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Group Break: Finishing off the 2013 Panini Triple Play box!

All good things must come to an end, but luckily, the group break isn't over.  No, the only good thing ending is the 2013 Panini Triple Play box because it's time to rip open the final eight packs!

As you can see from the video, we did fairly well with the box though collation definitely left a bit to be desired.  I like to try and scan the majority of the hits/inserts from a set so let's take a look at the goodies from the final eight packs.

Warning:  If you prefer to see your cards opened "live" (well, live in the sense that I recorded the video live), don't read on until you are done with the video!

Ok, with that out of the way, let's take a look at some cardboard, shall we?

We begin our scans with the highlight of the eight packs - our one short print from the box:  a When I Was a Kid card of Bryce Harper of the Nationals (congrats Josh).
I have to admit, from the name of the subset, I thought that Panini would have tracked down the featured player to write a blurb.  That appears not to be the case (at least in the instance of Harper).  The card back does at least feature one quote by Bryce which helps sell the theme a bit.  Overall, a nice card that ties back to kids (the main focus of the set).  I approve.

Next up, the eight stickers from the packs.

I like the fact that each pack has a sticker - it makes pack ripping fun.  I don't like the fact that the sticker collation in the box was abysmal (and that's putting it nicely).  As a whole, we ended up with 14 red stickers including 2 Strasburgs, 2 Beavans, 2 Ichiros, 3Kemps, and 2 Machados).  There's no way we should have had that many duplicates in the box!

The blue stickers are much rarer (we ended up with 7 in our box) but even those had duplication problems.  We finished with 2 Gio Gonzalez cards, 2 Ryan Howards, and 2 Adam Jones.  That means only the one Clayton Kershaw didn't come with a duplicate.  Awful.

The orange stickers are the rarest (we ended up with only 3 in our box) but even there 2 of our 3 stickers were duplicates (singing the National Anthem).  Again, I repeat myself:  Awful.

The baseball 101 cards are good stuff for kids - I definitely approve of the concept.

What I don't approve of is the fact that again we were plagued by duplicates.  Of our six Baseball 101 inserts, we got two Knuckleballs and 2 Outfields.  The only two non-duplicated inserts from this set were the two you see above.  On the bright side, since this is a group break and the Baseball 101 cards don't have a specific team involved, we have plenty of cards to distribute among the various group break slots at the end of the break!

We got another three eye black cards - with one duplicate (Felix Hernandez).

It still makes no sense to me for a pitcher to have an eye black card but whatever.  I didn't scan our two tattoo cards since they were Jeter and Kemp - both of which we've already pulled.  In fact, it was actually the third Kemp tattoo card of the box!

The only bright spot in terms of collation and inserts in the Panini box was with the All-Star cards.

The All-Star inserts are quite nice - and out of the nine All-Star cards we ended up with only one duplicate (Giancarlo Stanton).  It's bad when I have to consider that a "win" for collation but in this box that's definitely as good as it gets!

I hope everyone enjoyed the Panini Triple Play box - and don't judge the cards too harshly until you have them in hand.  The set definitely grew on me as I opened the packs - each pack had enough variety to keep me interested...and if Panini could just fix the collation this would be a set that I could see myself buying (especially at a low price point)!

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