The Third Series of Topps 206 has been sent to collectors. This 50-card series is completely comprised of prospects. The series also features the smallest print run yet at 28,225 packs. Series 1 had a print run of 74,997 while the Second Series had a print run of 33,914 boxes.
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 checklist from Topps.com and a list of the potential parallels and their odds are stated below.
Series 3 Parallels:
• Piedmont Back (2 per pack)
• Sweet Caporal Back (1:3 packs)
• Sovereign Back (1:6 packs)
• Polar Bear Back (1:18 packs)
• Series 3 Exclusive: Carolina Brights Back (1:20 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 got in the two boxes we opened:
Pack 1:
CJ Abrams American Beauty 3/10, Ian Anderson Piedmont, Brady Singer Piedmont, Wander Franco, Nate Pearson, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Josh Jung, Ronny Mauricio, Hunter Greene, Riley Greene.
Pack 2:
Sixto Sánchez Old Mill, Nolan Gorman, Team Name Switch, Nick Lodolo Piedmont, Julio Rodríguez Piedmont, Andrew Vaughn, Joey Bart, Royce Lewis, Andy Pages, Alex Bohm, Sam Huff.
Grade: A
Series 3 has been the most fun series of the reboot to open. I really liked the prospect theme to it and worry that Series 4 will be a let down once it arrives. We really beat the odds with our break. We’ll break down our two big hits below with pictures. However, we also seem to have gotten a short print that is not included on the checklist. We got a Nolan Gorman card (pictured above in pack 2) that features the city name rather than the team nickname. We searched the Topps website and eBay and were not able to find this card. All of his cards on eBay have “Cardinals” on the card rather than the “Palm Beach” version we got.
We got really lucky and pulled the American Beauty version of CJ Abrams (#/10). Abrams is featured in his Fort Wayne Tincaps uniform and the cards is stamped “03/10” in the upper right hand corner.
Our favorite pull was the Sixto Sánchez Old Mill back card. The Marlins #1 prospect has been really fun to watch this year for our hometown team. This card also gets a bump for featuring him in his Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp uniform, which has to be one of the best minor league team names ever!
I wish I would have picked up more boxes of this series. It is everything I wanted from the first two series. It was a lot of fun to open and with the lower print run, I was able to beat the odds and ended up pulling three pretty rare variations. I will definitely work on putting this series/set together and try to find as many of the different variations I can for some of our favorites in the set (Sixto Sancez, JJ Bleday, Vidal Brujan and Andy Pages).
The sale of Series 4 packs has already ended. When we get our packs we’ll unbox them on the site. You still have more than two weeks to pick up your Series 5 packs from Topps. Look for Series 5 to be the most popular yet as it will feature a Luis Robert rookie card!