Tuesday, March 15, 2022

The First* Phillie of 2022: Well Done, Topps


*I'm cheating here.  The first Phillie of 2022 was technically the Kyle Gibson card, as that was the first live 2022 Topps baseball card I saw as it was on the top of the team set I purchased earlier this month.  Since shortly after the start of the pandemic, Jenna has resorted to curbside pick-up for our groceries or an occasional home delivery.  This means neither of us have set foot inside a Target or Walmart in about two years, and I'm thoroughly OK with this.  This also means the days of buying random blasters of new baseball cards is pretty much gone.  I ordered the Phillies team set from an eBay seller in early March, the set arrived recently, and I've already posted a gallery of Phillies cards from Series One of the set.

But for the purpose of tradition . . . Doug pulled the first Phillie this year, the Zack Wheeler card out of the first pack of 2022 Topps he opened.  Ben was a few seconds behind him with the Matt Vierling card.  Since we don't venture inside stores anymore, Jenna ordered two blasters of 2022 Topps Series One from Target with the small box delivered on Sunday afternoon.

It's a great design this year.  It looks like a Topps flagship set should look - clean, relatively plain - but it also looks like a baseball card design from the year 2022.  Well done, Topps.  The player's names are easy to read, the photography is great, the player's position is on the front of the card, and I've always preferred a card with the team's logo on the front.  The more I look at the design, the more I like it, and it's easily the best design of the past ten years - ahead of the 2015 and 2019 Topps sets in my opinion.

The backs are fine too.  Clean, with an easy to read card number, and I appreciate the Series One indicator below the card number as well.  The team logo shows up again on the back, which again, I appreciate.  My only small complaint is the orientation of the back of the cards seem to go both ways.  This would drive me nuts if I had planned on binder-ing this set, but since I'll purchase a factory set at the end of year and binder-ing these days is reserved for vintage sets, I'll never notice this quirk.

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