2018 Topps Big League Rack Pack

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well and is ready for the weekend.  Being on a pretty strict retail card budget means some sets get priority over others.  During the course of the year I stick to Opening Day, Topps Flagship, and the occasional Stadium Club purchase (because of the quality of the set).  I pretty much stay away from the other sets because of price (Heritage, Archives), the unknown (Bowman), and the logo-less (Panini).  Sure, a sale or phenom could cause me to make a brief detour, but that's usually the plan.

I did buy some Bunt when it was around, because it was a cheap get.  When I found out Bunt was being replaced by Big League, I figured a brief detour would be necessary, since it should be cheap, as it was targeted to the kiddos.  Unfortunately, it wasn't the case...2 bucks for 10 cards and 5 bucks for the 30-card Rack Pack.  Still, I tried a few.  Here's the best of the Rack Packs!

The best?  Foreshadowing...

There's 400 cards in the checklist, and there's not a whole lot of inserts...that's kinda kid friendly, right?  I mean you don't want your 10 year old to have to hunt down 25 parallels of his or her favorite team's middle reliever.  Anyway, here's what I got:

#90 – Didi Gregorius

#312 – 2017 AL Walks Leaders

The card border isn't bad, and I believe the blogosphere prefers the 3 players on 1 League Leaguers 

card as opposed to the current setup in Flagship.  

More foreshadowing...

#19 – Matt Olson

#353 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Guaranteed Rate Field

The Ballpark Landmarks are a cool subset (not an insert).  Unfortunately, there's only 15 cards for it 

and the Cubs gets two cards.  Too bad all the ballparks aren't represented.

#123 – Jorge Polanco

#364 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Oriole Park at Camden Yards

The B&O Warehouse was constructed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad...yes, the Railroad on the

Monopoly board I could never land on.

#223 – Mike Zunino

#188 – Orlando Arcia

#170 – Daniel Murphy

#179 – Reynaldo Lopez

The blogosphere also appears to approve of the player breaking out of the picture and into the 

border.  I still can't believe Murphy made it through waivers to the Cubs.

#65 – Matt Harvey

#376 – Edwin Diaz

#68 – Edwin Encarnacion

Harvey was already on the Reds by the time Big League was released, and he was almost 

traded to the Brewers by the I got around to posting this.  Nice bat flip shot on the Encarnacion card.

#269 – Justin Verlander

#237 – Ben Gamel

#209 – Andrelton Simmons

Verlander had a pricey bill to pay off today.  I mean, thirty bucks for pancakes?

#286 – Yuli Gurriel

#62 – Robinson Cano

Cano is one of the players who has a Players Weekend Nickname Image Variation in the set.  The 

Variation is part of the set and uses the card number of the featured player.  Oh hey, it's Players 

Weekend this weekend!

#112 – Clint Frazier (RC)

#363 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Miller Park

#144 – Nelson Cruz

#304 – 2017 AL Runs Scored Leaders

Good for Topps for using a different picture for Judge.

OK, enough foreshadowing...

#1 – Aaron Judge

#315 – 2017 NL Batting Average Leaders

#40 – Yoan Moncada

It's an Aaron Judge hot pack!

Big League puts the insert / parallel cards at the end of the pack, as opposed to the middle...

#353 – Ballpark Landmarks:  Guaranteed Rate Field (Red Foil Parallel 1/1)

Correction...it's a Big Hurt Hot Pack!

When I came across this, I was initially pleased to get a Red Foil parallel of a pretty nice card, but I 

did not know the Red Foils are 1/1s!  I did a triple take when I saw the 1/1 in the upper right.  This is 

probably the best card I have ever pulled from a retail pack.  If I read it right, according the back of 

the pack, the odds of pulling a Red Foil is 1:1015.

#104 – Jose Altuve (Players Weekend Image Variation) 

#111 – Paul Goldschmidt (Gold Parallel) 

#349 – Mariano Rivera (Gold Parallel) 

#265 – Stephen Piscotty (Gold Parallel) 

The Players Weekend card comes 1 in 3 packs.  You get 3 Gold Parallels in a Rack Pack.

Here are the backs.  The "Did You Know?" blurbs are a fun read, so I stacked several cards so those 

with excellent vision can read up on some of the players in the pack:

Anyway, that's the pack.  The excitement of pulling a 1/1 has yet to die down, and the fact that these cards can be found in retail packs certainly gives hope to the regular collector.  Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading!