what are the odds?

All Topps baseball cards from 1995 onward have the given odds on the back of the packs.

Since buying packs of baseball cards are almost essentially gambling, I suppose it's nice of them to give you your odds of 'winning' your prize. I'll be using the odds from 2012 Topps series 2 for this here post.

Introduced in series 1 back earlier in the year, series 2 had these inserts as well:

The Golden Moments inserts. Drab to look at due to them being made especially for the autos and relics. These fall 1 in 4 packs.



Speaking of the autos, the Golden Moments autos will run about 1 in 335 packs. Those are tough odds but usually your auto from series 2 comes on one of these cards more often than not. Chad here is from series 1 but I had no other auto to show from this insert set.



Or do I? this MONSTER hit came from a pack at the local shop last night. I was quite stunned to find such greatness in a basic flagship Topps pack. This is numbered 08/10 and the foil parallels fall at a whopping 1 in 11,800 packs. Now those are some tough odds and have to be the absolute biggest pull odds-wise for me. Garvey isn't in the Hall but perhaps he should be.


Normally when buying packs you don't beat the odds but I think it's safe to say even after buying 8 packs, I demolished them.

when you're wrong, you're wrong

I can admit it. I was wrong.

After watching the Yankees take on the Nationals this weekend, I have to say that I was wrong about my judgement of Bryce Harper. The kid has it. He plays like a big leaguer and does what he does pretty well. Then him calling that reporter a clown for his asinine question? Even better.

I think what happened was the Topps Hype Machine (TM) made me entirely sick of the kid before he even stepped onto a Major League field. Topps is adamant about shoving him down our collective throats because it's what the collectors want. Well the ones who sell on eBay do anyway, cause they're the ones making bank off him.

Anywho. I do wish him the best of luck in his career and will try to watch him on chances I get, which will be few due to Nationals games not being televised around here unless they are playing the Mets or the Yankees.

come on topps...

I found me some series 2 packs at Walmart today.

I didn't get anything of note except while shuffling through the cards, I noticed a familiar name:


No, you're not looking at Wade Davis' card from series 1 (card 48) on the left and his team set issue on the right.

The card on the right is from series 2, card number 578. Meaning Topps must really be thinking high on his performance to put him into both series 1 and 2.

Then there's an issue with card 395, being given to both Rod Barajas and Jonathan Lucroy. Except that some of the Barajas cards are numbered correctly, at card 391.

What is going on? Really, how do these errors happen in this day and age? The computers do all the work!

Sigh, Topps at it again...



Also, Jafronius, if you catch this, you sent me a comment yesterday and I tried to reply in an email but it didn't get sent out. Please send me an email and we'll make a deal.