Closing Day(s)

It was a simple plan. After coming home from about 7 months on the road, I would sort all the 2018 Opening Day I had accumulated, find the handful of cards with a different photo than the player's Series 1 or 2 card, and put the fun little set to bed.

Sometimes, the light's all shining on me and my baseball card plans. And sometimes, there is a bit too much light - though I am not sure there could be too much light on a baseball card - a sport for a nice sunny day -

That is my second favorite card from the set. It has that just perfect (estimatedly prophetic?) shaft of light, lots of strong lines, a nice mix of sharp and soft colors, and a nice trippy empty seats section. It is a bit of a 'farewell' card - Cole's final card as a Pirate, and a card I like so much I have now scanned and posted it twice in my sadly now nearly bi-annual posts. He was due to appear in Series 2, wherein he appears in his new Astros duds, thus making this a unique card in Opening Day.

This has generally been the only way an Opening Day card differs from it's S1/S2 counterpart over the years. He was traded to Houston on Jan. 13th - too late to change this card. And usually, only players changing teams in a certain segment of the off-season end up with a distinct card in this set.

Not this year.

By my count, some 65 cards in 2018 Opening Day sport a photo not used in the 700 card "Flagship" set. That's nearly a clean 1/3 of the 200 card set and a large break from how this set is usually produced. Topps promised something to do with "Base Card Veterans" on the 'sell sheet' for this set oh so long ago now, and they delivered. It is easy to rip (wait, I thought that was a positive word in this hobby) on Topps for their little boo-boos here there and seemingly everywhere. It is far more satisfying to use that verb 'delivered' with the word "Topps" as the subject.

This is pretty good news for me, a collector of those worthless "low end" baseball cards. I have always enjoyed Opening Day despite the cruelly repetitive cards from _the_ Topps set of the year. Usually an insert set or three appeals to me, the price is right, and the "hits" are tough pulls - but that gives them excellent re-sale value, like this one:

That isn't true across the board; although the product is not blaring a "Scrub Auto in every Box" tagline on every packaging surface, the sometimes quirky hits that do appear can also have a scrub-like essentially randomly dubious value like cards in other products, too...

I mean, the good pull there would be a Mr. Met or Wally the Green Monster "Auto" that I am sure someone would want a bit more than this one, from the franchise with the lowest attendance in Baseball. Though why anyone would pay real cash money for one of these totally eludes me. Can I sign the Mascot autos next year, Topps? I am so old I learned cursive in grade school and I know I could handle the assignment. Maybe I should reach out to Marlins Man on the Twitter somehow, though I don't know if he has kissed and made up with Derek yet. I suspect not.

But that's how baseball cards work - there is not a $20 bill in every pack. If you buy some at about every trip one makes to the grocery store, like I do, what is in the retail packs lately is a whole lot of repeats. And even the 6 card, 1 insert packs of Opening Day have very funky collation these days.

That Cole card pretty much always appeared in a pack with a nice enough card in the exact same position in the Topps universe: the final card as a Pittsburgh Pirate for Andrew McCutchen. Ripping these packs over the course of the season elicited groan after groan as same-same pairs of cards appeared time and time again. 

It wasn't until I had some nice indoors time to sort these cards, using the #s on the back, that I found the most clear evidence I have ever seen of how the fairly not-magical Topps collation machine works.

2018 Topps Update Gerrit Cole is card #183.

2018 Topps Update Andrew McCutchen, it's steady pack-mate every time I pulled the Cole card, is card #83.

Many other cards appeared in my stupidly large stack of these things with the same sequence of #xx and #1xx. I knew I would have 7-8x of some cards, and 2-3x of many others, as so often is the case lately for dumb retail Topps addicts like me.

But I had randomly pulled cards (RC fever) aside all through the creation of that big pile of cards over many months of 'collecting', so I couldn't be sure just how this nutso numerology appeared in the packs, originally. So I ran back to my local Big Box store and scooped up their very last 3-pack blister pack of Opening Day packs that I was hoping was still there - a whole 'Tree-Fiddy' (yes, really, $3.50) of research expense for my devoted blog readers. I had purchased the next-to-last such blister the day after Christmas and I was praying it was still there, to get an accurate look at the actual pack packing of these cards. (I got a big hit from that next-to-last pack; you'll see that card here in my next post, very soon.) So much for the simple plan of just sorting a big stack of cards.

This is what I found:

Pack #1

Marcus Stroman #108 (unique to Opening Day)

Adam Jones #15

Ryan McMahon #115 RC (unique)

insert - YMCA Dance @ Yankee Stadium (dumb worthless card I have 5x)

Jon Lester #25

Austin Hays #125 RC (unique)

Ozzie Albies #13 RC (NOT unique)

(Most of the Blue Jays cards are unique in Opening Day; more on that in a bit.)

Pack 2

Carlos Rodon #25

Francisco Mejia #125 RC (unique)

Jon Gray #42

insert - Rockies Opening Day (yawn)

Stephen Strasburg #113 (unique)

Rafael Devers #2 RC (unique, sorta)

Adrian Beltre #102 (unique)

Pack 3

Xander Bogaerts #149

Miguel Cabrera #46

Chris Davis #146

insert - Cubs Mascot "Clark"

Jose Quintana #199 (unique)

Danny Salazar #38

Luiz Gohara #138 RC (unique)

Every pack held 2 "pairs" of cards. A lot of things clicked into place in my mind over how a "pack" of Topps baseball cards is assembled.

In my experience, collation slipped a fair bit down the hill a few years ago, and has stayed horribly bad ever since, across all of the flaggy-shippy sets I like to rip (this one, S1/S2/Update, a little Chrome now and again). I do not recall precisely which year this was, but I suspect it was 2015, when Opening Day went from a 220 card set to a 200 card set. I am pretty sure this also heralded a change in the basic design of a printing sheet, going from 110 card sheets to 100 card sheets.

And it seems obvious that in this release, the cards may have been placed on the sheet in sequential order, which is not the normal practice. But to get these #xx, #1xx pairs, I suspect they were; and then a card is cut from the 1-100 sheet followed immediately by a card from the 101-200 sheet - the same 2 spots on each sheet being then stacked together.

Now, I don't know the rest of the mysteries of the collating technology. I do think these card #s explain it some, and also explain those excrutiating runs of 9 identically sequenced cards that come out of all sorts of different pack configurations of the other retail flagship releases. Except those sheets are probably assembled without card #1 adjacent to card #2, like these Opening Day sheets probably were.

Or, I could be wrong, and there are still 110 card sheets with 10 cards simply "Double Printed' - it used to be a little sideline on checklists, to identify "DP" cards. But really I don't think those exist any more. Though my brand new 100-sheet theories leave a hole in how all the printing plant gadgets handle creating cards #301-350 in S1 & S2.

Unfortunately, it has been a long time since an uncut sheet of Topps baseball cards has escaped into the wild for Topps nutz like me to get their grubby paws on.

Ahh well, I bet you are starting to pick up some more of those little letter zzzzzzzs by now. Let's look at some cards already!

This card has the blah blahs; a card of a decidedly middling middle infielder in his magical 'new' road grey duds. Not up to my usual standards of showing you the good stuff and nothing but the good stuff. But it is actually one of the 2 most unique unique cards in the set - Solarte's only 2018 'Flagship' card as a Blue Jay. In Series One he was still a Padre, and he didn't make the cut for a brand new card in Update. (Gerrit Cole, conversely, got a new Astros card for himself in both Series 2 _and_ Update). 

Yawn. I just report the esoteric, not exciting, checklist news; probably the little z key is still chasin' yas. So how about this card:

Bazinga! I think if you are a Blue Jays collector, yas gottas get your mitts on deeze cards dere, eh? Here I am even subtly advertising the source in the photo, which I cribbed from eBay as I do not own any of these. I somewhat wish I did, but I also somewhat understand that I already have way too many baseball cards, anyway.

That is a "Blue Jays Canada Parallel" seeded one per blister pack at Wal-Marts in Canada, only. The Morales card is a unique Opening Day card; the Jays have 5 cards in the set and 4 of them are nique-sters (Josh Donaldson's is not). All 5 have a parallel like this, north of the border.

Whew. The things you discover when you set out to sort a stack of baseball cards. So, since I found all this cheap thrill baseball card treasure, let's see it already!

The Dodgers were the biggest winner of new cards in '18 Opening Day, so I had to keep them all together for ya, and for me, and my 2018 baseball card binder - the point of this 'simple' plan. That will probably be my only Yu Darvish Dodger card, ever.

As befits an NLCS winner, the Dodgers have 11 cards in this set. 8 of them get sui generis (haven't you, too, always wanted to use that in a sentence?) efforts. The ALCS winner, the Houston Astros, get only 8 cards. Exactly Zero of them vary from S1/S2. Conversely, their cross-state rivals up in Arlington or wherever, receive 7 cards, with 5 of them being these nifty extra work tasks carried out by the Topps card creator, who works for the Topps Chewing Gum Company --- Brooklyn.

That page includes the first of a bit of a gusher of nu-RC in this set -- 25 of them. I like them. Some day, collectors might start to value these Opening Day cards because of their unique content. In the Rookie Card Flood era, there are so many of the darn things for most Rookies, especially the hawt ones like Buehler & Verdugo out there in a pretty darn good baseball card market, some collectors are finally starting to collect cards to collect based on "eye appeal", from what I read on the Internets lately.

And that's a good thing. Though I don't want, need, or plan to own multiple Rookie Card cards, I do like the idea that I can end up holding a cheap little Opening Day card that someone else might want, some sunny day. And that other collectors have little choice but to start considering esthetics - that will lead to better baseball cards, for all of us.

Rookies Rookies Rookies, moar Rookies

Only thing to really note here is that one of the more anticipated RCs this spring, Rhys Hoskins, who has a multitude of RC logo cards in all sorts of inserts and retro insert subsets and autos (nifty sig, too) and every other kind of gimcrack Topps can think of you to get you to buy still more Rookie Cards - well, he does not get a special card in base Opening Day. Neither do some of the other S1 Rookies falling out of every other set of 2018 baseball cards in all directions, like Ozzie Albies and Amed Rosario.

Is this an example of Topps just really starting to dive into the little things, the itty-bitty things, like the way all us bloggers constantly try and whine them into doing? I would say, somewhat. These 'extra' cards of just ordinary not-hot Rookies are very welcome in my collection, and I don't miss having an extra Rhys Hoskins card as "hot" rookies get too many cards, in total, to want to keep them all anyway. I think the real reason Hoskins doesn't have a special card on that NL East RC page there is that Topps probably made so many other cards of him, they needed all the other photo rights they purchased for those other cards.

One "top" Rookie did get a hey, look, it's different card here -

I get a kick out of a "Rookie Card" for players that have already been placed on the Topps All-Rookie Cup team based on performance in their "Rookie" year. How did that happen? Eventually, I will have 9 of these things to amuse you with, all together on their special 2nd Year Rookie Card All-Rookie Team.

The actual photo on this ¿different? card for Devers is the same photo as his regular Series One card, which will always be worth infinitely more than a card from the red-headed little stepkid set called Opening Day, because the Series One card is a traditional vertical card, and the bulk of hilariously OC baseball card collectors hate horizontal cards. And particularly, horizontal Rookie Cards, like those.

OK, just a few more Rookies to go...

Yankees Rookies! I'm rich! Is anything better in baseball cards than a Yankees scout finding the next true Natural, nursing him up through the Yankees farm clubs until he is elected to the Hall of Fame part-way through his incredible Rookie season in Yankee Stadium? Oh, wait, that was last year. These guys are more ordinary Rookies, with questions on their defense and questions on whether they will be able to re-write "The Book" that all the veteran MLB pitchers will write about them, once they see them for a few more series, and a more than passing chance they will get traded to some sad sack team that lives in baseball card purgatory, like my beloved Detroit Tigers, who have a whopping 2 whole cards in this set - the same # of just Rookies that the Yankees have.

OK, now we can plumb the mysteries of just what is a "Base Card Veteran", per Toppseses very own advertising for these cards. Does that mean a baseball player who has already been on soooo many baseball cards in their career that Topps felt they should have an extra base card this year? I'm down with that.

Ooops, forgot, more Rookies. Dang things are as bad as Tribbles - keep an eye out around your card desk, in case they start to multiply.

Now, I wish I could ponder each and every special card in Opening Day, and how it compares to the counterpart card in Series 1 or 2. Sometimes these are better, other times S1/S2 is superior. Alas, I have already spent way toooo much time on this post and I still have a few more scans to upload. I will include an actual checklist of these cards in the Comments down below here, eventually.

I can recommend this nifty blog - the 2018 Topps Opening Day Blog. I hope it returns to action; it features an awesome breakdown of exactly which game each of these action packed baseball cards came from - check it out!

Personally, I do like horizontal baseball cards. Going forward in my collecting efforts, I am going to try harder to collect them properly - by freeing myself from the chains of sequential checklist #s and simply keeping 9 such cards all together on a binder page to make them so much easier to enjoy.

Of those, the David Price, Chance Cisco, and Greg Allen cards are clear winners, with so much winning over their other 'Water Slide' cards, that I will never get tired of such winning, that I can tell you.

I might get tired of all these RCs, though, whew. 25 RC logo cards in a 200 card set is 12.5% of the set - 1-in-8 cards is some kid who may or may not 'stick' in MLB. But those are the last ones to share, finally.

Meanwhile, I just realized I should have grouped some of these Base Card Veterans into a page with all Alternate Uniforms. I like those, particularly on baseball cards, cuz I can't see them on the radio, where I absorb most live baseball action. Colorful Alternate Unis make for more colorful baseball cards, and that is more better. This 2018 base design is really starting to grow on me.

A few more 'Farewell' cards in there for players who changed teams last winter, and a rare photograph of Troy Tulowitzki actually taking a recent At Bat for the Blue Jays. I hope that one is covered in that '18 Opening Day blog I haven't really delved, yet. And I would have to say that otherwise just ordinary baseball card for TT there is actually better than his Series One card, which is part of the weird "Pointing" subset fetish Topps produced this year in S1 & S2. Pointing is sometimes considered rude due to some ancient quirk in our DNA &/or our cultural DNA, and it doesn't always work on sports cards, if you ask me. If you want a final Toronto Tulo to remember, pick that one.

I did mention that Solarte card is one of 2 such in this set; the other is Ian Kinsler -

This will be the only California Angels 'Water Slide' for Kinsler, who pulled off a rare design+team triple header for Topps in 2018, appearing in Series 1 as a Tiger, Opening Day shown here, and in Update as a Red Sock. I was glad to see him finally get another chance to be on the winning side in the World Series after such a solid career, but felt pretty bad for him when he had such a Buckner-esque experience this time, though with the sting lessened quite a bit by his particular bad game making no difference to the outcome of the Series.

Still, a nice card to have if you collect Ian Kinsler, which wouldn't have been possible without Topps Opening Day, for pack rippers at least as it is also part of the Angels 'Factory' Team Set. 

Opening Day is now a set/product that I feel has been near totally re-born, and I look forward to starting to rip (the good kind) it all over again, in a little less than 90 days as I type.

I also found a clear, obvious winner for Best Card of the Set, which could obviously only come from these Opening-Day-only cards. My Best of the Year? Stay tuned. But clearly a contender. And this player had a really nice candid card, amidst all the all-action-all-the-time cards that make up 'Flagship' these days, in Series One - a pair of nice gestures from Topps, here. And I think there should be an excellent chance for this recently retired, future Hall of Famer to get a true "Sunset" card send-off in 2019 Series One, just four too long weeks away as I type. But if that does not happen, this will have to do, and will do nicely:

Does opening Opening Day on Opening Day make Opening Day Opening Day?

I would say it does. I like to open baseball cards on Opening Day. Even if it is not Opening Day for everyone - as it was not for Tigers fans this year. And even if, and really, especially if, I do not have a chance to watch Opening Day on TV, which is usually the case as Opening Day is almost always a day game.

But that's OK; I enjoy baseball on the radio, and when I wonder what the players look like, I turn to my baseball cards. So it does seem like the perfect product to open on Opening Day is --- Opening Day. Let's take a look.

In my very first pack this year, I got a Hit!

Woot! Woot! I'm rich! The new Babe Ruth's Rookie Card! Woot! And it is a clutch Press Conference variation! Woot!

Oh, wait. Press Conference photo variations in Opening Day were like so four years ago or so. Opening Day variations remain incredibly tough pulls - in years of collecting this product for some reason, I have never pulled one. I have 2 from 2018 Series One, but those are actually more common than the /2018 gold cards, running at about 3,000 copies each (something I read on one of the baseball card forums). So I did a discount double check and checked out all the Opening Day variants in the ever handy Cardboard Connection gallery, the only place I ever see such cards. This Ohtani card is just his regular base card in this set, which will be a unique card for him; I highly doubt Topps would repeat this rather boring image in Series Two.

But a nice reason to collect Opening Day is the possibility of other random variants amongst those dreary low end base cards no one cares about, like this one:

I knew this one was coming, sort of, as it was used by Topps on the "sell sheet" several months ago. That vaguely kinda promised something unique as an image of a Kershaw card was labelled "Base Card Veteran" - but that was a picture of an entirely different Kershaw card, featuring Clayton @ idle in a night game, looking contented. Which well now remain just a mock-up image that never gets produced.

Would there be more Base Card Veterans? The only way to find such baseball cards is to open more baseball cards ...

Which is a unique card, as compared to his Series One card. This might be become more difficult for Topps, in terms of finding new action shots of Tulo, as he is once again on the DL as I type. But this card may have been produced because of a promo I read about for blister packs of Opening Day at a retailer in Canada, which promise a Blue Jays card in every blister. The outside-the-wrapper-cards proved to be the same base cards as found inside the wrapper, but at least this one is something new for a Jays collector. I wish I could remember which blog I read those details on, sorry about that.

Opening Day is where to find "new" cards of players changing teams in a certain post-season window, like this one:

Which overall is a well-done such effort with the 21st Century airbrush. Normally, Topps selects the classic 'road grey' uniform for this work -

Though that one called for the tricky use of the Redbirds there, as St. Louis only rarely sports a vintage road uni that actually says "St. Louis" on it. A mostly fine effort by the Topps airbrusher on Photoshop detail, but these cards always invite close examination, and this one doesn't disappoint in that department - dat shoe, doe.

Something rarely seen in Opening Day is a card like this one:

A more typical road grey effort, with no shoes untied for a Yankees player visiting the O.co - last year? What makes this card interesting is it's predecessor in Series One:

I think I have only ever seen Topps do this once before, and that was on an obscure /50 Silk parallel in 2013 Update. Makes for a unique pair of cards illustrating the construction of brand new 21st century baseball cards.

So, are there more unique "Veteran" Base Cards? I'm not that sure yet. 75 of the 200 cards on the checklist "will be featured in Series 2," as the Sell Sheet notes, and I found plenty of those. I was looking for Tigers cards in particular, as I sweetly absorbed the first inning of a new MLB season, but I would settle for Pirates cards as well since they were my team's first opponent. And a team I have basically cheered for since following the Charleston Charlies, their AAA affiliate in the mid-70s, which supplied many of the cogs in the "We Are Family" 1979 World Series winners. So I was only sorta happy to pull these 2 cards, nestled quite apropos sequentially in a pack -

Not every player that changes cities does so on time for the Topps airbrusher. A couple bittersweet pulls and a cruel irony of that ever-so-crappy Topps collation machine they use for retail products - I have pulled this pair of cards three times now. Fortunately I did finally pull a card of a player playing in the game I was listening to -

I am thinking this is another forthcoming Series Two card, as with the previously pulled pair of Pirates, though I am sorting Series One in a unique way this year and haven't toted up exactly how many cards I still need after plenty of duplicative retail purchases. But that is part of the enjoyment of opening Opening Day - brand new baseball cards, like this one:

Another un-remarkable card in a release full of Hitters Hitting and Pitchers Pitching, somewhat inevitable with an Action Image driven themed set. I just like finding a Wieters card after all those years he refused to sign a contract with Topps; I think this is about his third year back with (ALL?) the rest of his compatriots. At least they didn't issue another frowning Matt Wieters card.

Though all the Hitters Hitting cards start to wear me down sometimes, at least for a DH that has to be the go-to option. And I do like a possible trend in the photo selections, as exampled here -

It does seem like the photo buyer likes those colorful alternate uniforms, too; the 'Road Alternate' is especially nice to see on a card. I would love to have enough free time some day to count up how many Alternate/White/Grey unis Topps uses for the images in a given set... but I don't see that blog post happening any time soon.

Not every card reveals which solid color Alternate is in use:

But that's OK, some cards are just a great capture of a baseball player playing baseball, even the Pitchers Pitching cards. But I still take the most notice of the more unique cards

Which is neither a hitting card, nor even a fielding card, but the much more rare Base-Running card. And this new classic Kris Bryant card (I always like his cards, even with no plans to chase all the expensive ones) is a yet more rare subset of Base-Running cards - a Home Run Trot card, it looks like. I pulled another great example of this only very occasional baseball card genre from the other part of the "Bryzzo", featuring Anthony rounding the bases on the 1983 inserts in Series One. I will certainly be on the look-out for more of these types of cards.

And hey, look, a Fielding Card!

They do still exist, if you open enough baseball cards. I like a card featuring a live action baseball - Thames is still concentrating on the incoming ball which just popped in to his glove, and the base runner is nowhere to be seen, yet - Out! - you can almost hear the Ump say from just off the edge of the card. I am not always a fan of a torso-only shot on a horizontal card, but this one works.

As I type tonight the Brewers are busy dismantling the Padres for a sweep of their opening series. Uecker mused that "I don't know how you can get much hotter than this" as the Brew Crew sprayed hits all over PetCo throughout the game. The Brewers even appear on my radio without Internet assistance, so they have always been my #2 go-to team to root for, which will be a big help in this year when the Tigers main upside is drafting very first in June and will then at least have the team logo on one of the most expensive baseball cards around, come next fall. So I am happy to pull Brewers cards, and cards like this

Which could well be JV's first Astros card featuring a true image if that is Correa playing a strong shift in September or October game action last year. It was a little odd seeing Verlander in his new duds while listening to Opening Day in Detroit, where normally Justin would have been on the mound over most of the last decade. But it is a nice colorful card and I like those; it connects me to this next card and maybe shows off how special-green the Astro Turf is in the new Astro Dome:

This is a repeat image from Series One, but pulling it again in Opening Day gave me a better appreciation for this uniquely colorful card, which has plenty of strong lines and could be becoming a favorite of 2018 so far.

Overall though, I expect most of the "75" Series 2 players in Opening Day to have repeat images. I won't know for sure until late June, or maybe next winter sometime if I run out of spare card baseball time, all too common in my self-employed life.

But I like opening Opening Day for a chance to pull cards like this -

And although I used to love parallels back in the days of proper baseball cards with proper image borders, I generally have a strong dislike for just bad ego-stroke gimmicks, which is all that can be said of the truly bad Full Bleed parallels this year. Yuck.

The "Opening Day Blue" cards are once again not numbered this year, so you just have to take Topps word for it that there are 2,018 of them. They only fall one per 77 card blaster now, as compared to 2 or 3 per blaster in previous years, so we are probably looking at another set with a bountiful print run - thanks Aaron Judge! And I mean that; I am happy to know print runs are going up, and more people are buying baseball cards. Always a good thing.

Of course, most of those purchasers are looking for cards like that blue Calhoun up there. Because if Willie Calhoun becomes the next Aaron Judge, that blue parallel dere will be quite the card to have, though that seems unlikely for a Rookie who failed to make the Opening Day line-up of the Texas Rangers, or even the 25 man roster. But that card was an interesting pull because of this card

Which is of course not an Opening Day card, but a Series One card - and a different card. The bread-and-butter of the baseball card business now is that special logo about to be chipped in to the stands as a foul ball by Calhoun's bat there, and a product with unique Rookie Cards is a product that will be opened in large quantities by gamblers looking for that special version of the hottest RC in town.

Topps works hard to never disappoint those types of customers:

These are all new Rookie Cards, and this is not completely new this year; the inimitable Aaron Judge had his own special Rookie Card in Opening Day last year (2 of them, actually, with a photo variation). But I don't think Opening Day '17 had anywhere near this many. Not all the RC cards in Opening Day this year are unique as compared to the Series One version, but there is no shortage of them either. I think I will keep this little Noob 9 collection together on this binder page - maybe next year this near complete team of players will all have the Rookie Cup logo on their cards.

Though I enjoy the cheap thrill of opening the cheap lottery tickets which Opening Day offers, I also purchase a fair bit of it for the inserts. It seems to me like I have an innate better chance of liking an insert set in Opening Day, when Topps is deliberately trying for a more light-hearted touch, you know, for the children. Like me.

One standard component of Opening Day are the Mascots; I am always pleased to pull this character:

Almost a pity I wasn't listening to Opening Day at Three Rivers or the Ketchup Place or whatever they call Pittsburgh's Park these days. I could have gone for a little less cropping and a little more Pirate flag, but for Topps, too, there is always next year. I'm still looking forward to this year's version of Mr. Met and Paws and Bernie Brewer; there is usually one other or two other Mascot cards I really like - even the Swingin' Friar made my permanent collection of these one year just recently.

The other long-running theme of Opening Day inserts is "Opening Day Stars"

Though I have to question how a player can be an Opening Day Star already when he hasn't actually ever played on an Opening Day - first time the ever multiplying horde of RC logo cards has been included in Opening Day inserts. This one should perhaps only feature Opening Day Stars from teams that play outdoors, in the northern half of the country (an ever dwindling list), as this card is almost perfect for Opening Day in some cities - it looks like it is snowing big wet juicy snowflakes, but that doesn't bother a Rookie so hot, he can wear short sleeves on Opening Day, or something.

Overall I liked last years Opening Day Stars quite a bit better:

Which was a good news / bad news discovery for me last year - for once I liked a Topps effort at just adding random cutesy graphics to a baseball card. The bad news was these have become very tough pulls as well, falling about one per three blaster boxes now. But I hope to complete last year's set of these despite having quite a ways to go, so if you have a few laying around the card desk, hit me up.

Last year this set used the Opening Day set/product theme to feature cards featuring Opening Day activity at the ballpark. The cards were rather hit or miss, and inexplicably featured only 15 of the 30 stadiums. This year the insert set is back, but Topps could only be bothered to create cards for 20 of the teams. How did they do? More Hit or Miss, in my opinion -

So although I hope to visit the home of my 2nd favorite, newly hot team, this card certainly doesn't, well, it just doesn't do anything at all. Some crunchy old-timers gathered around the batting cage during batting practice could well make for an interesting baseball card. But this card is not that. It is still slightly better than this one though -

Which doesn't feature anything at all except the duhh-huhh obviousness that Reds fans like to wear red when they go see the Reds, something baseball card collectors know very, very well all Reddy. What really makes me hate that card is what it says on the back, some nice text about Cincinnati's long tradition (the like, really, really, really long tradition of always playing in Cincinnati on the first day of activity in the National League) and mentions the pre-game Parade, which warms up for this card:

Only Topps could create a baseball card about a baseball tradition and then not bother to actually depict that tradition. And do it on two separate cards in the same product. FAIL.

The Team Traditions & Celebrations insert set will probably eventually yield a couple cards I like, though none made it into the 'scanner pile' to show off to you, Dear Reader. And let's just forget about all those Hot Dog cards last year, which always just made me pointlessly hungry before I threw them in the trash.

But there is almost always an insert set in Opening Day that I like, and didn't see coming. This year it is proving to be the "Before Opening Day" cards, which finally yielded a Tigers card on the Tigers' Opening Day - 

- and which both revealed a piece of Tigers apparel I have never seen on a baseball card before, and featured a nice player, maturing into being an everyday starter in his late 20s, thus considered worthless by most of the baseball card world these days. But not by me. And to find a journeyman player on a Topps insert set in the year 2018 was quite a surprise; one I didn't see coming at all - and he even plays Left Field, naturally. Thanks Topps!

I'm not sure why, but I always like seeing Spring Training on a baseball card. Probably 'cuz of all those cards from my youth in the mid-70s. But even though plenty of Heritage and Archives cards feature plenty of Spring Training poses and even real palm trees at times, they are not actually Spring Training "Action" cards, like this

 Sigh. Thumbs up for authentic Spring Training photo, thumbs down for being essentially a picture of Buster Posey's butt. Try again, Topps

An authentic Grapefruit League patch card, and I didn't even have to pay top dollar for a sliver of a patch glued onto a non-descript card of some All-Star. And probably the last Marlins Ichiro card I will pull - I am looking forward to Ichiro's triumphant Mariners card in Update. It had better be triumphant, Topps. Just as this player really needs to finally triumph this year...

That is certainly a positive sign for Buxton. And kind of a rare sight on a baseball card, unfortunately - a nice big, unforced smile. I think this will be the year that will finally show whether paying $8,000 for Buxton's "Superfractor Auto" was a worthwhile investment, for someone, somewhere. I hope so, after pulling this happy baseball card.

Another happy card was the following, for both the photographed player, and me, the low-end baseball card collector:

Topps likes to make sure I pull all the best Anthony Rizzo cards. Or at least the best ones I can get via buying some cheap baseball cards with my groceries all the time. That started in 2011, when I pulled his /60 'Hope Diamond' parallel RC, which will sell for a whole lot of pretty pennies sometime soon I expect. And it continued on into 2013, when I pulled his autograph from a pack of retail cards not once but twice - and not dupes/doubles, either. The $ swag factor has been declining some in subsequent years though Opening Day relics have been historically been a tough pull, I did get one of Rizzo. 

Now this year just a generic insert might not fetch a whole dollar once COMC has 29 of them for sale all at once here in another couple months, I am still quite pleased with this card - a St. Patrick's Day card. I doubt I will ever assemble 9 such cards together because I doubt 9 exist. One that I know does was for Miguel Cabrera, but was a "case hit" photo variation in 2013 Topps Chrome, a card I am very unlikely to ever own. So I will just be happy to place this with my 9 best Rizzo cards eventually.

That Rizzo is certainly one of my favorites from this nascent collecting season so far. A final "Before Opening Day" card amused me however

as it seems Topps will never pass on buying a photo that subtly, or not so subtly, shows off some epic manicurial action

This also happens for any player sporting some nice, not-natty dreads, but I didn't pull any in Opening Day so far, though I do have a couple more Series Two previews for ya:

I kind of like a picture of Justin Turner possibly turning a Double Play, but I don't know how Topps managed to make someone with a debatably epic beard somehow look a little girl-ish at the same time. This card will not make my Nifty Nine binder page for Justin, that I can tell you.

The final S2 preview card continues a theme Topps leaned on heavily in S1 this year: What Are They Pointing At?

A player probably far from any favorites list outside of New York, but one that will likely make a hand-made subset collection in my collection as I think all these finger pointing cards will make a pointedly unique binder page later on this fall sometime.

And although I had to settle for just the one Tigers player card while listening to the first Tigers game of 2018 the other day, Topps did come through for me with the one just exactly perfect baseball card for my Opening Day ripping tradition:

This card notes proudly on the back that "The Tigers won their ninth straight home opener in 2017" and will definitely be the last time Brad Ausmus is seen on a baseball card for quite some time. But, alas, all Topps and I could do was give it the old Topps try, one more year. One of the greatest things about baseball, and baseball cards, is the well-worn, not-a-cliche-but-a-comforting-truism about next year, when I will most likely be opening Opening Day on Opening Day, to open the season, again.