The beginning of a new MLB season is always a cause for celebration for baseball fans, and Topps is trying to spread that same feeling to baseball card collectors. 2007 Topps Opening Day Baseball takes the base Topps brand and puts a slightly more kid-friendly spin on it.
About.com's review box of Opening Day Baseball was a hobby box of 36 packs, each containing six cards and an individually-wrapped stick of bubble gum.
Base Cards
Topps Opening Day base cards utilize the design from Topps Series 1 but flip it by using white borders and gold foil for the team and player information. The result is clean and attractive, though not quite as eye-catching as the black-bordered Topps cards.
A total of 191 MLB players are featured in the base set, most of which use photos from Topps Series 1. Some new twists are added with 65 cards that preview Topps Series 2 and 28 cards that depict MLB mascots. It doesn't get much more kid-friendly than that.
It's not entirely apparent why such a retail-oriented product needed a hobby version, but hobby packs do have a bonus in the form of exclusive parallels stamped with the 2007 opening day date (April 1, 2007) and numbered to 2007. They fall at a rate of one or two per pack, and my review box yielded a total of 48.
The sample box also produced 135 of the 220 base cards, with just five duplicates.
Insert Cards
Almost every pack of Opening Day Baseball holds an insert card of some kind. Foremost among them are Diamond Stars, all-foil cards picturing 25 of MLB's top names.
Others appeal to younger collectors in different ways. A 28-card insert set actually combines to form one big puzzle of today's biggest stars. A partnership with Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery stores comes through on other insert cards, which give collectors either one free rental of the MLB 2K7 video game or a discount off its purchase.
Finally, the Alex Rodriguez Home Run History insert that runs through all of Topps' 2007 baseball sets continues, with cards commemorating career home runs 76 through 100.
I found a total of 28 inserts in the sample box: 12 puzzle pieces, nine Diamond Stars, six MLB 2K7 rental cards (box buyers will be able to keep that game checked out for quite a while) and one HR History.
Autographed Cards
This certainly isn't a focus of the Opening Day set, but 10 players do sign autographs for inclusion in both hobby and retail packs. At the time of this review, Topps had not released an autograph checklist.
The Last Word
Topps has been doing Opening Day sets for several years, so there must be an audience for them. It's easy to question the need for a cheaper product that mirrors Topps Series 1 in a lot of ways, but since boxes of the base Topps brand cards have been selling at higher than retail prices recently, you start to understand the thinking here.
Collectors and dealers have been asking for more affordable packs to try to get more kids into card collecting, and Topps Opening Day is a solid addition to that effort, aided by an above-average design for the 2007 season.
