first look at 2024

my local walmart was fully stocked with 2024 topps series 1 when i stopped in on thursday afternoon. i have a hobby box on the way, but wanted to get a look at the cards now! i wasn't pete alonso excited

but i was looking forward to opening a few packs. i bought a fat pack, a value pack, and a blaster, and i opened the fat pack first.

first card - felix bautista

some serious attitude straight out of the gate! the card design is giving me strong 1986 topps vibes,and the neon actually works, thanks to the thin gold foil "tubing" inside. i like it.

first rookie - colton cowser

lots of oriole rookie cards lately!

first horizontal card - corbin carroll

the design works really well with teams that have black accents in their uniforms, like the diamondbacks. carroll's card is pretty well color coordinated with the green sign in the background matching the green in the team logo, however, 

first fully color coordinated card - brandon nimmo

brandon nimmo's card is off the charts when it comes to color coordination

first dodger - chris taylor

topps making sure to not forget taylor this year

first checklist - shohei ohtani and mookie betts

these guys are teammates now, and i see that topps has "snuck in" ohtani super short print dodger cards into the set. smells like 2012 topps update all over again and a dozen years later josh beckett is the only dodger ssp that i've been able to afford.

first card that really caught my eye - joe jacques

the black tops to the cards make a lot of images look like night shots, but i think this one really is from a rainy boston night.

first insert - atlanta braves gold parallel

first player that will show up again in update - manuel margot

assuming he sticks with the dodgers long enough

best jose altuve impression - mauricio dubon

pretty sure we've seen this image on a dozen altuve cards

first league leader card - american league wins

on which kyle gibson gets the shaft

gibson had the same number of wins as gerrit cole but doesn't make the front of the card. i love league leader cards that cram a bunch of players on there like the 1978 topps wins leader card or the 1982 topps home run leader card. i guess topps doesn't want to mess with the basic three-player design.

example of why 2024 is a good year to be a pirates team collector - jared triolo

when the base card is the best color match

scarce rookie cup/rookie card combo - andrew abbott

sure i would rather have abbott's teammate elly de la cruz' card even though it doesn't have the cup

for the record, the future stars cards are pretty slick with the multi-color neon up top - grayson rodriguez

so many orioles!

only dodger insert - freddie freeman stars of mlb

best example of bad color coordination - fernando tatis jr

i would be ok if topps were to ignore the padres' city connect uniforms altogether. they used the regular home unis on his 1989 insert

but we get the city connect again on his stars of mlb insert

although it works way better there.

here's the back of tatis' base card

topps continues to go with jersey numbering tributes as opposed to the hero numbers of the past. compare the back of his card and the back of walker buehler's

i guess there wasn't much to say about buehler so the line spacing is quite different. i do appreciate topps noting that buehler didn't play in 2023 due to injury while tatis just didn't play in 2022. would be great if they noted "suspended", but at least it's not ignored like a-rod's lost 2014 season was in 2015.

here's the front of buehler's card

and the three other dodger base cards i found in my various purchases

deluca is no longer a dodger, but at least i have a card to remember him by

the value pack had a couple of yellow parallels

which i thought were walgreens things.

the blaster had two rainbow foil cards - both rays

arozarena striking a pose makes for a great card. sort of like jose bautista's 2016 flagship card featuring the playoff bat flip.

in total, i found 13 stars of the mlb cards, including a quad of rookies

there's my first henry davis card

i found two stars of mlb chrome parallels

as well. 

there were three more 1989 inserts

but the checklist doesn't include steve carlton as a twin so i'm not too interested in these things.

i received one card from the 1989 design-inspired celebration of the kid insert set

and there were three other inserts that showed up only once

the semien card had me confused at first. was he second team all topps team? no, he's the second baseman on the all topps team, but the position text overruns the right border. i saw ohtani's card from the set and he is the "desgina" on the team.

finally, there are the nonsense parallels. i got three "holiday" parallels

which are seeded 1:2 packs in blasters. with seven packs per blaster i guess 3 is still within range. however, i also got an "eggs" parallel

which is a 1:21 pack card. can't wait for the series 2 arbor day parallels.

so, that's my first look at 2024 topps. i like the design, and while i didn't see any guardians sporting the memorial patch they only wore a couple of times in 2023, am holding out hope. same goes for the brooks robinson patch the orioles wore during their truncated postseason. i know there are a couple of other cards for some of my mini-collections in series 1, and i hope to find them in a couple of days when my hobby box arrives.