A Queen's Comfort

In these troubling and uncertain times, the best form of comfort, for some people, might just be a box of Baseball cards with game 7 of the 2016 World Series playing on TV.

On what would've been 2020 opening day, MLB went all out to please its fans, airing 1 re-run of an iconic game for each team on various streaming platforms. They've also used the MLB network to broadcast iconic matchups which is how I recorded the previously mentioned World Series game.

Though non-essential businesses have been ordered to close in Massachusetts, deliveries can still be made. I don't want, by any means, to order a surplus of unnecessary goods and overwhelm workers during this time.

Because of that, the 2020 Topps Gypsy Queen box that I got from Blowout will likely be my final online purchase for quite some time.

Like I do with most products, I'll start off by overviewing a single pack of 2020 Topps Gypsy Queen before, ultimately, getting to a full recap of the hobby box. I don't envision writing that until the weekend since I'm only halfway through at the moment.

But even from the pack design alone, you can tell a lot of attention to detail was exercised in the creation of this product. Bryce Harper wouldn't have been my first choice for the cover, but the color combinations work beautifully together and with his off-white jersey as well.

Each pack contains 8 cards, and there are 24 packs in a hobby box. Gypsy Queen has always been one of my favorite products, and I especially enjoy the direction the set has gone in since last year. Now, let's take a look at the 2020 release together.

#96 Xander Bogaerts

The Boston Red Sox may have traded the face of the franchise as well as their #2 starting pitcher to Los Angeles over the offseason, but seeing Xander Bogaerts' card reminds me of the dynamic duo that he and Rafael Devers were last season. Thus, I'm provided with a little bit of hope that this season is going to turn out alright.

Onto the set design which uses the same color as both the 2016 and 2018 sets. With all that the cards had going on last year, it's refreshing to see something a little simpler.

We have the GQ logo in the top left and the team logo in the bottom right along with the typical information that you'd expect to see on a Baseball card.

The only unnecessary element, in my opinion, is the team name; the small text combined with the presence of the logo renders it relatively pointless.

#192 Ryan O'Hearn

Admittedly, Ryan O'Hearn was somebody I was hoping I wouldn't have to run into now that the 2019 rookie class is in their 2nd season. His base cards and autographs, along with a few other players (Cedric Mullins), flooded last year's releases.

Hopefully, if nothing else, there will be a new crop of players to perform this task in 2020, so I'll at least be tired of new players rather than the same ones as last season.

#131 Colin Moran

The card backs are incredibly similar to what we saw from Gypsy Queen a year ago but with one major improvement; the card numbers are actually legible, not like the small digits, that Topps forced us to read in 2019.

This time around, you can easily see, for example, that Colin Moran is #131 in a set of 320 cards, but last year, the text was unnecessarily small. Even though the backs don't differ that much from one another, I applaud Topps so much for the change they made that I'm willing to look past it.

#250 Justin Verlander

Nice player collection addition here, though I must say I'm not particularly stoked to acquire new Astros cards these days.

#FTM-20 Fortune Teller Mini Aaron Judge

Since a massive overhaul was done on the set in 2017, a lot has changed surrounding the Gypsy Queen product. One of the constants through all of the shifts, however, has been the Fortune Teller minis.

The back of each card predicts with the particular player will achieve in the subsequent year. In this case, the "fortune teller" envisions that Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge will bounce back from 2 injury-plagued seasons by winning the AL Gold Glove and Silver Slugger.

#247 Ronald Guzman

There's not a whole lot for me to say about Ronald Guzman as I'm not very familiar with him, though I do find it interesting that Topps chose to have his leg extend past the frame of the image.

#74 T.J. Zeuch

#260 Zack Collins

Not to be confused with Zach Collins of the Portland Trail Blazers, White Sox catcher Zack Collins is expected to be yet another key contributor to this resurging team in 2020.

Overall, though I certainly have to see more before comparing and contrasting the 2, there are a lot of similarities between 2019 and 2020 Gypsy Queen, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

After all, Topps finally established an identity for the set last year after years of uncertainty, so now that they've got it down pat, I wouldn't mind another year of playing it safe before taking another risk.

2019 Panini Donruss in a Nutshell

I initially had zero plans to recap or give my thoughts on the 2019 Panini Donruss product, but I've witnessed a few different bloggers share their opinions on the set over the last few days. Alas, I figured I'd join the party and summarize the set in a nutshell based on the blaster box that I opened last month. 

2019 is the 6th straight year that Panini has released their revived attempt at the Donruss brand, and it's become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the set designs. I will say that this year's design has a bit more personality, and I'm fond of the throwback-style Donruss logo in the top left corner.

The no-logos almost go hand-in-hand with Panini products, and I've honestly grown accustomed to the absence of team names and logos. Truth be told, my main problem with Panini Donruss has never been the fact that Panini doesn't have the MLB license. Rather, I have issues with the product itself.

As I alluded to earlier, I purchased a blaster box of 2019 Panini Donruss last month, a decision that didn't seem right from the start. There's far more value, oddly enough, in the value packs rather than the blaster box.

I could've gotten far more cards for the same price had I bought 4 value packs instead, but the promise of 8 exclusive parallels in the blaster appealed to me, so I bit the bullet and tested my luck in an effort to sample what this product has to offer.

The set design is probably the best that we've ever seen from this product, but that's not saying all too much. It's more of a modern take than what we've seen in the past, thanks to the diagonals in the top left and bottom righthand corners, but the respective team colors are still profoundly featured. 

I realize that Panini can only use the city name, but I'm struggling to understand the reasoning behind the faded city name and position at the bottom of the card. If Panini can't mention the actual team name, the least they can do is make the city name and player's position a bit more noticeable.

Like the 2018 release, this year's Panini Donruss set is variation-centric as they tend to fall at roughly 1 per pack. However, unlike the helpful hint (white baseball vs black baseball) that indicate which cards are variations in 2018, no such indication exists on this year's card backs.

Because of that, I've been relying on the COMC set checklist when adding some of these cards to my online PC inventories. Cards that seem like regular base cards, as it turns out, are actually variations.

All it would take is a subtle change, but I wish that Panini would've done something similar to what they did in 2018 as it pertains to distinguishing the variations from regular base cards.

Card backs have always been a major weakness of Panini, but I actually like the ones from this year. The orange/yellow color is reminiscent of the card backs from the classics cards in the 2018 Chronicles set. 

As always, Panini could have utilized the space much better, and I spot a couple of places in which they could include a little detail to separate base cards from variations.

This year's Diamond Kings cards are in the style of the 1985 Donruss set as Panini continues to recreate the Donruss base sets from the 80s as part of their product, beginning with the inaugural release in 1981.

The '85 Donruss set is extremely underrated, for it makes excellent use of black borders which can be a daunting task. While Panini did a stellar job with these cards, the card backs could very well be some of the worst that I've ever seen in my life.

Starting in, I believe, 2015, Panini made an effort to recreate previous Donruss base set designs initially released in the 1980s. This year, it's 1985's turn, meaning we finally get to see black borders on Baseball cards once more. 

While they weren't perfect in recreating the set, I do appreciate the effort and, nevertheless, I really do cherish these cards. I didn't end up with any major names, or, come to think of it, any guys that I collect, but I included a few of the nicer ones above.

Even though this year's rookie class isn't too strong, 90% of the '85 cards that I pulled were rookies, including 2 different ones of the same player, the April 2019 AL Rookie of the Month, Brandon Lowe.

As promised, I received 1 8-card pack of blaster box exclusive parallels. However, I soon noticed that there were 2 different types of parallels featured in the pack. I won't go over each and every card that I pulled, but I will give an overview and show the highlights. 

The first type was a holo purple parallel, a cross between the rainbow foil cards of Series 1 and a traditional parallel card. I pulled 4 of these but didn't end up with anything notable. 

The highlight was likely an '85 card of a player I can't seem to remember more so because of how much I like the '85 cards rather than how cool the purple parallels are.

It's not that I dislike the purple foil parallels. Rather, I just didn't end up with any cool cards. The 2nd group of exclusive cards, the rapture parallels, were definitely my favorites.

From the moment when I first laid eyes on these distinctive rapture parallels, I was incredibly impressed. Here, there are a creative and interesting group of parallels available as a retail exclusive that totally distracts me from the fact that these cards have no logos. 

I'm not sure if these rapture parallels exist for base cards in addition to inserts, but the 4 cards that I pulled were all some sort of insert card. The Dominators of Miguel Andujar is perfect for the parallel while the Kershaw is an excellent PC addition. 

However, it was the Juan Soto Nicknames card that gets my vote for not only my favorite parallel but the best card of the entire blaster box. Because I opened the exclusive parallel pack first, the Soto insert parallel was the very first card I pulled. 

From that moment on, nothing else could match this colorful, inovative, and interesting card. I guess that's part of the reason why some elements of this product disappointed me; it started off on such a high after I pulled the Soto card.

All in all, I wouldn't rule out 2019 Panini Donruss entirely. There are some fabulous elements, like the 1985 cards and these funky parallels, but Panini missed several opportunities to make this set more user-friendly. 

I fully expect to see 2019 Panini Donruss in the dime bins for months and even years to come, and I won't stay from it completely. 

I'll just have to remember to check every single card that I buy online to see if it's some sort of variation or not.

(Technically) My First Pack of the Year

If you count the silver pack that I opened yesterday as an actual set and not just a promotion than I suppose that quick pack opening would claim the title of the first pack I opened of the year. 

However, if we're going strictly off of sets and not counting promotional items than I suppose I'm actually opening my first pack of cards of the year today with my first 14-card pack from 2019 Topps Series 1 hobby.

Topps changed the number of cards per jumbo, hobby, and retail packs as well as blaster packs, hanger boxes, and likely value packs as well. This is likely due to their increasing of production of the Flagship set, resulting in fewer cards per hobby and jumbo box than there were in years past.

The difference wasn't too big of a deal for me, and I've been eager to get my hands on this release for months now. This year, I went for a whole hobby box of the set for a very good price at my LCS where, in previous years, I've simply purchased a couple blasters at the very most.

I'm trying to make the 24-pack hobby box last as long as I can since it's not every day that I get to open new packs of cards. Therefore, I'll be saving the full box recap for tomorrow while opening pack #1 today, allowing me to give my complete thoughts on the set design, photography, card backs, and more. 

It's always somewhat of a big deal to see whose card I pull first from Series 1, and I happen to remember the last couple years though not much before that. Here's a quick list of the first card pulled from the last few years.

2017; Andrew Cashner

2018; Adieny Hechavarria

And the first card pulled from 2019 Topps is...

#150 Aaron Judge

Aaron Judge! As you can tell from my 2017 and 2018 first cards, I'm not too used to pulling big names with my first card of a Series 1 pack. I had pretty great card collecting seasons in the years where I pulled some middle of the road names, so I'll be interested to see what 2019 has in store for me now that I've pulled Aaron Judge as my first card of the year.

#183 Freddie Freeman

As for the set design, I like it a lot more than I originally thought I would. Many people have pointed out how the cards are reminiscent of the 1982 Topps set which is something I definitely notice as well. 

With that being said, there are a few unique elements that help 2019 Topps stand on its own. Some, like the stellar photo variety, are great. Others, like the last name being on top of the first, don't really make much sense

#77 J.D. Martinez

The card backs are definitely one of the strongest points of the entire set. With full career stats making a return for the first time since 2016, Topps is relying less on the head-scratching social media usernames that they still feel the need to include. Instead, the dynamic card backs somewhat resemble the fronts while also reminding me slightly of the backs from 2018 Topps Big League.

#188 Matt Davidson

The half borders are definitely better than no borders, so Topps is at least making progress by steadily improving the design after the disaster that was 2016 Topps. I still don't quite understand why Topps can't just leave the picture alone and not have a weird disco pattern underneath the border, but I'll give them a break for improving on the Flagship set once again.

#50 Mookie Betts

Just like last year, I landed 2 different Red Sox cards out of my first pack of Topps Series 1. While this year features the 2 best hitters on their 2018 World Series team, Martinez and Betts, last year featured an insert of Mookie as well as a card of starting pitcher Rick Porcello. 

So far, Judge, Martinez, and Betts have come out of the first 5 cards of the pack. It's looking to me like 2019 will be a great year for card collecting.

#324 Logan Morrison

One thing I instantly took notice of was the improved quality and creativity with the photos on many of the cards so far. While past years would feature the same, boring pictures time and time again, I'm already seeing more landscape cards and more unique images than I have seen in many years. 

Pack #1 wasn't a fluke, by the way. The rest of the box features even more incredible and creative shots.

#220 Alex Colome

As I mentioned earlier, the card backs are truly something special as they feature just the right amount of color, less than 2017 and more than 2018. Full stats are back, finally, but my one issue with the card backs is the same concern that I have about the fronts. I'm struggling to see why the last name would be placed above the first. Simply put, it just doesn't make much sense.

#51 Michael Brantley 150th Anniversary Parallel

To celebrate 150 years of professional Baseball, Topps, among other things, is featuring 150th-anniversary parallels that can be found in 1 in every 6 packs. The gold foil Topps logo and the 150 years stamp are the only differences between this and a base card. 

Nothing for nothing, but either go full out with a gold foil design or something special with these cards. Otherwise, don't bother with a parallel that's merely a stamp in the bottom left corner.

#216 Bring It In

And just like that, we're back to base cards. Last year, I could open 10 or 12-card packs and expect 2 or maybe even 3 inserts or parallels. Now, the cards per pack, at least for the hobby packs, have been increased to 14, yet only 1 parallel card was found in the pack. 

I understand their need to produce more of the set, but it's unusual to only find 1 insert or parallel in a 14-card pack. I can't help but wonder if it's the same for retail as well.

#331 Cesar Hernandez

This year, the Phillies cards feature a new logo, the blue liberty bell with the Phillies team name in front. The new logo looks like a near-perfect fit on the cards and is definitely an improvement over the insignia they'd been using in past years. 

Also, notice the excellent image on this card. If nothing else, Topps is stepping up their game as far as the pictures go.

#239 Christian Yelich League Leaders

This is the 3rd year in a row that Topps has included individual league leaders cards rather than a combo card with the top 3 in major stat categories for each league. The more I think about it, the less a fan I become of the individual league leaders cards. 

It just doesn't seem all that necessary, for example, to have 3 different cards for the 2018 NL batting average leaders. Last time I checked, it worked out just fine when they were all combined onto 1 card.

#296 Lewis Brinson

The Marlins are another team to feature a new logo on their 2019 Topps Series 1 cards. Considering the total rebuild that the franchise is going under, I suppose they need something to excite the fans they have remaining. I personally didn't have a problem with the old logo, but I suppose I'm partial to the new one as well.

#337 Mychal Givens

I don't have anything to say about Mychal Givens. I don't have anything to say about this card either. Moving on to the 14th and final card of the pack.

#200 Jacob deGrom

2018 AL MVP, 2018 NL MVP, and the 2018 NL Cy Young award winners all in my first pack from 2019 Topps Series 1. Things appear to be looking up in 2019, and it's not just thanks to the cards I pulled in my first pack.

The design is definitely an improvement over the 2018 set which basically put you to sleep after 1 pack. Topps has been gradually making the sets better since 2016 by featuring better photographs, borders, and a cleaner design.

One thing I'm certainly excited for is 2019 Topps Chrome. These cards look awesome, and I'm stoked to see the chrome versions come late July or early August.