Inserts Into The Sky!

Back when 2017 Topps Series 1 came out, I did a post on the escalating number of inserts that have been included with the flagship set.  I just updated those charts to include the complete offerings of 2017 and 2018, and now Series 1 in 2019 Topps.

It's not getting any better.

The truth is, since my post in mid-2017, inserts have just about DOUBLED in total quantity.  Instead of inserts totaling half the base set, they have now EXCEEDED it.

                    Base                Inserts

 2015           1100                   562

2016           1000                  574

 2017           1000                 1100

 2018           1000                 1203

                                2019           1000*               1500+???*      *-projected

In the original chart, you can see that since 2008, total inserts had risen and floated at about 600 plus or minus, for several years.

The same chart, updated for the last few years, shows the explosion.  The same 600 card level is now dwarfed by the totals for 2017 & 2018.

The number of insert sets included with flagship & update have been rather steady since 2015, hovering between 20 and 25.  Topps could cut this number down a few more if they would have made the Salutes and the 80's tributes separate products like they should have been, but then the tributes would have competed directly with Archives and Heritage and become totally pointless.

The average cards per insert set has also leveled off at just over 50.  This doesn't really show the real story, though.  It's the first few largest sets that have been growing.  With a few exceptions, 100 and 150 count inserts were commonly the highest per year, with only one or two examples in a typical issue.  The last two years, the largest sets have been 250.  And in 2019, we already have one that will be at least 300.

The insanity doesn't end there, though.  Oh no, my friends.  The other development that has made the potential totals increase exponentially - INSERT PARALLELS!

In 2015 and 2016, Topps made First Home Runs and MLB Debuts - in three different colors or foils.  So a true master set may technically consist of all three colors.  This adds another 210 cards to 2015, and another 160 to 2016.  (They didn't repeat the MLB Debuts in Update.)

Then, in 2017, they added Blue, Red, Gold, and maybe even Silver as parallel sets for the inserts.  The Gold parallels were generally serial numbered to ten, so I didn't count them in this survey.  That's just way too scarce.  And the Silver only shows up once in the list on TCDB, and I haven't seen any, so I let them go too.  Blue & Red were enough to triple the numbers by themselves.

2018 even surpassed those numbers.  Blue, Black, Gold, and Red appeared.  Reds were again numbered to ten.  Golds went up to 50, and Black was /299, but from what I've seen, this is not consistent.  Some inserts sets have both blue and black unserialized parallels, like the LIM's above.

So basically if you add up all the parallels to the regular inserts, the 2017 totals go from

1100 to 1392

for the unserialized colors, and then if you add in the ones that are serialized to 299, 50, or 10 you are at a grand total of

1542

2018 starts at 1203 (again on top of only a 1000 card base set), and goes to

2846 

when you add the unnumbered parallels.  If you go for all the serialized ones too, you'd have to put together

4902 cards!

I've gotten used to storing my flagship sets and inserts in a two row shoe box.  I think I'll give up before I'd ever think about amassing the entire master set and having to put it in it's own 5000 count monster box!

And I would guess that it's just going to continue into 2019.  The numbers will probably be even larger.

But guess what?  Now Topps isn't putting as many inserts into their packs!  I don't know how the ratios compare between the same packaging for this year versus the last few, but you're going to have to buy more to get the same numbers - which have now increased again!  Whether it's boxes and packs, or just dropping cash at dealer secondary market tables, it's going to cost more to finish the Topps set.

Set collectors are in the minority.  There aren't many customers that are willing to do this.  So why is Topps bloating these out so much?  What part of the collector audience are they thinking that they're attracting by making more and more parallel inserts and making them harder to get?

I know I'm not it.

Well, maybe just for my couple collected players....

Leading Ladies Of Sports Broadcasting #11

And now the final card in the series.  Maybe I'll make a checklist for fun.

I don't watch a lot of NFL Network because I see a lot of it being just hype and rhetoric to support the few teams that they seem to favor all the time.  But every now and then I'll tune in, especially when I see this analytics angel.

Cynthia Frelund was born and raised in Okemos, Michigan.  I still can't believe she's almost 40 years old.

She got her BS degree in Biology in 2005, then moved right on to Northwestern for a Masters in Predictive Analytics and an MBA in Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Finance.  That's quite a foundation.  She's like the Numbers Geek's Dream Girl.

She worked at the NFL in Finance Strategy a couple years after a stint as a Financial Analyst for a private company.  Then went to Disney/ABC Television, not in front of the cameras, but in Business Development.

Then in 2012, Cynthia moved to ESPN as an Associate Director of Technology Development.  She later became a Producer of Next Generation Content, and finally got on screen as their Predictive Analytics Analyst in 2015.

In 2016, she came back to the NFL to her current roles as Predictive Analytics Expert on Gameday Morning, Fantasy Live, and podcast Game Theory and Money.

Frelund keeps in shape by running marathons (20 so far) and teaching Pilates classes, including at her own facilty.  She's involved with Bright Pink, a non-profit that aids women in the prevention and early detection of breast cancer.  She's also an animal lover and includes pics of her beloved bulldog Bodhi on her Instagram.

There is little information about her personal life on her social media pages.  She's very private about that.  All this and maybe single too?

A Spot Of Tea And A Look To The Stars

More progress on the Astronaut / Space binder this past week.  Another eBay arrival.  This time it was from across the pond in Great Britain.  Seller grahame_ing has what appears to be all the different non-sport sets from Brooke Bond Tea.

Here is a scan of my Race Into Space set all paged up.

These sets all have corresponding album books that the cards can be attached to.  I'm still looking for an empty book.  Don't actually want to paste the cards in it, but there is a lot of background info in the book.

The cards are standard mini size, but the stock is rather thin.  Kinda like '81 Donruss.  I got them in five stacks of 10 folded in a blank piece of paper in a plain envelope.  They were perfectly fine and it made for cheap shipping, even from overseas.

I love the detail in so many of these artist renderings.  The scans don't do the color justice because they're scanned through the plastic pages.

The set is from 1971, so some of the text is very speculative about future NASA projects.

Above are the backs for the last five cards.  One is about basically what amounted to the Space Shuttle that wouldn't fly for another ten years or so.  It's really interesting that they must have planned to do a lot of this stuff so far in advance.

These are really cool, being vintage-y and still so affordable.  Too bad they didn't do American sports.  But if you're into history or nature, check out the set site and then find them online.  (See links above)

Cheerio!

The Other Great Baseball Legend Named Robinson

He was one of the more accomplished players, but not really one of the most appreciated.  Frank Robinson played for 21 years, managed for 17 more, and was elected to the Hall Of Fame in 1982.

He has all the accolades.  NL Rookie Of The Year, MVP in both leagues, 12 time All-Star...

AL Triple Crown winner, World Series MVP, All-Star MVP, Gold Glove winner,

17x 20 HR seasons, 11x 30, and one 40.  6 100 RBI seasons.  And one 200 hit season.

AL Manager of the Year, and of course, the first African-American manager in MLB history.

But those are the obvious facts.

Some other interesting items from his page on Baseball Reference's Bullpen Wiki:

If you asked any second baseman or shortstop in the 1960s who was the one guy they didn't want to see the response would have been immediately "Frank Robinson". He was the most feared baserunner of his time. 

Frank's impact in 1966 was more than the obvious Triple Crown. He brought an "edginess" to the Orioles that had not existed before. Brooksie was a sweetheart. Boog a loveable oaf. Paul Blair, everyone liked Paul. And they HAD been winning 90 plus games without Frank so how much of a big deal was his toughness? Legit point. But the team talked about it, the opposition talked about it, and the O's just seemed like a different team.  

(It) was the 10th inning of the sixth game of the 1971 World Series, where in spite of a pulled thigh muscle which he'd suffered running to third on Merv Rettenmund's single, he scored the winning run on a sacrifice fly by Brooks that was so short that it barely seemed to loft past the infield dirt. Robinson just willed himself to home plate, and I swear the throw was wide simply because the g*%#!& baseball was scared to get within ten feet of Frank Robinson. Never mind poor Manny Sanguillen

Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four: I was warming up in the bullpen when a fan leaned out and said, "Hey Jim, how do you pitch to Frank Robinson?" I told him the truth. "Reluctantly," I said. 
 

Frank Robinson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005.
 

There are statues of him outside three different ballparks, and no one else will wear his #20 in Cincinnati, Baltimore, or Cleveland.

His tribute to Baltimore.

The boys from Intentional Talk recognize his legend.

He was assoicated with Brooks in their playing days and beyond, but Frank Robinson belongs right up there with Jackie in his legacy to the sport.

More Stuff From Outer Space

Gillian Taylor: *sarcastic* Don't tell me; you're from outer space.
James T. Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

Ok, these aren't from outer space, they're just about outer space.

The major target of my eBay binge the other week was the three sets of Space Shots cards from Space Ventures, Inc.  I found series 2 and 3 for a nice combo price and picked them up with a couple other odd items that I may show later.

They consist of 110 cards each and cover pretty much every significant program, launch, and accomplishment in space thoroughout history.  Made in 1990 thru 1992, they're nice and clean and printed on standard white stock.

 

All three series came in wax boxes with packs.  I've never seen a boxed set of series 1, so I think only two and three were boxed sets.  That's how I bought them.

Here are some highlights from series 2.  A lot about the planets, Gemini, Apollo, Soyuz, Skylab, and the Shuttle.  There are cards denoting the anniversaries of a lot of the missions.  And some unusual images of astronaut activities.

Series 3 is the "International Edition" and highlights a lot of the accomplishments of the USSR, Japan, and other countries.  Of course, a lot of the first people to do things in space were Russians.  There have also been several joint projects between nations. 

The backs of both series have either patches of the described missions, or trivia challenge questions.  Not sure if there is a list of answers somewhere.  The third series also has International Space Firsts.

There is also a companion set of 36 embossed cards in the Moon Mars product, which I had before.  Those are more like the old Action Packed football.

Great additions to my Astronaut binder. 

Just have to find Series 1 for a good price.  I've seen wax boxes for $20, but I wasn't sure if I could move the dupes and trade for the rest if I'm missing any.  Anyone else have some or want my dupes if I have to go that route?

Free Samples of 2019 Series 1

Sorry, not giving them out.  Just reviewing some that I got.

Inspired by a couple first day posts about the new Topps series, and the fact that I was in the right part of town the other evening, I made a quick Target run to get a taste.  At first glance, I was on the fence about the base design, and am (still) worried about the quality and quantity of the inserts.  But luckily, I had a couple Target gift cards from some tech support I did a while back.  Those set me up for three hanger boxes, which (if I have the math right), are the best deal as far as price-per-card among the retail package offerings.  So my net cost for these was 31 cents!

My Tarzhay had three hooks of these.  Two were labeled with the Gleyber Highlights cards and one just had the Home Run contest cards line.

I wanted nothing to do with Glee boy, so I opted for three off the other hook, and I'm glad I did.

I've heard the ratios of inserts to every pack are down this year.  Then I remembered, there are no packs in these hangers.

I'm not going to scan a bunch of the base cards.  You've seen them several places already by now, I'm sure.  Not sure what the rule is for designating the first card you see in a given year.  O'Hearn was on top of the first wrapped stack, but I saw the bottom of the stack first, so Pivetta was the initial name I read.  Can we get a ruling from the commish? ;)

Best part about it - No doubles!  Three consecutive boxes on the same hook actually yielded a consistent stream of different singles!

Anyway, the parallels I pulled were all foils.  I seem to be developing a knack to pull Acuñas.  There is a nice guide page to all the different parallels here.

There he is again!  And super bonus ~ I pulled the only '84 I would have chased after, Bo Jackson!  Kershaw is a good name too.  Night Owl?

So this was a bit of an Acuña hot box...

With the base card rounding out the "trifecta".

A couple of the shameless promo cards.  "Hey kids, here's what you missed if you're all about just the superstar hype machine!  Hope you can contribute to the revenue stream this year!!"  At least there's only ten of them.  Which is in stark contrast to...

...these really decent looking 150th Anniversary tribute cards.  Unfortunately, there are, of course, 150 of them.  As if the past few years' worth of 100-100-50 insert series weren't bloated enough.  Now we have an excuse to issue them all at once!  Or, are they going to total up 450 by the end of the year?

The most horrible development this year is that there appear to be less inserts per pack(age).  But there are still a huge number of total inserts issued.  530 to be exact (thanks ArpSmith for the math and the list).  They break down like this:

150 Years of Baseball – 150 cards

’84 Topps Throwbacks – 100 cards 
(3rd annual incursion on Heritage and Archives)

Stars of the Game – 100 cards  (Annual star player worship set)

Iconic Card Reprints – 50 cards  (Annual triple redundant recycling set)

Cactus League Greats – 30 cards (retail)

Grapefruit Leage Greats – 30 cards (retail)

Evolution – 25 cards

Greatness Returns – 25 cards

Revolution of the Game – 10 cards  (Now here are some interesting subjects!)

’18 Topps Now Review – 10 cards  ('nuff said)

Now granted, they DID cut down on a few sets.  The retail spring training ones are only 30, and the last third of the list are 25 or 10 - where most of them should be.  And the total counts are down to 2008-2009 numbers, if we were talking about the WHOLE YEAR.  It is quite possible that if they repeat the '84s and add on to the 150ths or StarOTG, they may issue more total inserts than ever!  How can you justify putting less of them in packs?

(Update: Sounds like they will, in fact be issuing 150 more 150ths for series two.  And they really only reduced two insert sets by 5 cards compared to last year.)

C'mon Topps, we meant there are too many inserts TOTAL TO GET.  Not that there were TOO MANY IN A PACK!

As far as the base set goes, I'm OK with the design in general.  Some aspects are the same old thing, and some are improvements.  Most of them are somewhere in between.  Let's see what the net score is if we give points for good things and take them away for bad.

+5 for Composition - I really like that the photos "break" the design elements.  Do more of this!

+1 for League Leaders - OK, so ya got the label on the front.  It's distinctive, but still kinda blends in with all the base cards.  Every journey begins with the first step, I guess.  League leaders should be multi-player cards, period.

+2 for World Series - OK, this is better.  Nice official logo and multi-color text below the stripe.  Maybe change the standard name to a headline about the game next time.  But good job.

-1 for Last Name First - The backwards name is a little off putting, but not an OCD dealbreaker.  Maybe if they did something like this, so you read front to back instead of top to bottom.  Shades of Stadium Club.

-3 for Massive Trademark symbols -  This is totally unnecessary and just shows amateurism at PhotoShop.  It's a simple font size adjustment.  Like this...

There, aesthetically pleasing and all legal too.

Let's go ahead and throw in +2 for Good Collation - at least in the hanger boxes that I got, I didn't duplicate any cards.   Which is rare.

Plus ten and minus four comes to a net gain of six points.  So 2019 base is generally a step forward from previous years.  Still flawed and bloated, I'm probably going to fill my base set and see how easy some of the smaller inserts are, and then call it a year.  I'm not seeing too many other potential builds this year so far.