I Opened A Pack of Cards: 2021 Topps Series 1 Jumbo

It's been quite a while since I've touched wax. Or I guess these days it's foil. Back in 2018, I opened a jumbo box each of Series 1, Series 2, and Update to build my flagship set from packs. That's a ton of fun, but cost about $450; I got some other interesting cards but not enough to justify that overall expense! Perhaps if I had pulled a Mike Trout autograph.

Since then, I've mostly stayed away from boxes. In 2019, I believe I opened one jumbo pack; it could have been just a regular hobby pack. I remember opening a couple Opening Day packs too, since they're cheap and fun. Last year, nothing. I got some singles online and at a couple card shows, but I don't think I even saw packs anywhere. The card shows probably had some boxes, but they usually don't have loose packs.

So this year, I expected much of the same. Buy singles when I find them, save my money for what I really need. You're seeing that post so obviously I bought one pack this year! I'll show you the goodies and then give you my thoughts. Every freakin' card is scanned individually. Enjoy?

The images are pretty crisp. I don't feel like I'm looking at oversaturated HDR images like in some prior years.

Nike jerseys. Still getting used to that.

I like the subset cards this year. I'll end up with a full flagship set anyway, but I might put together a second set of subset cards. Or maybe not.

One thing I gotta say is this: I'm sick of all the Astros-bashing. It's not that they should be forgiven, necessarily, it's just getting old. And at this point, it's just virtue signaling or karma farming (if this were reddit...)

I got the Jesus Lizard. If someone makes a Project 70 card of him with his head replaced by a lizard, I might just buy that. Those Project 70 cards cost a fortune, though.

Those throwback uniforms are nice and all, but with Topps including so many legend SPs I have to check if I'm getting a Steve Carlton or something.

There are so many rookies in this set, and so many young players overall. Not complaining, just an observation.

The card on the left will probably become a meme. 

Evan Longoria playing at the Bay instead of for Tampa Bay. Strange.

Cameo on the right. 'member when that was common?

Can we have a Darth Bader bobblehead night?

This is my first pack-pulled Aaron Judge card.

Yaz!

Gotta make these small to fit them two across.

There are lots of team cards in the horizontal series.

While 2020 wasn't a good year, I think it's important to have a record of how the pandemic impacted baseball. Mask cards, no-touch high-fives, hand sanitizers, all have a place on cardboard.

I'm surprised Topps is still putting all the horizontal cards together in packs.

Remember when Odor was good. Now he just stinks? I guess he hits home runs.

I love a card with a trophy on it. That truck must get about 2 miles to the gallon though.

Overall, I enjoy the design. It's not too invasive, though the accents on the side probably could have been smaller (at least, make the shadows smaller). The honeycomb design is slightly reminiscent of 1987 Donruss with their baseball tire tracks across the middle of the border. Was that intentional, since 2021 Donruss used 1987's design for their throwback subset?

As for the inserts, very meh. I remember when I used to get a ton of inserts in every jumbo pack. I'm not sure that's really necessary, but it was fun. My one parallel is the jumbo gold foil parallel. I got a Rickey Henderson, though, which was okay.

And one of these things. I could really do without so many throwback inserts in flagship Topps. There's already Heritage and Archives for that. I get that it's Topps's 70th birthday, but every 10 years it's the same thing. And in 2026, we'll see a 75th Anniversary set that, once again, reprints a card from every set before.

My pack was so disappointing that the shop owner gave a the Silver Pack. Maybe I did okay here? I mean, I know Clemente was great, but I guess we'll see what becomes of the two players with first last names.

Oh, yeah. The Silver Pack had one of these, too. My scanner really hates dark borders, and had a hard time with all of the '86 throwbacks. But the shiny blue borders here really did it in. This is #/150, and looking at eBay sales, I have a card worth the price of the jumbo pack. So overall, I did well. Who knows, some of the rookies may pan out. But given the print run of 2021, I'm sure the base cards won't be that crazy valuable.

Speaking of rookies, as I mentioned, there were a lot of rookies in this pack and in 2021 Series 1 in general. Since I haven't opened much in the past couple of years, and in 2018 the jumbo boxes had decent collation, I haven't added many new, young players to my archives collection. (My archives collection is one card of every player to ever play major league baseball. I'll never finish, I know - some players are only in pre-war sets, and many players never had a card of any kind. But I can get as close as possible, right?) Because I needed so many of these cards for the archives, the pack was pretty good for me from a collecting standpoint. Only 16 cards are in the "extras" stack, though a few more of those may move somewhere else.

So this pack was good, in the end. No relics, autographs, SPs, or low-numbered parallels, but the silver pack Acuna (which is going into my collection) definitely made up for the value. I'm happy to have gotten my money's worth!

I haven't made up my mind for sure yet, but there are a couple inserts I didn't get that I might want the full set for: Stars in Service, for showing players off the field, and History of Topps, because it's baseball cards on baseball cards.

What I don't want is the Topps Through the Years set. It's just a bunch of reprinted overpriced cards. It's like buying a postcard of the Mona Lisa; it's a memento but it really isn't the same as the real thing.

What do you think of my haul? Of Series One?