Topps has brought back a set that has been around over 110 year ( the T206 first came out in 1909). This version is an online only set that has been broken down into 5 Series. The First Series has finally been shipped to collectors and hits have begun to show up on eBay.
The 1st Series had a print run of 74,997. Each box has 10 cards, 8 base cards and 2 Piedmont Back parallels. Some packs will contain only 7 base cards and an additional parallel or autograph. Each box costs $14.99. Here’s a list of the potential parallels and their odds as stated on Topps.com.
Parallels:
• Piedmont Back (2 per pack)
• Sweet Caporal Back (1:3 packs)
• Sovereign Back (1:6 packs)
• Polar Bear Back (1:18 packs)
• Old Mill Back (1:30 packs)
• Cycle Back (foil stamped # to 25)
• American Beauty Back (foil stamped # to 10)
• Ty Cobb (foil stamped # to 1)
• Autographs (Randomly Inserted)
Here’s what we were able to pull from our two boxes.
Box 1:
Randal Grichuk Sweet Caporal Back, Mike Schmidt Piedmont Back, Mariano Rivera Piedmont Back, Andrew Benintendi, Robbie Ray, Jon Lester, Dillon Tate RC, DJ LeMahieu, JD Martinez, Pete Alonso.
Box 2:
Carlos Santana Piedmont Back, Noah Syndergaard Piedmont Back, JT Realmuto, Scott Kingery, Carlos Correa, Max Kepler, Justin Dunn RC, Sean Murphy RC, Freddie Freeman, David Dahl.
Grade: C-
I was a huge fan of the 2002 version of Topps 206 and was very excited when Topps announced the reboot. The look and design are great. Even the boxes look awesome. However, opening two packs left me disappointed. I beat the odds with the Sweet Caporal Back of Randal Grichuk and got the two Piedmont Back cards per box I was supposed to. The veteran Piedmont Back cards were fun to pull, I can’t wait until they release the series with more prospects in them.
Which gets me to my first real issue with this series, the player selection. From my two boxes there was really not one card that excited me. Going in to the unboxing, I had sky-high hopes and these probably clouded my overall evaluation of this break. I’ve purchased two boxes of Series 2 and plan to order at least 2 boxes of each remaining series. It will be interesting to see what we get next time.