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I'm back with another box review thanks to my ongoing Breaker's Club group break! This time around, we have the results of our hobby box of 2021 Topps Stadium Club Chrome to take a look at.
Each hobby box promises 14 packs with 6 cards per pack. One of those cards should be an on-card autograph. Unlike many recent Topps' releases, Stadium Club Chrome does not come with any sort of box topper (which was kind of a bummer given the going price on boxes these days)!
Out of the 400 card base set, our box produced 69 different base cards. As usual with the Stadium Club brand, there were a number of excellent photos in the box. I picked out a few of my favorites to scan:
That alone is enough to show how difficult this set would be to collect in its entirety! Also of note, we didn't get a single base card numbered higher than 357 which seemed kind of odd to me. According to Cardboard Connection, all 400 base cards are "common" (i.e. there are no short prints in the base set) so I can't explain why we were missing such a large numerical chunk of card numbers.
My guess is most people don't buy Stadium Club Chrome for the base set anyhow, it's the parallels (and maybe the autographs) that are the real draw for many. As far as parallels go, our box produced four different refractors (seeded 1:4 packs so we beat the odds slightly since the box only has 14 packs):
37. Shohei Ohtani (Angels)
136. Cavan Biggio (Blue Jays)
155. Kris Bubic (Royals)
258. Dave Winfield (Yankees)
Not a bad quartet of players if you ask me - the Ohtani being particularly nice though both the Biggio and Winfield cards have interesting photos as well which shine bright with the refractor technology.
The only other parallel that we found was a 1:57 pack Orange refractor which was serially numbered out of only 25 on the back of the card!
The Trevor Rogers card goes to the Marlins and is numbered 18/25! I will admit that it's kind of neat that a card numbered out of only 25 isn't a super rare pull. It does suggest that Topps didn't completely over-produce this particular set (though, truth be told, with 400 base cards each with 25 orange parallels, the math still says there's plenty of product out there)!
There is also one partial parallel in the set - a 1991 Design Variation set which contains a total of 25 different cards. Those are seeded 1:4 packs and we again slightly beat the odds by finding four such cards in our box:
76. Derek Jeter (Yankees)
174. Bryce Harper (Phillies)
209. Christian Yelich (Brewers)
231.; Jo Adell (Angels)
I have to admit that the Jeter card looks perfectly at home in the 1991 design (despite that being a few years before Jeter actually arrived in MLB)!
The rest of the inserts in the box consisted of three Beam Team cards (seeded 1:4), one Virtual Reality (seeded 1:14 packs), and one Crystal Ball (seeded 1:14 packs).
For me, the best of that bunch is the Casey Mize Crystal Ball insert - a great looking box hit insert if you ask me!
Finally, speaking of box hits, here's our one promised autograph:
As expected with Stadium Club, we pulled a rookie autograph - this one being Nick Maton of the Phillies. I don't have much else to say about this particular card though it should be noted that at least the autograph is on card!
Overall, I give the 2021 Topps Stadium Club Chrome (hobby) box the following rating:
Set Design: A
Collation: A-
Opening Thrill: C+
Overall: B+
With only 14 packs (and only 6 cards per pack), the ripping process for the box is over in a blink of an eye. It's kind of disappointing how low of a percentage of the 400-card base set you get in a box as well...it's definitely disappointing if you are someone like me who is a set collector at heart! That being said, the overall design for the set is solid and the various parallels are always fun to pull. I'm not huge on most of this year's inserts though the 1991 Design Variations are fun for someone who considers 1991 to be an important year in my baseball card collecting history. That all being said, at nearly $140 for a box of 2021 Topps Stadium Club Chrome I think there isn't quite enough value there to make the gamble worthwhile.
Not sure if it's Topps with a high MSRP or if it's the demand that drove up these box prices, but $140 is crazy... and very sad. $10 a pack for four cards? If it is Topps, that set the price... they really should be ashamed. Then again... if collectors are will to pay these prices... it's hard to blame them.
ReplyDeleteBox prices are still kind of nuts, though thankfully not quite as bad as last year. Of course, prices on everything are now nuts so maybe people are scaling back their discretionary spending on things like cards.
DeleteThe only appeal for me for this set is that some of the images are different from the images in the regular SC set, after all images are what SC is all about! Don't care about that other stuff, so not for me.
ReplyDeleteIf this were a base-only set (maybe with one parallel because it's 2021/22) I'd be all over it. Get rid of the auto (and thus the big box price) and give me a gorgeous chrome set with great photography and I'll collection 10 out of 10 times. Charge me $140 for a box with a (most likely) unwanted autograph and I'll pass 10 out of 10 times. Too bad Topps doesn't ask me what I want.
DeleteDifferent images and some of the players were updated for new teams (like Kris Bryant)
DeleteIt sure seems like hobby boxes are yielding less and less value with every new product. :(
ReplyDelete10 bucks was what the LCS charged me for the pack I bought. It's a bummer I won't be getting more of the stuff, so thanks for showing off the cards!
ReplyDeleteI always smile when I see a unique RC photo...suppose Yermin became the next legendary player and bloggers 60 years from now are showing off their rookie cards of Mantle and Aaron and Griffey Jr and Trout...and here's smiling Yermin!