Monday, April 11, 2016

2016 Topps Opening Day

Another year, another Topps Opening Day release. This release may be just popular enough to stick around each year, but it's not all bad. A truncated release of the flagship set, it combines a lot of base cards from series one and peppers the set with a few previews of series two players.

Is this release necessary? Yes and no.

The Opening Day base set really just becomes a parallel handpicked set of the flagship release, but the upsides generally outweigh the downsides. The major upside is that, at $1 a pack for seven cards, this is a very affordable option for kids. This is usually a gateway pack to bigger and better sets. I hate to put it like that, but it does give novice collectors a very approachable way to get their hands wet into the world of card collecting. It also has fun and kid-friendly options for inserts.

The White Sox have four cards in the base set and a mascot card.

OD-55 - Carlos Rodon
OD-57 - Chris Sale
OD-170 - Jose Quintana
OD-198 - Avisail Garcia
M-21 - Mascot (Southpaw)

Opening Day is definitely no collectors' definition of a perfect set, but it doesn't need to be either. I commend the set for being very affordable and kid-friendly. It also gives a nice preview of a few players not represented in the flagship series one. Those are really the only reason for this set to exist. For some people, that's enough.

4 comments:

JediJeff said...

Oh no - that last card is not Southpaw. It's "mascot".

(Frigging Topps)

Steve Gierman said...

True. "Mascot" is the only card I haven't found by opening packs. :-)

Brett Alan said...

I just found "Mascot", in one of the lamer packs I've opened. I'm dumbfounded as why one would have the rights to use a picture of a mascot but not his name. And, for that matter, why you'd WANT to have a card of a mascot if you can't use his name. Is any kid going to be thrilled with that? (Apparently 5 of the 25 mascots have no name on the card. smh)

Steve Gierman said...

Call me a completist. Topps was able to use the Southpaw name in earlier releases. I wonder what happened to change that.

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