1996 Topps Gallery Baseball Review

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Topps Gallery was one of my absolute favorite brands when it existed (excluding 2005). Year after year, Gallery provided a sharp-looking set and even sharper inserts, with awesome artistic tones. You may recall some of my previous Gallery breaks but if you need a reminder, here’s a look at the versions of 1998 and 2000. For now though, have a look at where it all began, 1996 Topps Gallery!

Box Details: 24 packs per box, 8 cards per pack, $35
From: Dave and Adam’s Card World

Base set: The base set is comprised of 180 cards. Each base card contains one of four different designs, depending on where they fall in the set. The first 108 cards are pure full-bleed photos with a holofoil nameplate, as evidenced by the Kevin Appier card. Cards 109-126 (The Modernists) feature a colorful block background and consist mainly of players who were in their third or fourth MLB year in ‘96. Cards 127-144 are titled as The Futurists and as you would expect, consist solely of rookies. Lastly, cards 145-180 are entitled The Masters and feature the very best in the game, such as Greg Maddux. The semi-border and nameplate resemble that of a framed masterpiece and heavily influenced the design of the following year’s set. In this box, I pulled 115 out of 180 base cards (64%) with 63 dupes and 2 triples! There was a major collation flaw in this box that I will discuss later.

Players Private Issue (1:8 packs, /999): The first-ever Topps Gallery parallel was known as the Players Private Issue. This parallel mirrored the entire 180-card set and can be identified by a gold holofoil stamp on the front of each card. The print run on these cards is 999, but a couple things should be noted. First, the first 100 cards were sent to the players themselves, hence the name of the parallel. Second, it was announced after the 1996 season that Topps destroyed a whopping 400 sets, leaving 499 left in circulation. I pulled PPI cards of Geronimo Berroa (492), John Wetteland (450), Paul Wilson (638), and Jeff Suppan (306). These cards are numbered “xxx” rather than the standard “xxx/xxx” that we’ve all been accustomed to for years.

Expressionists (20 cards, 1:24 packs): The only insert in this product inserted at a rate not worse than one per box is known as Expressionists. These cards are smothered in several different types of foil and have somewhat of a raised texture to them. The photographs on these are superb. This card features a shot of Gary Sheffield popping up a can of corn. The checklist is certainly a diverse one. Mike Piazza, Ken Griffey, Jr., Mark McGwire, Ray Lankford, Carlos Baerga, Dennis Martinez, and Edgar Martinez are in this set as well.

Photo Gallery (15 cards, 1:30 packs): Photo Gallery is a full-bleed insert that featured some of the game’s biggest stars and some of the greatest moments of the 1995 season, such as Eddie Murray’s 3000th hit or in my case, David Justice hitting the game-winning home run in Game 6 of the World Series. Special foil effects were also added to each photo. Check out this Randy Johnson, for example.

Mickey Mantle Masterpiece (1:48 packs): Like most other Topps products in 1996, Gallery also had a tribute insert to the late Mickey Mantle. Unlike some other inserts, this Masterpiece insert was done extremely well and actually served a purpose. The back of the card depicts a smiling Mickey, along with complete career stats. As annoying as some of his inserts in recent years have been (screw you HRH), this one’s a keeper.

Final Thoughts/Grades:

Collation: D

Over half (56.5%) of the base cards I needed for the base set had a dupe or triple. In fact, the dupes accounted for more than one-third of the box’s contents! The issue that I mentioned earlier was the fact that in every pack, the second and third card were exactly the same. Yes, this happened in all 24 packs! You probably know that I like to try to collate sets when I bust a box so I don’t have to tell you how much this annoyed me. The rest of the box delivered well in my favor, though. I pulled one more PPI card than normal and also found a Mantle Masterpiece as an added bonus.

Condition: A-

The condition of these cards was by far the best part of the box. I was very happy with how clean these super glossy cards came out. There were few blemishes to be found.

Pulls: C

All the PPI cards were pure commons (though I love the Wetteland) and one of my inserts was of Gary Sheffield. Not good. If it weren’t for the Mantle, this box probably would’ve been a total bust, but at least the cards look sharp.

Value: C+

Compared to some of the other years of Gallery, 1996 has fewer actual inserts and more PPI parallels, which is something I’m not exactly fond of. The reason for this is probably that I don’t think much of a parallel which is nothing more than a stamp (one of the reasons you see no Pacific breaks here). They just don’t stand out, are pretty easy to miss, and give the illusion that 20+ packs out of a 24-pack box contain nothing but plain base cards. Boring.

Anyway, back to the inserts. If you haven’t already, go ahead and check out the earlier Gallery breaks I linked to at the beginning of the post. Based on the odds, it would be hard to pull more content out a box than I did here, but I still wasn’t as impressed as I was when I broke those other boxes. I suppose it’s just a quality over quantity issue. All three boxes can be had for roughly the same price but when it comes down to pulling parallels of likely commons with just two additional inserts vs. pulling several inserts of stars plus potential big hits such as printing plates or even autographs, I think I’d stick with the later years of Gallery, preferably before they switched to the all-painted sets.

Overall Grade: C

Blog Status Update

As you can see, the action on this blog has been slowing up a bit. In order to help avoid “tumbleweed” status, I thought I’d fill you readers in as to what to expect from me in upcoming weeks. First, as I mentioned in the last post, I do have a box that’s been broken and ready for recap/review. I’ve had little time to maintain this site since my last post but I can assure you that will be up before the weekend. Second, I’m in the process of ordering some new boxes for next week. I’m looking at some Topps Stars and Black Diamond, among others so watch out for that. Third, just weeks after holding my last contest, I’m already throwing ideas around for the next one. Like Crack This!, it will be in the form of a puzzle BUT the prize will be much greater than any card I’ve given away in any contest.

Check back soon…

Old School Hits: 2001 SP Game Bat Milestone Piece of the Action Trios

In mid-2001, Upper Deck released a product named SP Game Bat Milestone Edition. Inside each pack was a Milestone, International, Bound for the Hall, Autographed, or multi-player game bat card. While the first three sets on that list represented the most common pulls (They also had a gold parallel numbered to 35), the autographed and multi-player cards were very difficult to pull, seeded at 1 in 100 packs and 1 in 50 packs respectively. The multi-player cards I speak of feature either three (as pictured) or four players per card. This card of Paul O’Neill, David Justice, and Roger Clemens is just one of 14 Trios available. For the complete Trios checklist, click here.

Mail From the Bearded One

I have another box ready for review but first, I thought I’d catch up on a mailday that I’m very late in recapping. Recently, Greg of Beardy’s Baseball Blog and I had a team swap of Orioles and Yankees. It started when I emailed him stating that I had a small lot of O’s that I wanted him to have. The lot consisted of about 10 cards, most of which you can view here. Greg more than reciprocated the favor and a bulging bubble mailer from Maryland found its way here, much to my (pleasant) surprise. Here are the contents:

“Beardy” sent me this certified autograph of Chase Wright from 2007 SP Rookie Edition. The wood theme here is inspired by the 1996 SP set. I think you all know how much I love old SP/SP Authentic sets by now. I hate sticker autographs as much as the next guy, especially when they’re placed on the card in a crooked way. However, in the case of this card, the crooked sticker actually makes the signature appear straight so I’ll make an exception this time.

Greg also sent me my first cards from 2007 SP Legendary Cuts. I have never opened any of this stuff before, but I might consider doing so now that the price has come down. I love the look of the base set. It’s black, classy, and actually has legends in it! In my opinion, this is what Legendary Cuts is supposed to look like. Personally, I wish this product would’ve gotten the axe before they made cards LIKE THIS.

Finally, here’s a look at some of the other 42 cards he sent me. There were cards from Sweet Spot Classic, Finest, Turkey Red, Spectrum, Topps ‘52, Bowman Chrome, Bowman Heritage, and of course, Allen and Ginter.

Thanks for the trade and the great cards Beardy!

1997 SP Baseball Review

Here is the box break/review that I hyped up a few days ago, 1997 SP! 1997 was the last year that the brand wasn’t dubbed ‘SP Authentic’ as it is today. Despite this, there are still quite a few authentic autographs and other great cards to be found. Let’s see what this box yielded…

Box Details: 30 packs box, 8 cards per pack, $88
From eBay

Base set: The base set is comprised of 184 cards, the first 15 of which are Great Futures young stars/prospects which fell one to a pack. Each base card has a specific color scheme based on the player’s team and a holographic area running down the sides and across the bottom of the card. Besides the fact that these cards are condition sensitive, the one thing that I don’t like about the base cards is that the players’ first name and even worse, the card number on the back, are difficult to read thanks to “bronze on bronze” foil. Anyway, I pulled 170 of the 184 cards (92%). There were 61 duplicates in this box!

Inside Info (1:box): Inside every box of 1997 SP is a box topper pack containing a special insert called Inside Info. This set contains 25 cards, each of which contains stats and a mini biography tucked within the card. This card tells me about Chipper Jones‘ excellent 1996 season and that he hit .448 as a HS senior.

Marquee Matchups (1:5 packs): There are 20 players in the Marquee Matchups set, each of whom has an image (or partial image) of an inter-league rival in the background of their card. Notice that if you put two of these die-cut cards together, they resemble the 1996 SPx design. I pulled cards of Ken Griffey, Jr., Sammy Sosa, Cal Ripken, Jr., Chipper Jones, and Tim Salmon.

Special FX (1:9 packs): It’s inserts like these that made SP awesome. The Special FX cards are die-cut on all sides and feature three images of each player: a hologram image and two smaller regular images right below the hologram. Thanks to my scanner, these cards appear to be solid black in color in the non-holographic area but this area actually has a granite-like appearance, with a bit of a reddish-brown tint. The backs of these cards look just like the front except the positions of the colors are inverted and there are no holograms. There are a whopping 47 cards in this set! I pulled three in this box: Mike Mussina, Sammy Sosa, and Gary Sheffield.

Griffey Heroes (numbered to 2000): Another insert randomly inserted is a special 10-card tribute set to Ken Griffey, Jr. The set is called Baseball Heroes and chronicles Griffey’s career up to that point. These cards highlight his first home run crown, his first postseason trip, All-Star Game MVP Award, and his breaking into the Majors at age 19. The cards are numbered 91-100 (as opposed to 1-10) and there are just 2000 of each. I pulled a copy of card 94 (1370/2000). Unfortunately, as you can see in the scan, this card came straight from the pack with some major damage along the top edge.

Game Film (numbered to 500): If I wasn’t going to pull an autograph from this box, I would’ve wanted to at least pull one of these. Game Film is a 10-card die-cut set that is unique because it actually has film cells embedded into the card. I pulled a Barry Bonds (312/500) in which we see the follow-through of his sweet swing. Dating the film (like they did in hockey) would’ve been a nice touch but these cards are awesome nonetheless.

Final Thoughts/Grades:

Collation: C

There were 240 cards in this box and I fell short of the 184 card set by 14 cards. 61 duplicates equates to two dupes per pack on average or a quarter of the box! Usually this would drive me nuts, but seeing how the number of cards per box is considerably greater than the number of cards in the base set, I’ll let it pass. Also, I probably should’ve pulled one more Marquee Matchups card based on the stated odds.

Condition: B-

Of all the cards, the Griffey Heroes insert suffered the worst damage by far. All of the other inserts and base came out relatively clean (with the exception of two dupes getting chipped badly). For the record, this grade only got the minus because of that Griffey.

Pulls: B

Overall, I thought the pulls were solid with two Griffeys, two Chippers, some Sosa, Ripken, and of course Baroid. My box wouldn’t be complete without him or Tony Gwynn! I was happy to see the Game Film card since there were no autographs or basic SPx Force inserts. On a side note, I seemed to have “jinxed” myself with Chippers when I made the ‘Anticipation’ post.

Value: B+

This one is a bit harder to gauge. This was the first box of ‘97 SP that I’ve seen available in YEARS. The $88 I paid was the final delivered price (shipping was listed as “free” in the auction but postage was $12). To be honest, I was a little surprised this box didn’t go into the triple digits. The quality of potential pulls (autos) is incredibly high and even if you don’t hit one, you can still walk away with a nice box. If base dupes don’t drive you to the brink of madness, I’d definitely suggest trying a box if you can find one.

Overall Grade: B