2014 Topps Chrome - Purple Haze Edition

Last weekend I purchased a Topps Value pack and a blaster of Topps Chrome at Target. The Value Pack had 3 regular packs plus 3 Orange Refractors. At least I got a Phillie out of the Orange cards.

These are apparently retail only cards. Neither baseballcardpedia.com nor Beckett.com lists these. Martin was acquired in 2012 from the Dodgers in the Shane Victorino trade but hasn't seen much play for the Phillies.

The regular Topps Chrome cards look pretty much like the past few years. The fronts have the famous Chrome finish with silver borders. The backs have a heavy gloss easily distinguishable from the regular cards.

Here's a few.

As usual these cards are hard to scan and get a decent image. It took me a few tries to get these pretty good scans.

In my opinion the Chrome Refractor cards, not only look better than the regular Chrome, they also scan nicer.

And the X-Fractor cards always look cool when scanned. I'd like to know how they do this.

As an extra bonus, I pulled a rookie refractor auto card from the blaster.

Numbered 160/499. I don't know this guy from Adam but I see on eBay that I can buy this card for 99 cents (plus postage) so I've got a real find here.

I didn't notice this on the box top until I got it home.

The last time I bought a blaster of Topps Chrome was in 2012. I only bought one box and it was all Purple Refractor cards. The box had not hinted at such a possibility. I wrote about it here.

Well, son-of-a-gun, the purple lightening has struck again. Except for a few inserts, the X-fractor card and the auto, all the cards were Purple Refractors. As In 2012, I wonder what the odds of finding such a box are? As with the Orange, neither baseballcardpedia.com nor Beckett.com list the Purple Refractor cards. I'm glad I bought the Value Pack so I got some regular cards.

The only other Phillies card I pulled.

The only All-Star Rookie Cup I pulled.

Here's my big issue with all the parallel cards Topps produces. I've pulled 5 Pujols cards from the various products I've bought this year. 3 of them have this pose.

There aren't a lot of inserts in the set that aren't parallels, autos or relics.

This is from the awkwardly named Topps Shelf 50-card insert.

This die-cut insert, Connections, returns from last year.  The 'connection' seems to be Topps linking Puig's 2012 rookie season to Frank Howard's 1960 rookie season.