group break savings time

i mentioned earlier in the week that i bought a spot in a 2023 topps hobby case break. i figured it would be an easy way to get my dodger team set along with some inserts and maybe get lucky with a hit. of course, i wound up picking up almost all of the primary dodger inserts at the february card show, but i still was quite pleased with my group break haul.

no point in waiting - this was the big hit for me from the break:

it's a red parallel of a major league material autograph card featuring max muncy. sure it's a sticker auto, and it's a parallel of an insert, but still.

numbered to 25, i think it was the scarcest card pulled in the break. not the best, however, as there was a redemption for a ronald acuna jr auto destined for a lucky braves collector.

i did score one of the boxtoppers - trea turner

these are quite faithful to the 1988 topps league leaders cards, except those were minis, and these are the opposite of that. here's the back:

the one headscratcher here is the use of 2021 stats rather than 2022 stats.

i wound up with a small number of the rainbow and gold foil parallels, including one of each for michael grove's rookie card

and, as luck would have it, my breaker pulled the one dodger silver pack card i didn't find at the card show. hello miguel vargas!

as for the base, there are 9 dodger individual player cards

and they all feature the home whites. 

the only horizontal dodger cards in series 1 are the checklist and team cards

the latter of which features some guys who are no longer dodgers. i was sort of hoping that the team cards would be a callback to the 1988 topps team cards, but this is ok, too.

there are also three league leader cards that feature dodgers

those three hitters up top were the only national leaguers to hit above .300 last season. two other dodgers - trea and justin turner finished in the top ten, and jt's average was .278! one hit was all that kept freddie freeman from winning the batting title, by the way.

as for the pitchers, topps did a bad thing and left tony gonsolin off of the wins leaders card, as he had the same number of wins (16) as yu darvish. lame.

and still, not a road jersey in sight.

that's it for the break, but i do have a couple more 2023 cards to show. first is a card that was a shocker to me

a 2023 topps steve garvey auto?! 

when i joined the group break, i perused the autograph part of the checklist and noticed that the dodgers were somewhat underrepresented. that was fine - it kept the cost of the break down. there were certainly no garvey cards listed.  however, this think popped up on ebay and i pounced.

it turns out that it is a promo card - it says so on the back

i suppose if i followed topps on twitter, i would have known that garvey was signing these cards at burbank sportscards

thanks to this information, i know that this card is likely limited to 300 copies. i wonder what other regional cards like this exist.

finally, i think it was the seller who sent me the garvey that included a few base cards as filler, including this josh smith double play turn

it's always nice to get the base of a card that you already have but only in parallel form.

overall i am happy with 2023 topps so far. i am hoping that series 2 includes a trayce thompson card and maybe some wbc inserts. however, it looks like it will be a bit of a wait for more 2023 cards (there are a few 2022 releases coming soon based on the release calendar), and i am not sure i am willing to give big league (the next 2023 product due out) another shot after the dismal 2021 issue.