My First Taste of 2015 Topps!

Hey guys, Drew back here! Last week, I gave myself a little love and picked up a few 2015 Topps hanger boxes and a retail jumbo pack at Target! I've been seeing the new set all over the Internet and although I wasn't a fan at first glance, my opinions took a complete 360 turn in just about no time. So, Mr. Puig and I had a nice date in the Target parking lot during my break between classes in the midst of a snow storm (nothing new there).

My first card of 2015 was of Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford. The Giants are my second favorite team now after visiting San Francisco last summer, and I like this kid a lot. I'm more than content to start the year in this fashion.

Jumbo Pack:

It may not be a classy design, but its the way Topps has had to go with their flagship product for years now. In this age of advanced technology, it was only right that the product should be designed with color and flair to depict the time we live in. The photography is excellent as it has been for a few years now, and I absolutely love how there the border colors match the team colors! Hopefully this means we're slowly working towards less pointless parallels. My first Yankee card is of now ex-Yankee Martin Prado. I was bummed to lose him this offseason, but I'm excited to see how Eovaldi will fare in the Bronx next season.

My one gripe with the new product is something that has been a consistent Topps downfall of mine in recent memory: too many inserts. I like the concepts of some of them; particularly the Robbed in Left, Free Agent 40, and First Pitches, but the rest do absolutely nothing for me. The Archetypes cards look cool but have no meaning whatsoever in my opinion. And god- whoever decided to put Austin Mahone in a card set needs to reexamine their life choices (I'll definitely take the Jack White card though).

Hanger Box 1:

Boy oh boy do I love that Jeter card. Not only was it so appropriate to give him card #1 this year, but the picture to top it off just astounds me. I wouldn't be surprised if that is still one of my all time favorite cards years down the road. Another small complaint though is with the "Future Stars" cards, and I think a lot of you have vouched for this earlier. The foil does not look good at all. I'm so glad Topps went without foil for most of the base cards this year, but that was really unnecessary. All or nothing, guys.

I didn't pull anything spectacular in this box, but it was fun to go through. The Jackie Robinson inserts are neat, but I feel like the days of having a full insert set all given to one player should be coming to an end soon. The parallel I pulled of Sal Perez is beautiful looking, and has me excited for Topps Chrome!

Hanger Box 2:

I ran into some serious collation problems between the jumbo pack and this box in particular. Of the 157 total base cards I added that day, there were over 30 doubles including a few triples. With a set 350 cards deep, I shouldn't have come home with that many doubles, but what can you do. Those Hunter Pence and Cole Hamels shots are really sweet though; again, excellent photography.

We conclude with another relatively underwhelming collection of inserts. The dual past/present cards have passed their prime, but this year's Inspired Play is certainly the nicest design they've used for that template yet. The gold cards stand out this year more than in year's passed, and the history cards are interesting too.

Topps is never going to please everyone; and while I'm torn on some things with this product, I do really like it as a whole. I doubt I'll be buying much more due to financial constraints, but I'm happy with what I came home with. Over anything else, I wanted some cards to send out TTM, and I wanted to see the base cards for myself.

Very well done Topps, you're heading in the right path without a doubt! See Ya!