2012 Topps Series 1 Retail (Toys R Us)

Greetings!

Hope everyone's doing well.  I am loving the increased posts on the site.  Keep it up, everybody!

Real quick, a shout out to Wax Pack Geek…welcome aboard!  Looking forward to your continued contributions to the site.  Better yet, I get to hand off the title of Rookie to you.  I’ll send over the My Little Pony backpack so you can carry it around on the team plane.

Without further adieu, here’s a pack of 2012 Topps Series 1 Baseball…Toys R Us edition!

For the last couple of years, they have been having a buy one, get one half off promotion during Baseball’s Opening Week.  I was able to get two packs as part of an Easter gift.  These are regular packs with 3 extra cards…those cards are purple-bordered versions of the base cards.  Notice the attention-grabbing ad at the top of the package, encouraging you to complete the entire set (sorry for the bad scan).  So, wait, 330 cards in Series 1, with 3 cards in a pack.  I gotta buy 110 packs of cards to have a shot of getting the set (and that’s assuming no duplicates)?  At 3 bucks a pack, that’s $330!!!  Fortunately for me, I only paid $4.50 for the two packs, kinda justifying 6 purple-bordered cards for $.50.  Sorry Toys R Us, I ain’t falling for your marketing tricks!

Anyway, here’s the pack:

#276 - Scott Baker

#254 – Philip Humber

#209 – A.J. Burnett

The newest member of the Perfect Game club helps start things off.  Anyone listening to the radio call of the game heard that Humber pitched the perfecto at U.S. Cellular Field, in Chicago, instead of Safeco Field, where they actually were.  Word did get to Ed Farmer, the Sox’s play-by-play man, about the error, and I guess he was pretty amused by the mistake.

#GG-71 – Babe Ruth (Golden Greats)

#GGC-1 – Topps Golden Giveaway

#220 – Jay Bruce

I’m with most everyone on the set.  The shots are pretty good overall, the typos on the columns on the backs of the cards are unforgivable, and the inserts aren't too good.  Too much empty space on them.  But again, the shots are pretty good for the most part, as evidenced by the Jay Bruce card.

#5 – Desmond Jennings

#118 – Miguel Olivo

#66 – Nyjer Morgan

A couple more examples of good shots with Jennings and Morgan.  Seeing the Jennings and Olivo cards back to back made me wish that the Olivo card was a shot after Jennings tried to score.

#150 – Roy Halladay (back)

#264 – Chris Carpenter (NLDS Game 5)

#185 – Pablo Sandoval

I like the playoff cards in this year’s set, although I don’t know why they used the World Series logo instead of the NLDS logo.  That and why they shot they chose was Carpenter being consumed by Cardinal zombies.

#71 – Jeff Karstens

#169 – Brett Myers

#150 – Roy Halladay

And there’s the 3 “Exclusive Inserts.”  Now you know why I showed the back of the Halladay card earlier.  I will admit, I could clearly see that Halladay was the third card when I held the package just right.  Does that count as pack-searching?

Just for the record, the 3 “Exclusive Inserts” in the other pack I got were the Mariano Rivera checklist (#109), Kevin Youkilis (#160), and Justin DeFratus (#243).  I forgot to scan them in and I’m too lazy to do so now, so if you have those three cards, imagine a purple border around them.

Anyway, that’s the pack.  More later.  Thanks for reading!