I’m late to the party when it comes to Topps Total. I hadn’t purchased any of the first 5 Waves to open, as the reboot didn’t stick true enough to the roots of the product for me. I’m a huge fan of the original products as they were an autograph collectors best friend . The cards weren’t glossy, featured tons of players who may not have other cards and were inexpensive.

I also started out much more hesitant to participate in these Topps Online Exclusive products, but with the lack of products freely available at a decent price, I softened my stance. The cost and pack out options keep you from getting hurt too bad as each 10-card pack is $10.00.

The print run for Wave 6 is only 3,059 Packs and features a pretty interesting checklist that can be found here. The highlights of the 100 series are rookie cards of Brusdar Graterol and Michael King. Additionally veterans like Cody Bellinger, Freddie Freeman, George Springer and DJ LeMahieu can be found. Wave 6 also features randomly inserted autographs from Freddie Freeman, Cody Bellinger, Chris Paddack, Jean Segura, Willians Astudillo and Ryan Helsley.

Here’s what we got in our two packs:

Pack 1:

Brusdar Graterol RC, Travis Demeritte RC, David Price, Matt Carpenter, Adeiny Hechavarría, Chad Wallach, Nick Wittgren, Sam Coonrod, Jordan Luplow, Mitch Haniger.

Pack 2:

Taylor Clarke 1/1, Cody Bellinger, Jesús Tinoco, Colten Brewer, Duane Underwood Jr., Skye Bolt, Howie Kendrick, Travis Jankowski, Yusmeiro Petit, Chris Stratton, Mike Montgomery.

Grade: A–

The cards are nice and SUPER GLOSSY. I was a little thrown off by that at first but they really have a nice, simple design and the gloss helps them really pop. The player selection in each series is a little different than you are used to in part due to the massive amount of cards in the brand. Wave 6 features cards 501-600, so you’re not going to get only big name base cards. I mention this not as a negative, but more of a PSA. It’s cool to get a card of someone you don’t have a pile of cards for in your collection.

The grade is also seriously impacted by pulling a 1/1 card. It’s really cool to get a 1/1 in any product, but really nice when we weren’t expecting anything but base cards. The 1/1 cards in this product have a gold border and feature a 1/1 stamp in the upper right hand corner.

However, one of my concerns is that it’s really hard/expensive to put together a set for each series. Each Wave features 100 base cards, so you’re going to need to pick up at least 10 packs to put together a series set. I’d recommend trying a couple of packs and picking up the singles you want. I wish they made this more of a set-collector’s set, but we can’t always get what we want.

Wave 8 is currently on sale on the Topps website. You can pick up your packs for the next two weeks for $10 per pack. I’d recommend giving them a try, but limiting the number of packs you buy until you get them in hand and open them for yourself.