2015 Topps Strata Baseball Box Break Recap and Review

If you are following us on Twitter you might have caught our live box break of 2015 Topps Strata Baseball. It was quick, only two cards, but it sure did cause plenty of discussion.  And why not, the cards are sharp looking and take great strides towards addressing a concern many experienced collectors have had since the embedded material swatch became common place.

Almost all releases these days come with relic cards. Many collectors felt somewhat uneasy about these cards from a secondary market level and sometimes even straight out of the pack. Thoughts like "where did this jersey come from" and sometimes even "I don't remember that player ever wearing those colors" started to become commonplace. With the release of Strata, those thoughts have been put to rest.



With the simple, yet smart inclusion of an MLB Authentication sticker on each swatch of material, sealed behind a layer of acetate, each piece of jersey can be traced it its origins.  We pulled this Sonny Gray Clearly Authentic Relic Auto numbered to #/50.

That round silver sticker on the patch has a number that can be entered online at MLB Authentication and this certificate pops up.

I used that information to locate the game on ESPN

It was a good outing for Gray even though the A's lost as this writeup points out.

The authentication certificate also listed the number for the original authentication of the Jersey, also done by the MLB. No third party, direct from the league. I'm not sure, short of personally meeting Gray in the locker room and having him hand me a piece of his uniform off his back, that there is much more that could be better than this solution Topps has devised.

Beside that cool on card auto relic there was this Francisco Lindor on-card auto.

In person this card is even better looking than the photo. 

So in each box of Strata you get 2 cards, with the promise of one Strata relic card and one autographed card. The odds of our relic card also being autographed was 1:6 boxes. 

Overall this is a matter of the Topps team knocking it out of the park from design to on-card autos to the new authentication system.  2016 Topps Strata Baseball is definitely worth a look for premium card collectors.

Review box provided by Topps.