This year's Topps flagship design reminds me more and more of recycled late 2000s era Bowman designs. It's pleasant enough, but nothing immediately grabs your attention. The card just fades into the background relying on the actual photograph to do most of the heavy lifting. Some photos work very well and are eye catching masterpieces. Others... not so much.
The cards are all game action, except for the posed shots on the two All-Star cards. So much action, in fact, that it gets tiring. The only break in the action is Adrian Nieto's card, which shows him standing near home plate with his catching gear on, pointing at something, possibly directing Felipe Paulino to the opposing team, where they hastily agreed to take him in trade in exchange for eleven Wiffle balls. Other than that, it's all running and pitching and batting. I think I sweated out five pounds just watching all that action on cardboard.
The White Sox have twelve cards in the set, not including variations and inserts.
US-37 - Leury Garcia
US-62 - Adam Eaton
US-100 - Jose Abreu
US-156 - Ronald Belisario
US-170 - Matt Davidson
US-232 - Scott Carroll
US-239 - Jose Abreu AS
US-252 - Adrian Nieto
US-277 - Chris Sale
US-309 - Alexei Ramirez AS
US-325 - Jose Abreu
US-330 - Daniel Webb
Leury Garcia, Matt Davidson and Daniel Webb have sparkle variations. Adam Eaton has a photo and a Sabermetric variation. There are also red (Target), blue (Wal-Mart), red hot foil, gold (/2014), green camo (/99), black (/63), pink (/50), clear (/10), platinum (/1), and black, cyan, magenta and yellow printing plate (/1) parallels of each card. I have a love/hate relationship with parallels and variations. The collecting side of me likes them, but the completist side of me strongly dislikes them.
Overall, it typical Topps. If you've collected either of the previous two series for 2014, you know exactly what you're getting from Topps. The inserts may change, but the game is still the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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