I caved...2013 Topps Box Break

A week ago, I said right here, on this very blog, that I was going to hold out on piecing my 2013 Topps set together. Prices will drop, blah blah blah. Well, like the title says, I caved. I broke. I folded. I am a weak, weak, little man.

But not without good reason. You see, I won a fundraiser raffle at work last week in which my prize was a choice of gift certificates. I went with Wal-Mart since the others stores and restaurants weren't to my liking. I had no intention of spending it when I went into Wal-Mart Tuesday night to pick up some bread. It wasn't exactly burning a hole in my pocket, but as I usually do, I moseyed past the card aisle just to see what was up. When I had gone last week, they had some blasters and jumbo packs but none of the smaller packs. I'll admit, if they had any, I probably would have picked up one or two.

On Tuesday, there was still the same selection although heavily picked over and considerably less quantities. This time though, hanging out with the blasters was this one slightly bigger box:

If not for the large, bright stickers, I would have assumed it was just a blaster. Upon closer inspection, it was a full box of the smaller packs I was looking for, but meant to be sold whole. This wasn't a hobby box because it had 24 packs of 12 cards, not 36 packs of 10 cards. There was no guaranteed hit. And as luck would have it, my gift certificate was for $50. As you can see by the sticker on the box, even with tax, I had enough to cover it, plus the bread!

Obviously, I bought it so I'm sure you want to see the hits. As if you haven't been inundated with 2013 Topps enough already. But I'm going to break this post up into 2 seperate ones because first I want to show two cards that caught my eye that I haven't yet seen on the other blogs. Then I'll do a followup post with the inserts.

Eury Perez was a late season callup for the Washington Nationals in 2012. He was mostly used as a pinchrunner. But what makes this card special is that some of my first customs were of this guy. My son and I used to talk to him quite a bit before and after Potomac Nationals games in 2011.  At the time, he had a Pro Debut card and a Heritage Minors card but it's nice to see him get an honest to goodness MLB card. I was actually surprised when I saw it because I hadn't really looked over the checklist other than to look for Cubs, so I had no idea it was in the set. Congrats, Eury!

And he reminds a lot of Tony Campana the way he plays and was used. Pinchrunner, bunting for sacrifices and/or hits but was pretty decent at the minor league level. And like Campana, with a Bryce Harper, Jayson Werth and now Denard Span in the outfield for the Nationals, Perez will have a tough time cracking the starting lineup on a regular basis. 

Hopefully, Paul from over at Wrigley Wax sees this card. That's Darwin Barney breaking up the double play under Didi Gregorius. I did a post last year about my Ryne Sandberg cameo cards and think this card deserves a spot in Paul's very nice Barney PC, because he did, in fact, break up the double play.

No shame in being the force out, especially since according to the boxscore, Barney followed up a single by David DeJesus with a single of his own. Anthony Rizzo grounded to second forcing Barney out but allowing DeJesus to score. The Cubs were still down by two, but now the tying run was coming to the plate with one out instead of nobody on and two outs. Not that they capitalized on it or anything, because hey, they're the Cubs. But not the fault of Barney!

As for the base cards in general, I pulled 250 of the 331 in the set with no duplicates. Not to shabby. 

Check back in a little while to see the inserts that will be available for trade!