A trip to the Stadium

I love Baseball Picture Cards. They are cheap entertainment ... or are they?

I was quite pleased to discover some brand new Stadium Club Baseball Cards on the shelf of my local Big Box earlier today. What I was most pleased about was discovering I could purchase the single hanger pack you see just above. It has been several years since my local Big Box stocked this product in anything but $30 "blaster" boxes.

So let's rip the pack and I will somewhat 'live-stream' the results as we go, one card at a time:

Boom.

First Card, Best Card? Quite possible. The baseball player with the far-away eyes is always a nice look and this will be an excellent entry in the Baseball Card biography of a probable-in-a-few-more-days-right-now Rookie of the Year. Go, go Joe Charbonneau!

This is what everyone wants from a pack of Topps Baseball Cards and this pack - Delivers.

I quite like this design. Player name, a splash of team color, which is on the unusual side for Stadium Club, and a discrete addition of the Position. Everything I need on the front of a Baseball Card and nothing extra, nor anything overly distracting. Good Job.

I have no idea who Jackson Merrill is aside from knowing he had a heckuva Rookie season for the Padres. The players for the West Coast teams are always super mysterious to me, which is a big reason I buy Baseball Cards. They're not pure entertainment for me; they are more like a form of info-tainment. This is my very first Jackson Merrill Baseball Card so let's see what the back of the card can inform me about him -

All the bases are covered here, again without any distractions, and no wasted space either, unless you count all that stupid boiler-plate legalese at the bottom. I could rant about that a little but such is the society we live in. 

I like the little detail of the "pick" number although that is usually only of much interest for the first round players. And then every first round player is just about guaranteed a Topps RC at some point.

A back-of-card photo is a very good place for a portrait image. But then, so is the front of a Baseball Card:

This very nice card, like plenty of Baseball Cards lately, creates some questions for me that the card can't answer. But that's not the fault of Topps, because that traces to my surprise during the recent World Series to see the name "Mark Leiter" on the screen.

Wait, what? He is still pitching? Why haven't my Baseball Cards told me about this? Nope, not that Mark Leiter, nor Al Leiter. Mark Leiter, Jr. appeared out of the Yankees bullpen and I was, somewhat as usual with oh too many relievers outside of the AL Central, in complete ignorance about him. Mark Leiter Jr. has pitched in 5 MLB seasons but has only 3 Baseball Cards to his credit, 2 of them from Update sets I never completed. Such is life in the bullpen.

Jack Leiter, as it turns out, courtesy of Baseball Reference, is Mark Leiter Jr.'s cousin and is the son of Al Leiter. The back of this brand new Stadium Club card untangles none of that; a bit surprising in that that would have been a lot easier for Topps Card Back Writer to discuss, as compared to looking up the average speed of his fastball in his very first MLB game, which is even more useless trivia than found on the average back-of-the-baseball-card. Oh, well.

I do like any set that mixes action images with posed portraits though, so we're off to a good start. Next -

Wow, another Rookie Card! Bazinga!

Like oh so many Rookie Card cards, this one creates questions, too. I remember learning a little about Jared Jones the old-fashioned way, by listening to Joe Block and Bob Walk during Pirates Spring Training 8 months ago. This brand new Rookie Card for him can't quite answer my questions, which revolve around how'd-that-turn-out. For that I will need one of his 2025 Baseball Cards, maybe just a few more months from now.

Round 2, pick 44, by the way. How does that happen amongst 30 MLB teams? Something about "Supplemental" picks that nobody needs to worry about. See how quickly that becomes useless information, after the first draft round?

Nice card though. I'm starting to think the Pirates might not have a regular "Road Grey" uniform any more? All I know is, Topps seems to quite prefer using their black uniform which is maybe considered their "Road Alternate" perhaps. Works for me. Can we go 4-for-4 on this hot RC action?

Vet!

I do like an "On Deck" card; I was happy to see one in Update just the other day. Stadium Club is one those checklists that mixes current and retired players of course. This card notes that the 1990 Reds went "wire-to-wire" on their way to a World Series win. I did not know that first factoid. Good job, Topps Card Back Writer. Let's shuffle onwards:

Mr. Red?

Is there a Mr. Red? I just made that up. I guess it wouldn't be a set of Stadium Club without a new Johnny Bench card. I'm not going to bother to look but I would expect this card might be here because it would give heft to the autograph checklist, perhaps, even if Johnny signed just 5 cards. It's not like anyone would ever know the total. Be that as it may, despite this being a neato Batting Cage photo (which are 100% a thing of the ever more distant past on Baseball Cards) this is just a good Baseball Card. I don't collect the Reds or Johnny Bench despite my fond memories of pulling their original 1970s Baseball Cards, so I doubt this card will make the final cut by 9s on my keepers. Maybe the next card will -

Reds Hot Pack!

This card will be a keeper - I love "Look In" images of a Pitcher just before he gets deep into his wind-up. Here, a not quite perfect example of that term for such a photo, but pretty close. This is precisely how things look to a batter, and that creates an extra bit of heft to a Baseball Card image, which is not altogether that common. Action, about to commence:

Everyone's favorite ... or perhaps not? Such a great player. Such an unshakeable memory. I already know I will be quickly scrolling past / ignoring the plentiful long-winded debates that will erupt, oh, about four years after Jose Altuve's final game. I like the sly "cya" via the little "x" on the outfield wall. Brooklyn will never forget. But of course, all 30 teams must be on the checklist -

Hmmm. A nifty combo - an action image, technically, but more of a "candid," which is usually a photo from the dug-out or somewhere off the field of play. So a fine workman-like Baseball Card for a fine perhaps workman-like player. It is thought that Houston might commence a major tear-down, soon, and perhaps Kyle Tucker will play in another uniform sometime in the future. That is something old Donruss cards could help with, as they were some of the only ones I can remember ever to include a key thing about all Baseball players: Contract Status. I would like to see that return, though the logistics of just what card back to include that on amidst a year-round stream of brand new Baseball Cards probably means it will never happen. Maybe if/when Tucker gets a new team, he will (deservedly) become more well-known. Though I'm a little nervous about where this pack is heading, maybe the next card in the pack will gift a new Tucker future, Oujia-board like-

astros hot pack

sad trombone. Though if someone had asked me to pick an Astros player and pick an interesting image for him, I doubt I could top the combo of showing super fantastic Designated Hitter Yordan Alvarez still playing in the field. Well done, Stadium Club. So off to Baseball Reference I go...turns out, he plays a lazy-estimate of kinda 1/3 of his games in the Outfield. Topps Card Back Writer sticks to the much more glitzy offensive accolades though. Let's break this hot pack streakyness, howzabout?

Upside Down Card!

Hit Alert!

Exciting!

Insert.

Regular.

Remember earlier when I name-dropped a famous Rookie-of-the-Year who fell off the map faster than Chris Coghlan? Who? Baseball is a hard game. What's old is perhaps inevitably new again, or something. Not the most memorable insert, no matter how hard the card back tries to convince us we will never forget Corbin Carroll. Maybe if the Diamondbacks had actually won that World Series, he would be on the front of this very pack of Baseball Cards, rather than the player who did. CC is an exciting player; I doubt anyone doesn't want him to re-figure out how to "read the book" the opposition data miners seemed to have created about him in 2024. Let's get back to the regular checklist, shall we?

Parallel Alert!

Just a red parallel, the easiest one to pull; a quick bit of Googling informs me there is one of these in every single $10 "fat" pack. i.e. is totally worthless, though if that was the Jackson Merrill card from the front of the pack, well, yeah, I would be setting that one aside even more carefully. But this is precisely where Stadium Club always falls apart for me, every time. I purchased this pack knowing it would happen. 

Parallels.of.full.bleed.style.cards.are.100%.pointless. Please, make it stop.

I know that will never happen. The vast majority of purchasers of Baseball Cards demand a chance to hit the #311 Mickey Mantle card, every time they open every pack of Baseball Cards, so they can instantly retire happily ever after. So there has to be some way to trick us into thinking that, maybe, we just did.

I now have a copy of card #256 in the checklist, the Rookie Card card for Johan Rojas. But if I were to assemble, i.e. "collect," a full set of the 300 base cards on this checklist - do I have a copy of card #256? Would I just randomly mix in parallels with such a collection? I could, I guess. Would it make any difference? On a binder page, it would. To me.

Enough, enough. I just like memorable Baseball Picture Cards. A washed-out red background takes away from such memories. Is Rojas' hand red now, too? Let's keep it together and shuffle that one to the back of the stack and see what appears:

What trickery is this?

"Pink" parallel.

I used to quite enjoy the pink parallels in Topps Chrome. They appeared 3 per odd hanger pack of 3+1 packs of TC. At least that particularly wasteful-of-plastic format is gone, which is something Topps should really consider now in their products in my opinion - specifically the silliness of all the superfluous wrappers in a "blaster." 

Those enjoyable memories of pink bubble gum are gone now though, as the pink parallels now appear in a blaster of Chrome at the rate of 2/blaster. Given that all of the base cards, except the eventual MVP I guess, are 100% worthless and a blaster costs $40 now, the pink cards sorta cost $20 each, if you buy them lottery ticket style. No thanks.

Now this little gimmick of each package format (an "SKU" in retailese) having some special not-available-elsewhere card in it has come to Stadium Club, which ALREADY had far too many parallels - did I mention yet they are 199% completely useless? 

I totally missed the explanation of the pinks right there on the top of the package when I bought it, oops. I probably would have bought it anyway, just to see what 2024 Stadium Club looks like.

But let's do some financial calculations here. This "pack" has 15 cards in it. The "3 Exclusive Pink Foil Parallels" are part of the 15, not a "bonus." This package of Baseball Cards done costed me $9.99 + 6% sales tax, or $10.59, or 70.6¢ per card.

Just a few years ago, Stadium Club cards cost right around an even 50¢ per card. Yet since every kind of pack in every kind of box of these cards has inserts (acceptable enough, as sometime inserts are very, very good), and those useless parallels. I'll jump the card image reveals here to note that this pack had only 9 base cards. Of the one insert and 5 parallels, none of them are worth any money, which is not why I buy Baseball Cards, at all. Nonetheless, the filler cards promising a possible prize under the scratch ink are just that, filler - if you actually want to build this whole set by purchasing packages of it. That means the 9 base cards thus cost $1.18 - each! Pretty similar to the costs of Topps Chrome.

Let's go check another reality of all this, on that giant buying and selling site we all know, and, essentially, love: eBay. There, a full set of of 300 2024 Topps Stadium Club Baseball Cards currently as I type costs: oh, about $250 - right now - a bit more than I expected when I began this paragraph. 

But a set of 2023 Topps Stadium Club, also of 300 cards, costs only around $60, delivered. That's only 20¢ a card, and 1/6th of the price of the 2024 SC base cards I just purchased.

Opening packages of Baseball Cards is just plain, stupid.

I expect everyone reading this already knows the basics of those numbers, which only ever go ever upwards. For me, it is a good exercise to really take a look at my spending on this info-tainment I enjoy so much. I pretty much knew before I opened this pack of 24 Stadium Club it would be the only pack of the product I would purchase, despite the potential enjoyment the cards coulda/woulda offer.

It is just, well, 6 times smarter to purchase these cards, later, outside of their randomly assembled packages.

Like - that fantastic Justin Steele card up there you might have already forgotten about. Let's see it again -

Are we back in 1960s Shea Stadium?

Talk about some Vintage warm fuzzies here. This card will absolutely make it to my eventual 9 Best of 2024 Topps Stadium Club binder page. Too bad I have to purchase a new, not-parallel copy for that little collection, which I am sure will be a lot of tough decision making on first COMC and then Sportlots (cheaper), once all 300 cards are available to scroll through some 6 months from now. Or, any random quantity of years from now when I get around to deliberately assembling such a page.

I fully expect 2024 Topps Stadium Club will have plenty of cards like that Justin Steele card; maybe I will have to purchase 18 of the cards as there will be too many that I just can't possibly "cut" from the roster. Like all Stadium Club projects, I will be looking forward to that, some day.

Maybe this pack will show me part of that future:

Yeah, no.

What did Sammy Sosa do to Brooklyn, anyway?

Let's try again -

First Horizontal

& - Cubs Hot Pack

One thing I particularly enjoy in Stadium Club is the horizontal cards, usually. This one will not likely "make the cut" though perhaps the non-Pink version will be a lot more interesting with all those scoreboard (?) whatevers becoming legible. So many horizontal cards are like this lately; this one is even more NOT-improved in it's parallel-ness than the red Rojas card. Thankfully I didn't have to gaze upon any of the 200% pointless "Sepia" cards this year. Who ever truly wanted one of those?

Three cards each from 3 different teams? Just like the game of Baseball, no matter how many packs you open you will never see everything that can happen inside a pack.

That Ian Happ card is #14 of 15 in the pack. The final card is quite fitting for the player on it, who is reported to be saying goodbye to his position on the field over concerns about his defense, though he will have DH work for a while to come, and of course could still sometimes "back up" a regular starter. 

Additionally, this last card is yet another parallel - a Stadium Club Chrome, 1/pack for these ten spot packs. All 300 cards in the checklist have a Chrome version this year. Whatevs.

It is also just exactly perfect for the theoretical potentiality of me purchasing more 2024 Stadium Club, hot off the shelf...