chrome was a chore this year

i purchased a fair amount of 2025 topps chrome this year, and i purchased it from a variety of sources - directly from topps, from a couple of card shops, and from different target stores in different cities. none of it produced much for my collection, which from this product would be mostly dodgers. if i pc'd ketel marte, on the other hand...

the very first pack that i opened this year included a river ryan base card

and a couple of packs later, i found a roki sasaki prism refractor

that was a good start, but it also represented the sum total of my dodger cards across a lot of packs, until i found a teoscar hernandez refractor when i visited one of the local card shops

and then later, a yoshinobu yamamoto sepia refractor

in my final ill advised blaster purchase.

one other card for my collection from my pack ripping experience was this xander bogaerts double play turn

then again, i did also find a brooks lee photo variation refractor in one of the packs i purchased

lee sort of lives on the fringes of my collection. he's from my neck of the woods and so i have been setting some of his cards aside, and this is a nice one for sure. not sure whether or not it will hold, though.

at some point, i decided to go the sportlots route to get my chrome dodgers that were missing

which were all of the dodgers except for river ryan. that would be those nine above plus clayton kershaw

and shohei ohtani.

note that his chrome card shows him as a two-way player

while his flagship card did not. instead, he got two flagship cards - one for each position. i actually purchased two ohtani base chrome cards from a sportlots seller for $30. now that he has won the mvp, i'll exchange one for $20 and see if i can get that extra $5 value for the $15 i invested. stay tuned.

those initial orders included some parallels, too. 

hunter feduccia refractor

mookie betts, justin wrobleski, river ryan sepia refractors

freddie freeman prism refractor

mookie betts

and feduccia ray wave refractors

blake snell xfractor

and as many clayton kershaw parallels i could find from shopping cart sellers at reasonable prices.

refractor

ray wave refractor

sepia refractor

xfractor

while parallels are the name of the game in chrome (aside from autos), i did pick up a couple of mookie betts inserts - all-etch

and fortune 15

and i also waited on a buyer friendly ebay listing for this fanatical insert

which was a must have for me. i love seeing mookie and muncy (and nestor cortes, for that matter) reacting to freddie freeman's walk-off home run in the 2024 world series. here's the back

which doesn't mention the moment. i think, in that moment, betts was a fan and so it would have made sense to write about the homer. curiously, freeman has a card in this set but it does not feature this dinger. ohtani and sasaki also have fanatical cards, but they will likely remain out of my reach.

going online for my 2025 topps chrome fix was a lot easier, of course, but you know what? i still haven't learned my lesson with retail and hobby wax!

the days of archives

not quite "sands through the hourglass" stuff, but i spent a little bit of time on wednesday opening the blaster of 2025 topps archives that i ordered from topps. the official release day wasn't until yesterday, so i was surprised to see the fedex man with this part of my order. i also ordered a blaster of 2025 topps chrome update which did supposedly release on wednesday, but that hasn't shown up yet. go figure.

the first two cards out of the first pack were these ones:

and the first two cards out of the second pack were these ones:

thankfully, the third pack strayed from this pattern, as did all the others.

each pack included cards from the three designs being used this year - 1964 (as seen above), 1996

(the return of the phantom zone inset photo!) and 2005

we are officially in the joey votto legend era, and i always enjoy seeing teddy ballgame on cards, although the dangling socks placement on this one is suspect. plus, topps used this same photo last year on the 1994 design.

as far as the designs go, things are pretty faithful to the originals, but there are some font differences for sure. i am still of the opinion that 1996 topps looks better in landscape format, and there are some of those to be had

the luis robert card is nice but i really like the connor norby even if the rookie card logo seems to float a bit. topps included other marlins rookies with the 1996 design

and you can see the rc logo floats in the portrait design, too.

stan musial's card

caught my eye as a nice looking card. i just wish they had put him on the 1964 design so we could have had a belated final tribute card.

i guess my least favorite design used this year is 2005. having the player's name on the side makes the last name up top redundant and a waste of space. here's drake baldwin's card

as well as matt shaw's

i am liking those cub unis and am glad to see them on so many cards.

regarding keepers, i found a couple. shohei ohtani's card

and freddie freeman's card

go to the dodger collection, and vladimir guerrero's card

is for my player collection.

the blaster promised four black foil parallels, and here they are:

not a bad group there. the ozzie albies card looks especially nice with the black foil border.

i found another parallel - an "aqua scope foilboard" numbered to 75 of brenton doyle

his base card was also in one of the packs.

and then there are the inserts. not all inserts were represented in my blaster, but i did get a 1995 topps cyberstats season in review card of jung hoo lee

and a 2007 topps all-star card of fernando tatis jr

and then, of course, dylan crews made an appearance with a 1987 boardwalk & baseball insert

the first two cards are pretty true to the original design, although the season in review card of lee doesn't deal with the "what if" aspect that the original 1995 cards did. as for the boardwalk & baseball insert, topps has replaced the b/b on the originals with a team logo in the lower right. i guess that means there will be no "no slash" variations available.

the big card from the blaster was a fan favorites autograph:

ol' zebulon is a bit of a fan favorite here, although it might be because of his unique name. as a pitcher he had middling success in 2025 which was in line with most other twins players.

not a bad blaster to rip, and it was early to boot! a fun way to spend part of one of the days of my life.

care for an update?

it's turning out that the easiest, quickest, and probably cheapest way for me to get my hands on new card releases is to order directly from topps. i did just that when 2025 topps update was first offered for pre-sale, and my order showed up a day or two after the official release date.

as always, update brings the veterans in new places, like old friend andrew heaney

although he was s dodger (again) by the time the season ended. and, as it's been for the last couple of decades, there are plenty of rookies to be found. one that jumped out at me was this tyler owens card

who looks like he skips left-arm day and fuels up on cans of spinach that only feed his right arm.  there will be more vets and rookies soon enough, but let's go to inserts for a  moment.

i seem to have a knack for finding dylan crews cards. i pulled an auto from bowman last year, and i have found a bumch of his inserts in product i've opened this year, too. so it was no surprise to me that the only night terrors card i found was a dylan crews card

he's wearing the nationals' alternate jersey (i think) which actually features his initials. it's like when luis avilan suited up for the dodgers a decade ago, or steve finley's run with the giants. and then who can forget keith creel who played for the royals and got a couple of cards back in the early 1980's with his initials on his hat.

speaking of the way back machine, topps pulled the bleacher reachers out of 1997 (and 2013 via archives) as part of this year's release. here's jim thome

most of the checklist is current players, and thome being featured made this feel more like an archives thing. same with the 1961 mvp design which includes mvps from across the history of the game. i found an active player - andrew mccutchen

but there are plenty of retired greats in this set, too

here's an update standard - a mystical insert 

and the retail standard stars of mlb

lots of excitement here in minny about luke keaschall. at the start of the season, brooks lee was the twins' rookie darling, but it was all keaschall by season's end.

i found a couple rainbow foil parallels, including adam frazier

who returned to the pirates to begin the season, but finished it in kansas city.

most of the parallels that i found, however, were of the "holiday" variety. the black & orange "base" parallel 

was most prevalent, but i did find a jack o'lantern parallel

as well.

the all-star game inserts are foil this year - here's a nice looking card of brent rooker

and the 1990 35th anniversary inserts are foil, too, now. here's byron buxton

the twins have some great alternate uniforms.(such as the one buxton is wearing) their city connect, on the other hand...

back to the base cards, there are plenty of screaming pitchers like fernando cruz

but, for me, update is and always has been about just that - an update. we finall see cody bellinger as a yankee

in a flagship release on a base card. not quite the same excitement as i had in 1981 seeing fred lynn in an angel uni on a card for the first time.

here's another one - johnathan india

and walker buehler, too

buehler, of course, finished the season as a phillie

another old friend - joc pederson

spent all of 2025 in texas after a year in arizona, and justin turner

was back in the national league with the cubs after bouncing around the american league in his post-dodger days.

to many, update is about rookies, and topps obliges. here are the base and rookie debut cards of kristian campbell

drake baldwin

and nick kurtz

the latter two, of course, are the rookies of the year in their respective leagues.

there are other rookies worth noticing, like michael petersen

who finally gets a card. the ship has sailed on us getting a dodger card of petersen, but it's nice to see that time immortalized on a card back

petersen could have just as easily been shown as a brave since he pitched for them in 2025, but it works out here as he returned to the marlins around the trade deadline.

another rookie i noticed was logan vanwey

i hadn't seen those astros uniforms before. i like them better than their space city duds, but i like them a little less now that i know that the script just says "stros".

speaking of uniforms, the all orange oriole unis are always worth a view

and i'm glad to see them on cardboard

and it wouldn't be a flagship release without the combo card puns

i do like crew missiles better than "a-bomb for a-rod" or whatever that call was.

one last thing i look to update for are cards featuring photos from the season. this gives me a chance to see some of the memorial patches on cardboard, usually for the first time. the brewers wore a patch for bob uecker

and it's visible on oliver dunn's sleeve above the wisconsin state shaped patch.

the mets wore a number 7 patch for ed kranepool, and i saw it on a couple of cards

same for the a's and their rickey henderson memorial patch

which is the circular one above their last minute patch to recognize sacramento as their host city.

the reds wore a patch for pete rose, and connor joe's holiday parallel

shows it pretty well. however, i am going to wait to see cards from future releases before i commit to any of these for my memorials collection. there are a couple other patches to seek out, too, such as the ryne sandberg and dave parker patches, not to mention the patch that the dodgers wore for fernando valenzuela all season. speaking of the dodgers, i did a (dumb?) thing and bought into a team break so i will show dodgers in a different post.

i'll leave this one with justin verlander's card

it sort of looks like the giants are wearing a memorial patch for chevrolet, but that's not the point i want to make. by the time this card reached the shelves, verlander had already been seen as a giant in at least four other releases. i wonder if series 2 should be the new update?