2018 Topps, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Building Other Sets

There it is - the first card from the first pack I opened of 2018 Topps. I've decided to keep the 1st card pulled in a separate spot.

Here's the last two years of first cards, just to give a sense of the evolution of the borderless design.

Here's the back - the trade with the Rangers looks like it worked decently well for both teams. The Rangers don't have Fielder anymore due to his retirement, and Kinsler is moving on to the Angels this year, but both teams ended up with several seasons of production from their player.

I purchased a blaster and 2 loose packs - and I ended up with just two Twins. The lens flare effect on the team logo doesn't really do much for me. It just gets in the way - might be better if the light source was behind the logo instead of in front.

Some nice action shots for the young guns.

The veterans are all brooding and intense. They've been through some things.

The horizontal shots are back again, which is usually a good idea. Overall, I thought there was a nice selection of photos for Series 1.

Here's where everything comes off the rails. The inserts have been getting more generic looking and unnecessary. I'd much rather have more base cards than these. The 1983 Salute is a head scratcher - the design was just recently used for Archives, and while I will be the first to admit is one of the better Topps designs of the junk wax era, it still seems like a slot that could have been used for something else.

The Derek Jeter set... I get it, that's fine, but I will just be trying to get rid of them. Opening Day... Why? Topps has a whole set dedicated to Opening Day, we don't need an insert set on top of it. Then there's the Home Run Challenge card.

Check out the website. This "card" is just an ad for the promotion, not the actual Home Run Challenge insert. You can't even use this card to enter the contest! Wasting space in the pack.

Ugh. Get over yourself, Topps. This is masturbatory.

This is the manufactured Relic, Royals fans, hit me up... Overall, the base set is fine - I'd prefer borders, but the photo choices are good and there's a variety of rookies and veterans. No Bartolo Colon? That's a bummer. The inserts are terrible, I would have preferred bringing back First Pitch and/or adding National Anthem singers or something. The inserts also seem position player heavy - would have been nice to throw the pitchers a bone too.

The blaster came with a bunch of coupons, and this last one caught my eye. What set is this? I checked Topps website and Cardboard Connection but I didn't see any upcoming releases for Topps with "BL" initials. The coupon is good from May to August, so I'm guessing this is a product coming out in the summer sometime.