2013 Topps Hanger Box with Odd Insert Ratio?

I am so happy to be the first........twentieth.......one hundred and seventy-eighth blogger to bring you a look at fresh 2013 Topps product.

Bought a hanger box at Walmart like everybody has in the last two days and came across a very odd selection of inserts. More about that later.

Got one of these..........

 .....and immediately tried out the website.

Here is what came up(I added the site to the image):

topps.com/thechase

Guess I'll worry about that later.

Here is a common card to show you what they look like:

One thing that sticks out to me is the lines added behind the team logo.

I had not noticed those at all in all the images I had seen until today.

It really makes me more excited about the cards now because I thought it was just white space but now it really fills out the design.

Here's a scan of a card back:

Not too bad.

Kept the baseball field motif from the front which ties the two sides together which Crackin' Wax pointed out in his video. And he also pointed out a different feel to the cards, which I can attest to. They feel a bit thinner.

With my eyes as bad as they are some of the bios and the Career Chase fact are hard to read but not a terrible overall back.

Here are some of the base set cards which are either stars/rookies or just plain awesome shots:

Favorite card of the year!

Rockin' the stirrups and, apparently, a home run

Great color coordination here-and logos too!

Dodgers seem to have the best color match

Bad year, great card

Clean looking card!

Beast or bust. You never know.

Another gritty player for Arizona.

Here's to good health!

A technicality is not vindication nor a reason to act as if it is.

You're lucky I put you on here Ryan!

Here is the 1972 style mini I got:

I love this set. I was born in 1972 and only have one card from the real set.

By collecting this set I will claim this as my birth year set.

Here's the back:

So much better than last years 1987 set.

Full stats and uses the true color from the original set. Last year's backs were way too dark.

Here is a Chasing the Dream insert:

Which reminds me of this set from 2001 Topps:

Thick card is.......thick.

And I also got two cool Emerald parallels:

I like the Emeralds but am going to grab any and all Pink parallels that I can. They are mesmerizing to me since it is such a different choice of color than we are used to seeing.

Now here's where the oddly worded title of the post comes in regarding odd insert ratios(still odd).

I got one silver foiled Chasing History card:

Nice card. Looks great in person.

But then I got all these:

 

All four of these cards are gold foil with holographic backgrounds and are parallels of the silver foil cards.

The thing is, why did I get four of them in one hanger pack?

I assume everybody got these in abundance in their hanger boxes but if you didn't I would like to know why I did. Maybe the sorter goofed up and tossed them in their together?

Whatever it was I'm glad I have them as they are great in person.

Here's a picture of the shininess:

Shiny!!

Definitely might go after this set too.

Overall, I think 2013 Topps is very solid. Did not see any thing that would give me pause about buying a ton of it throughout this year.

Except for the Camouflage parallel. That's just awful.

The good thing about the SP cards is that they are fairly easy to spot since they all involve players leaning into the stands to catch balls. I believe the name is Out Of Bounds Baseballs(OOBB).

Of course, I am calling them Baseballs Out Of Bounds(BOOBS).

Bought a blaster box too and will break it down and to say it is a letdown from the hanger box is an understatement. But the Patch card I pulled evened it up a bit.

Well, go bust some packs! :)

Topps Without Borders-1999

I am removing the borders from the Topps designs year by year.

This time it is 1999.

With border:

And without border:

Side by side:

I never was super fond of the whole gold borders in this set. It seemed like the borders were too thick and the actual gold tone was a bit off.

The gold curve at the bottom threw the whole card off, to me at least.

The borderless version has a nice, clean, classic look to it. Simple and elegant.

If they had put the position of the player in the lower left corner it would have been perfect.

I would have loved it if Topps had used this version instead of the one they went with.

Up next, 1998 Topps. Which, surprise, has a gold border.

3 Blasters of 2012 Topps Chromage

Picked up 3 blasters of 2012 Topps Chrome at Walmart a day ago and seemed to do okay.

The best part is that somebody put them in a spot that had held $5.98 boxes of some other cards. When I took them up to the register they said they were $12.00 but gave one of them to me at the $6.00 price. Thanks Walmart!(Last time I ever actually say anything nice about Walmart!)

The extra pack in each blaster has the 4 purple refractors.

I took pictures of the cards instead of scanning them. The shininess doesn't come through in a scan.

Here's the goodies, starting with the purple refractors:

Love this card!

An orange refractor of a free agent in Boras limbo:

I think this card is from a stack of cards that was next to the cards I opened, but I'll leave it here since it looks cool ;)

Some regular chrome stars and rookies:

Chrome refractors:

 

Three Xfractor shinies:

And last but not least, a really cool Die Cut:

Overall, I really like 2012 Chrome but with 2013 coming out today these will probably be my last boxes of Chrome.

Forgot I need to wade through all this chrome to check for SP's.

Fun boxes to break and a great price point. They came to about $1.50 a pack which works for me.

I have a couple of hanger boxes of 2012 Topps to crack open and I will post those when I destroy them soon.

Did you know 2013 Topps came out today? (You don't say?)