Everything old is new again. 1887 N174 is now 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen Baseball Cards. These cards look great. Even the base cards are enticing. And anything framed in this set is fantastic, from framed paper cards to framed mini relics to framed printing plates. There is so much to like here.
This set falls under our classification of trading cards. With multiple ways of buying Gypsy Queen, if you can find it due to demand, it’s accessible to all. You can buy them in individual packs, Value Packs of 3 -6 card packs plus a bonus pack of green framed paper cards, Blasters of 7 packs plus 1 extra pack and Hobby Boxes of 24 – 10 card packs with a box topper of 10 minis. Hobby boxes are supposed to contain two autographs and two relic cards. The unfortunate thing, acknowledged by Topps, is there were some real collation problems that occurred during the packaging of this set. You might pull multiple hits from a blaster, as we did already, or you might be shorted a hit in your hobby box, which, you will find out, also happened to us. But Topps immediately developed a hassle free way of requesting your missing hits within a day of learning of the problem.
Lets take a look at some of the cards we pulled from our hobby box.
From the Base set
Regular Base card, front and back
High Numbered Short Prints
From the inserts
Home Run Heroes
The Great Ones
Future Stars
Framed Paper
Minis
This is for sizing purposes. Regular base card and its mini parallel
Minis with Gypsy Queen Backs
Here is an example of a Gypsy Queen Back
Black Border Minis
A short print mini #/10
A Gypsy Queens insert
From our Mini Box Topper
6 regular, 3 inset parallels and 1 lighter version
And our hits
Hanley Ramirez Jersey Relic
Derek Jeter Framed Mini Jersey Relic
Gio Conzalez Certified Autograph
Overall Look
These cards are really appealing. The on-card autos are some of the best we’ve seen. As mentioned before, anything framed in this set is fantastic. The minis and insert sets like Home Run Heroes and The Great Ones are just as nice.
Quality and Variety of Players and Subsets.
300 base and 50 SPs make for a tight checklist. Add the excellent choices of players from the past and this set is about as good as it gets. But it does make the Gypsy Queen inserts seem out of place, a small part of the set, but seems better suited for a release like Allen & Ginter.
Do the hits hold up?
On-card autos that look fantastic with a shot at Aaron and Koufax, Stamp Cards, Framed Mini Relics? All great. Manufactured gypsy jewels and gypsy autographs detract somewhat and again seem out of place.
Will you want to collect them all?
Absolutely. Its a great looking first release with a fantastic checklist.
Rating
4 1/2 out of 5
We are already looking forward to 2012 Gypsy Queen as we are collecting 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen. Certainly whatever collation problems occurred will be a distant memory. But this is an amazing first release of a product we hope will be around for a long time.
Review box provided by Topps
Review box provided by Topps
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