2013 Hometown Heroes First Look

This set came out last month but today was the first time I saw any. I picked up 3 8-card packs at Target for $2.99 each. I like the cards enough that I'm considering buying a hobby box.

In the brief bio on the back of the cards, a mention is made of the player's claim to fame in his home town, thus the name Hometown Heroes. It's a 300-card set printed on a nice white card stock. Nothing fancy about them except for the bold graphics. The cards feature current and retired players and rookies. About half of the 22 base cards I got are retired players.  Some of them are players I've never seen on a post-career card, like Garry Templeton and Pat Tabler. 

We'll start with a World Series winner. The backs are pretty much all the same. Notice the prominent Player's Association logo. The small print disavows any association with Major League Baseball.

Only my second Puig card. Here's a few more...

As you can see from these examples, Panini is sticking to it's plan of just photoshopping out logos.

I always like to get post-career Bo cards. I didn't get the Mike Schmidt card but I've got one coming from eBay.

There are two complete parallel sets, "Hometown Heroes States" and Hometown Heroes Zip Codes"

Here's where some of the sense of this set starts to break down for me. You might think that this card would feature Dusty Baker's Riverside CA hometown's zip code. There'd you be wrong. 90012 is a Los Angeles zip code, so I'm guessing it's the zip code of Dodger Stadium.

There are a bunch of 10-20 card insert sets. I got 2 of them. With the Zip Code card, I got one insert per pack.

Not a particular novel idea, Nicknames is a 20-card set. You might expect that the card would explain how the player got his nickname but no. Each insert set comes in two parallels, black and gold. Some, like this set, also have autographed parallels, also with black and gold (which are serial numbered) parallels. The black autographed parallels are 1 of 1. No relic cards with the set. This card was a double hit for me. I collect Sandberg cards and he was just named the new manager of the Phillies.

This is the 18-card Home Grown Heroes set. I'm guessing that this is the black parallel. This sounds like a interesting idea, a set with players who grew up and played for their home town team. No, wait, Kaline was born in Baltimore. As with the Zip Code parallel and the Nicknames set, it looks like Panini had some good ideas but didn't know what to do with them.

2013 Topps Update

I decided to just restrict myself this year to retail purchase. I bought a blaster from Target (to get the Target Red cards), a Mega Box at Target (because there were two packs of Topps Update Chrome in the box) and 2 rack packs at WalMart (to get the WalMart Blue cards). I got a good selection of cards and inserts, in fact all the inserts except the low serial numbered ones and relics. Apparently, Topps Update Chrome is only available in the Mega Boxes so I'm glad I bought some.

I was surprised by the price differential among the 3 packages. The blaster cost $0.27/card, the rack packs were $0.15/card and the Mega Box was $0.37/card. 

You know and love (at least I do) the design so I'll only show a couple and then get into the inserts.

As usual, there are All-Star game cards, there is also a also Home-Run Derby subset.

After a couple of disappointing years, Drew had a decent year with the Red Sox and went to the World Series.

When I first saw this card I thought they had a black and white parallel set.

In Series 1 and 2 Topps had 1972 Mini cards. In Update they have 1971 Mini cards. Who knows why.

There are 10 cards in the Franchise Forerunners insert set. I pulled 4 of them.

I pulled 3 from this 20-card set.

The blaster box had this nice manufactured patch card as an extra.

Here's a Home Run Derby subset card from the Chrome Update

Note that the card number has an MB- prefix.  The only insert I got in the two packs was this:

2013 Panini Golden Age Box Break - Part 2

Yesterday, I featured the base cards from the set. Today, it's the insert cards. I got at least one of each insert card that wasn't numbered 1 of 1. I'm not going to show you the mini cards. If you've seen Allen and Ginter or Goodwin Champions mini cards you already know what they look like. There are 5 types, featuring cigarette or candy ads on the back.

Panini Golden Age Bread For Energy

What, you may ask, is this supposed to be? Apparently, in the 1950's bread companies began putting celebrities, ball players, cartoon characters, etc. on bread labels. These were adhesive labels that closed off the ends of a paper wrapped loaf of bread.  With a little poking around on the internet I came up with this.

An actual bread label featuring Warren Spahn. This sold on a auction site for $232.  I'd never heard of these before. A little more reading suggested that they are pretty hard to find.

2013 Panini Golden Age Delong Gum

More research. This design comes from a 1933 set issued by DeLong Gum Company. According to my "2008 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards", this was one of the first sets to be issued with gum. Here is some speculation on my part. Notice on the back it says "Play Ball Gum". In the early 1940's, Gum, Inc. from Philadelphia produced a set called "Play Ball". Gum later became Bowman which was later acquired by Topps. In 2007, Topps issued an insert set called "Flashback Fridays" with this same design.

Panini Golden Age Exhibits

This postcard sized card came as a box-topper. Good luck collecting all 40 of these. This is based on a line of cards sold by the Exhibit Supply Company of Chicago between 1921 and 1966. The cards weren't numbered and looking at them in the catalog it seems like it would be damn hard to figure out what you have. I actually have one of these featuring Gil Hodges which the seller said was from 1950.

This card illustrates another theme from the base set, people associated with the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal. Weaver played 3rd base for the White Sox in that series.

Panini Golden Age Headlines

My least favorite of the inserts.

Panini Golden Age Historic Signatures

An on-card signature, at least. The Bad News Bears theme carried over from the base set. Blunt was in most, it not all, of the movies and not much else. Nothing against Mr. Blunt, but there are 50 cards in this set and I'm guessing any other one would have been more interesting to me.

Panini Golden Age Museum Age Memorabilia

OK, memorabilia from Grace Kelly. The back of the card has a brief bio of Kelly and the simple statement "The enclosed material is guaranteed by Panini America, Inc." I'd have liked a little explanation as to how this little piece of fabric was related to Ms. Kelly.

Panini Golden Age Playing Cards
I had pulled one of these in the single pack I bought. I got 8 more in the box. Still not enough to play a game of poker.  Here's one which continues another theme from the base set.

Panini Golden Age Three Stooges

 A 9-card set celebrating The Three Stooges. Why not?

Panini Golden Age Tip Top Bread Labels

Another bread label brand. Notice the lower left corner. The NFL logo peaks out of the die cut area. I have another of the Bread for Energy cards featuring Miami Dolphin Jim Kiick which has the same thing.  Some mix-up in the design department?

2013 Panini Golden Age - Box Break Part 1

I shared a single pack of this earlier. I decided I liked it enough to buy a box. This set is a lot like Upper Deck Goodwin Champions (and Allen and Ginter for that matter) in that it doesn't just feature baseball players. In a set like this I usually don't pick just one card to put in the reference book but a selection of cards from the set that reflect the variety. If there are clear subsets, I'll go with them.  Here are the base cards I picked for my reference book.  I did pertty well with the box, getting at least one of each insert set, except for the three that are 1 of 1's.

Of the 103 base cards, 36 featured baseball players.  As in other sets, Panini has chosen to use the Photoshop option and remove logos.

 11 cards featured either football players of coaches.

I don't know what kind of license Panini has with the NFL, but the football players all had scrubbed uniforms and no team name mentions. They did, however, sport the NFL logo on the back.

7 cards featured horse racing, either jockeys or horses.

 

 18 cards featured actors, actresses or entertainers. There were a few child actors, especially kids from the "Our Gang" series and the "Bad News Bears" movies. But I'm going with:

The "Bad News Bears" is an actual subset.

I'd pulled one of these in the single pack as well.

There were also enough American Presidents to include in the reference book.

I have more than half of the US presidents on some kind of card now.

And finally, boxers:

There are two full-sized parallel sets, Black (1 of 1) and White. I pulled one of the White;

The rest of the cards are a hodgepodge of golfers, artists, famous objects (the Edmund Fitzgerald, Apollo 11), gamblers, wild west lawmen, etc.

And it would be this kind of set without mini tobacco cards.  There was one in each pack.

I'll feature the insert sets later. Some of the themes I've shown here, carry into the inserts.

Oh, and I got the Mike Schmidt card.