Review: 2008 Topps Opening Day Baseball

Topps Opening Day Baseball was created to celebrate the beginning of a new baseball season, and it swings for the fences in 2008 with bright red borders. Fun inserts and a low pack price are intended to appeal to kids and hobby beginners.

Hobby boxes of 2008 Topps Opening Day Baseball should be available for under $40. Inside, collectors will find 36 packs of six cards each, with a parallel in each pack and an insert card in most packs.

The base cards in Opening Day Baseball take their look from the regular 2008 Topps Baseball set. The obvious difference is that the frame is red instead of white, and gold foil is used for the team name, player name and the Topps logo. There's also a small logo that Major League Baseball uses for its Opening Day festivities.

Of the 220 base cards, 155 are identical to cards from Topps Series 1, while the remainder are actually previews of cards coming in Series 2. This season's set is certainly bright, but if you don't like red, it may not be your cup of tea.

A random hobby box opened for this review provided me with slightly less than three-quarters of a complete set, producing 159 of the 220 base cards.

Seeded one per pack, the parallels actually resemble a cross between the Topps and Opening Day base cards, as they use the former's white borders but keep the latter's gold foil. They're also stamped with the date of the first day of the 2008 season and numbered to 2199.

As expected, my sample box held a parallel in each pack for a total of 36.

The inserts in 2008 Opening Day Baseball are clearly targeted toward younger collectors, which makes sense for an inexpensive product. This year's list includes Tattoos of team mascots and logos and Puzzles, which are simply cards that can be put together to form one very large picture.

Perhaps the most creative are the Flapper Cards, which actually have different flaps on both the front and back that can be opened and folded in different ways to reveal stats, facts and trivia. There are also autographed cards, though they fall only one per case and the checklist is pretty short on star power.

Every pack also contains a stick of bubble gum, something that could be considered the original insert. Like other nmodern sets with gum, the stick is individually wrapped to avoid messing up the cards.

I pulled a total of 20 insert cards from the About.com review box: 12 Puzzle cards, five Flapper Cards and three Tattoos.

Topps Opening Day Baseball isn't intended for hardcore baseball card collectors, but it's a nice introductory product for kids and beginners. It's simple and easy to collect, though a bit gaudy for this reviewer's tastes with the red borders.

Without much searching, it should be possible to find packs of Opening Day Baseball for a dollar or less. That makes it a very affordable way to start someone along the road to collecting and an obvious gateway to the regular Topps set.