Break Me Off A Piece Of That Update Bar

While I'm watching Minnesota and New Orleans on Sunday Night football, my friend Stuart calls.  He's opening boxes of Topps Update while he's watching Game 5 of the World Series.  I figure it's probably the last day of baseball, so I went and got my box.  Here's what came out.

I may have shown before how I always open a box layer by layer.

Here's the start.  Pack #1 is top left, then top right, then lower left, then lower right, and on to the next layer.

Here's about 2/3 of the way through.

Base in the big stack.  Keeper inserts to the left.  Trader inserts below them.  Parallels in bottom corner.

Foils and golds.  No one real special here.  All horizontals on the golds.  I like that the duals match up the sliding boards when you put 'em side by side.  Let me know if you need any.

Votto Retro Vintage Stock.  Back is the old school rough cardboard.  Number 50/99.

Brett Legend variation.  Card #76.  I was glad to see the KC catcher dude a few packs later with the same number.  Means there's probably a whole set in the box.

Salute inserts.  These are actually decent looking cards overall.  Just too pointless and bloatish to collect more than my established player collections.  Nice selection of retired players here.  All up for grabs.

The other bloated insert set.  I won't get off on a rant about why they choose to do this as an insert set when they have two other whole products that reprint old designs.  And great job on the contrast with the Rays player there.  You'll have to get one to flip over to tell who it is.  '83s are spoken for already, sorry.

Speaking of rants.  This one inspires one, just like Jordan at Mint Condition.  Stay tuned for that.  Micro version is that this belongs as a blaster prize, not the big item in a hobby box.

Now the keeper stuff.  These are the generic Star Player + Funky Graphic Generic Background + Catchy Title + Writeup describes how good they are = insert card formula.  And it's an idea that was copied from Allen & Ginter, where they actually used the country's flag in the design.  But whatever....

Annual spiffy photo effect insert set.  But at least there's a theme beyond pitching and hitting.  Interesting checklist.  OK, I'm in.  Need two Bo Jacksons, too.  Tim Raines hot box!

Mod design doesn't really match the name, but the year is there, so I'll give 'em a passing grade.  Interesting idea about the end of a player's career. 

The End.

So I'll sort 'em out and see if I got a full base set.  Would have liked to have pulled an actual auto or relic as advertised on the box, but it's a good launch to completing Topps for this year.  Guess I'll have to buy some retail to fill in the inserts and get some trade bait.