2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 Trading Cards Box Break Recap And Review

Reviewing Topps' flagship Baseball Card release is just an exercise in personal taste.  It is a given that any Baseball card collector should include Topps Baseball Series 1 & 2 in their collection each year.  2013 Topps Baseball is all about "The Chase" and that theme permeates from base to inserts to hits.  Everything about this year's version is on par with past releases, walking the middle ground when it comes to design which should appeal to a wide range of tastes.

For a detailed description of the cards with Everything You Need To Know About 2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 Trading Cards, use this link.

For the purposes of this review, we classify Series 1 as trading cards.  You can find Series 1 in a wide variety of configurations in both retail and hobby.  We opened a box hobby box which contained 36 – 10 card packs with a promise of 1 autograph or 1 relic card per box.
Here are some of the cards we pulled.

Base Set

Prince Fielder, front and back

Clayton Kershaw, Andrew McCutchen, R.A. Dickey

Starlin Castro, Joey Votto, Jose Altuve

Jered Weaver, Carlos Santana, Dan Uggla

Buster Posey, Ryan Braun, Adam Greenberg

Josh Reddick, Trevor Bauer, Jon Jay

Ricky Romero, Kevin Millwood, Yonder Alonso

Ryan Howard, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Joe Mauer

Mark Teixeira, Matt Kemp, Eric Hosmer

Jose Reyes, Shin-Soo Choo

Yadier Molina, Justin Verlander

Carlos Gonzalez, Brad Ziegler

Evan Longoria, Mike Trout

Bryce Harper, Yu Darvish, Anthony Rizzo

Manny Machado, Dylan Bundy, Jurickson Profar

Base Set - Record Chase

Roy Halladay, Alex Rodriguez

Andy Pettitte, Albert Pujols

Base Set - Playoff/World Series

Baltimore Orioles, Matt Holliday

San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals

Marco Scutaro, Detroit Tigers

Detroit Tigers, CC Sabathia

Pablo Sandoval, Madison Bumgarner

Ryan Vogelson

Base Set - League Leaders

NL Wins, NL ERA

AL Wins, AL ERA

NL Home Runs, NL RBI

NL Batting Average, AL RBI

Base Set Parallels

Green

Addison Reed, Norichika Aoki, Cameron Maybin

Brandon League, Jhonny Peralta, Daniel Nava

Gold #/2013

Jordan Pacheco, Scott Feldman

Michael Saunders, Bronson Arroyo

Inserts

Chasing the Dream

Jesus Montero, Mike Trout, Casey Kelly

Jarrod Parker, Drew Hutchison, Tommy Milone

Chasing History

Derek Jeter, Ian Kinsler, Johan Santana

George Brett, Kerry Wood

Babe Ruth, Warren Spahn

CC Sabathia. Don Mattingly

Calling Cards

Reggie Jackson, Brandon Phillips, Pablo Sandoval

Felix Hernandez, Prince Fielder

The Greats

Roy Halladay, Ted Williams

Spring Fever LCS Redemption

front and back

The Million Dollar Chase Code Cards

front and back

1972 Topps Baseball Minis

Evan Longoria, front and back

Jose Reyes, Ian Kennedy, Giancarlo Stanton

Joey Votto, Cliff Lee, Andre Ethier

Mike Trout, Lou Gehrig

Cut to the Chase Die Cuts

Derek Jeter. Roberto Clemente, Brett Lawrie

Out of Bounds Photo Alternative SP

Andre Ethier

The Hit

Ian Kinsler Chasing History Relic

Overall Look

I like this year's base card design, even more than the insert design.  Standout inserts for me are the Cut to the Chase die cut cards I'm also digging on these minis. Hit cards are rather standard design, what we've come to expect from Topps flagship.

Quality and Variety of Players and Subsets.

Topps has gone a long way this year to secure some of the best legends of the game which is fantastic.  The base set is as complete as you could expect. 

Do the hits hold up?

There is a wide enough variety of hits, autos, relics and manufactured that are desirable.

Will you want to collect them all?

The set is compelling enough this year to make collectors toy with the idea of going for a master set.

Rating

4 1/2 out of 5

2013 Topps Baseball Series 1 is great for both beginning and seasoned collectors.  Your Baseball collection is incomplete without them.


Review box provided by Topps