players out there than the 2 I pulled, but at least one of them is a rookie card.
Even though I didn't end up hitting the best refractor cards, numbered or non-numbered, I'm glad to report that I landed cards that I needed from each of the 4 2018 Topps Chrome insert sets throughout this box. For starters, I was lucky enough to pull 4 cards I needed from the Freshman Flash insert set which is devoted to big-name rookies of this year. Among others, I landed cards of Francisco Mejia and Victor Robles, both of whom are expected to become breakout players within the next few seasons.
Though the names weren't quite as big as they were in Freshman Flash, pulling the Joe Jimenez and Franklin Barreto Future Stars inserts put me 1 step closer to completing this 20-card insert set geared more towards 2nd or 3rd-year players on the brink of becoming baseball's next wave of stars. I also pulled an Alex Bregman Future Stars insert which happens to be a duplicate but is available for trade if anyone wants it.
I haven't yet checked the pack odds, but I'm fairly certain the Superstar Sensations inserts are slightly rarer than the rest of the inserts from the set, hence why I only pulled 2 in the entire box. Like the Future Stars cards, one of the Superstar Sensations (Bryce Harper) was a duplicate and is available for trade, but the Francisco Lindor card, on the other hand, was a need for that insert set as well as one of my favorite cards that I've seen from the set thus far.
As for the autographs, I definitely can't say I did too well with those either. Before opening the box, I had only heard of 2 of these guys (Garrett Cooper and Giovanny Gallegos), and barely anything about them. 3 non-numbered pitcher autos, 1 non-numbered hitter auto of a Miami Marlin, and a numbered autograph (005/250) of a Minnesota Twins pitcher aren't exactly ideal given what a 2018 Topps Chrome jumbo box costs.
With that being said, I can look back to the Topps Chrome autos pulled at The National a couple months ago and almost forget about not pulling any big names here. Even with this massive Topps Chrome purchase for my birthday not panning out how I originally wanted, I could still sell one or both of the autographs from Cleveland and definitely make the money back.
Plus, it was a fun break nevertheless, and if I got upset every time I had a bad hobby box, I don't know what I would possibly do.
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