2023 Topps Series 1 : in Which I'm Late to the Party...Again.

 

You guys sick of 2023 Topps Series 1 yet?

            I don’t know about you, but my card Twitter timeline has been full of 2023 Topps Series 1. Mostly the bells and whistle cards, and other inserts. How dare we show a base card as an expression of our excitement! Anyone who reads this blog, knows that I’m still a fan of base cards. That I primarily focus on the base series. For the past two seasons, other than Pirates and certain players, base cards have been my purchasing focus. That’s not going to change for this season, although, and maybe it’s just me, but is getting any information about Topps upcoming releases becoming hard to find? Usually, we know about Heritage or Gypsy Queen by now.

            But I digress.

            This is a blog post about 2023 Topps Series 1.

            And I like them.

            I really like them.

            2023 Topps might rival or beat 2019 Topps as my favorite base set since returning to collecting. Obviously, Topps is doing a connecting-through-the-decades thing with the players picture on the front of the card, along with the now ubiquitous (minus 2020 Update) action shots. I like having that card connection to 1963, 1983 and 2003. Topps makes it a point to drown collectors in nostalgia. If Topps hadn’t put those small pictures on the front of their base cards this season, well, it would’ve been an insult to all of us who eat from their nostalgia trough collecting season after collecting seasons.

            Another thing Topps likes to drown collectors in…is rookie cards. 2023 Topps is no exception. Of the 330 base cards, 58 of them have been given over to players with one season or experience or less. The big ones are in there. The guys who some of us are anticipating are in there. And there are a lot of cup of coffee type players given the RC treatment. I don’t want to deny a player their cardboard glory, but, like last season, I counted a decent amount of players getting their RC who are of far side of being considered young or a prospect.

            With the younger players, sometimes Topps withholds, and makes you wait.

            But sometimes they jump the gun.

            Case in point, Liover Peguero and Travis Swaggerty of my own Pittsburgh Pirates.

            Both Peguero and Swaggerty have RC in Topps 2023 Serries 1. Neither of them should. Peguero was in the bigs for one game, as an emergency stop-gap fill-in from the Pirates AA Altoona Curve team. He went 1-3 and then went back to spend the rest of the season in AA. He’s a highly touted prospect. I’ve been collecting Liover’s Bowman cards. I was looking forward to his eventual RC. But this feels kind of cheap. Most likely Liover Peguero isn’t seeing Pittsburgh this season.

            It’s almost the same deal with Swaggerty. He’s a former 1^st round draft pick who, through injuries etc, has had a bit of a struggle getting to the big leagues. He did in 2023…for five games and a total of nine at bats.

            Instead of rookie cards, maybe it would be cool if Topps paid more attention to he actual, final team roster. At least three of the Pirates base player cards feature cards for players who no longer play on the team. 

            Here's two of them.

            This happened in 2022 as well. Look, I know when some of us were kids, it was expected that your following season’s team set would feature players on it who were no longer on the team. This was especially true before cards started coming in series again in the late 1990s. But this is 2023. I think we can do better Topps.

            Anyway, I bought a Hobby box of 2023 Series 1. Let's see what was inside.

            I'm not a pleasure delayer. I open the Silver Pack first.

            For you folks who like the first card from the first pack moment, here's mine.

    

            Hey, look, the League Leader cards actually look like League Leader cards this season, instead of pretending to look like an extra base cards for a star player.

            I still wish Topps would group League Leader cards together like they used to do.

            These guys all came in the same pack.

            So did these guys.

            And Topps put them together sequentially in the checklist….you tugging-at-the-heart-strings-Fanatics-owned-monolith, you.

            Another year, another stud Braves rookie I wil refuse to like because of a now thirty-obne-year-old grudge.

            it wouldn't be a Topps Hobby Box for me if I didn't get a Joey Votto insert. This year did not disappoint.

            And here are the other 1988 Inserts.

            As a kid I was never a huge fan of 1988 cards. 1987 designs ruled for me, so there was no real way for 1988 cards to be anything letdown for me. Time has changed that perspective. While I'm still not the biggest 1988 Fleer fan, I've really come around to 1988 Donruss and 1988 Topps. I think I can safely say this is one of the most beautiful cards from my collecting era.

            Topps gave Bo Jackson a 1988 insert card in 2023 Series 1. I don't need to see it. I don't want to see it...I'll always have the original.

            Here are some other bells and whistles.

    

            From the what-in-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-with-this Relic files. I offer up my 2023 addition to the collection.

    

            If I remotely cared about modern pitching, I'd actually be excited for these inserts.

            But I'm old...so I'm not.

            And that about did it for the ol’ 2023 Topps Series 1 Hobby Box.

            Except I’m not telling the whole story here.

            Because I’m embarrassed.

            I made a collecting plan this season…and I didn’t keep it.

            In fact, I blew the plan up.     

            My plan was to go even more conservative this year. Buy a Hobby Box and pull the players that I wanted from it. Buy the other cards I wanted online or join breaks. No extra Hobby boxes. No spending money putting a set together, especially when the whole thing comes out in the summer and I could just buy it then. Good plan, huh? Good fiscally conservative plan.

            Except that’s not what I did.

            I got this raging sense of FOMO Usually I can control it. This year I couldn’t. So, instead of buying one Hobby box and calling it a day. I bought a damned Jumbo box too.

            These are the major highlights from it.

            So much for personal control, huh?

            Anyway…if anyone needs help building a set.

 Thanks for Reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Our good friend Russell Streur returns to talk Formula 1 racing!