Monday, January 19, 2015

2014 Topps Supreme Baseball Box Break Recap and Review

Last year Topps released Supreme Baseball in Asia, but enough collectors state side got their hands on boxes. 2014 Topps Supreme Baseball is available here too. Like other releases in the Supreme line, this is a hit concentrated product designed around sticker autos, on card seekers will have to wait for Five Star or Dynasty. The product is also heavily reliant on rookie auto, as are other releases of Supreme, so collectors will have to hope for the player of their choice, a hot ticket rookie such as the ROYs, DeGrom and Abreu or one of the small number of proven veteran hits found in the product.

Where Supreme seems to fit the most is with collectors who are willing to take a chance at pulling one of the bigger hits at a lower overall entry price point per box, not per card which comes in at about MSRP $45 a card. (Your street price probably will vary, as of the dad of this review, 1/18/15, some boxes can be found $50.)

2014 Topps Supreme Baseball fits into our Premium Cards category.  This Hobby Exclusive comes with 1 pack per box, 2 cards per pack, both autographed cards. 

Here are the cards we pulled from our box.



Base Set
Starling Marte Die Cut Auto #/35
Jose Abreu & Jon Singleton Dual Autograph Redemption

We held back on the release of this review because we saw the Abreu/Singleton card was completed. Here is the redeemed card.

Overall Look
The base auto (similar to the dual auto but not pictured here because we didn't pull one) feel somewhat interrupted by the sticker autos from a design level, almost like they are trying to mimick the look of an on card auto, but doesn't quite pull of the attempt. Where the stickers work well are with the etched gold foil backgrounds. Sticker integration there is seemless, which makes for a smart looking card, diecut or not. 

Quality and Variety of Players
The names you want are all here just not in the ratios we would like to see for these hits. The amount of prospecting here almost makes this feel like it would be more appropriate as a Bowman product.

Do the hits satisfy?
Some will get lucky and pull a fabulous card from their box.  Others will not. Careful consideration of the checklist will be the determining factor when it comes to satisfaction.

Will you keep coming back for more?
This is a tough one. A lot of it depends on individual buying habits. Supreme offers enough in both directions for collectors to say buy again or stop. For conservative buyers, a good first box might encourage them to try another one, but more than likely they will walk away expecting the next one to balance the scales. For the gamblers out there, because of the low entry price point, a bad box might be enough to encourage them that the next one will be the winner. But from the structure of the product, there probably isn't enough to push you to go outside of your comfort zone.

Rating
2 1/2 out of 5

The best thing you can do is to take a good close look at 2014 Topps Supreme Baseball's checklist to find out if this product is for you.


Review box provided by Topps


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