Topps used to wrap up its namesake baseball set with a standalone boxed set late in the season. These days, Topps Updates & Highlights Baseball fills that role, finishing off Topps Baseball but also standing on its own thanks to new rookie cards and inserts.
Hobby boxes of 2008 Topps Updates & Highlights Baseball hold 36 packs of 10 cards each. Every box should contain one Chrome Refractor box topper and one autograph or relic (memorabilia) card.
Base Cards and Parallels
People who haven't been exposed to either series of 2008 Topps Baseball or Topps Opening Day Baseball or Topps Chrome Baseball are pretty much the only ones who haven't seen this white-bordered, vaguely retro design at this point. The 330 base cards in Updates & Highlights continue the work done by the regular Topps brand, but they are numbered separately (starting with UH1) so they can stand alone as desired.
Along with many cards of players who changed teams through trades or free agency, the set also features Season Highlights and cards of players who took part in All-Star game activities. Topps also held back rookie cards of some 2008 newcomers for this set, most notably Tampa Bay third baseman Evan Longoria.
Just like the standard Topps brand, Updates & Highlights has Gold Foil parallels which substitute gold for silver on the player names and company logo and fall 1:2 packs. Other parallels change the whole border color and include Gold (numbered to 2008), Black (#'d to 57) and Platinum (1-of-1).
Last but not least are Silk cards, which are actually miniature cards printed on silk and framed to reach the size of a normal card. Topps did silk versions of just 100 base cards and numbered them to 50.
I busted a random hobby box of Updates & Highlights Baseball and came up with nearly the whole base set, finding 309 of the 330 cards. The expected 18 Gold Foil cards were joined by seven Gold parallels.
Autographed Cards and Relic Cards
Updates & Highlights follows the lead of Topps Series 2 and offers an autograph or a relic (memorabilia) card in every hobby box. The relics are more common, and many of them come from the 2008 All-Star Game and its associated events.
All-Star Stitches cards contain pieces of the workout jerseys worn by players at the Midsummer Classic, and they come in a variety of forms. Along with single, double and triple relic cards, there are also jumbo patch and autographed versions.
Topps' long association with Mickey Mantle continues with Mickey Mantle Reprint Relics numbered to 57. And the Presidential Stamp Collection also receives new cards featuring actual stamps celebrating former U.S. leaders.
Autograph content is provided mainly by the self-explanatory 2008 Highlight Autographs. There are also Ring of Honor Autographs for former New York Mets players and past World Series heroes.
But the big pulls are likely to come from the First Lady Cut Signatures set. As the name suggests, these 1-of-1 cut signatures come from 27 wives of former U.S. presidents, ranging from Abigail Adams to Hillary Clinton.
The About.com review box yielded a single relic: a Joe Nathan All-Star Stitches jersey card.
Insert Cards and Box Toppers
A full complement of insert cards includes both new and continuing sets. Anyone who collected Topps Baseball will recognize The Mickey Mantle Story and Year in Review, and they get new cards here. The familiar Ring of Honor series celebrating World Series champions also gets extended, and the 1986 Mets receive their own similar cards.
The 2009 World Baseball Classic cards are done on the same design as the base cards and take educated guesses at players who may participate in next year's tournament. Staying with the first wives theme, First Couples cards capture all of the American presidents alongside their spouses.
My sample box churned out insert cards in 22 of the 36 packs, as well as a special card with the lyrics to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on the back. Younger collectors will appreciate the continuation of the online ToppsTown code cards in this set, and I pulled 16 regular and two Gold cards from my box.
Hobby boxes are also finished off with a one-card box topper pack that contains a Chrome Refractor variant of one of the rookie cards from the base set. In my case, it was Oakland A's pitcher Greg Smith.
The Last Word
In the interest of completeness, many collectors will want to put the Updates & Highlights set together to finish off their 2008 Topps Baseball experience. White border and circle fatigue may be setting in at this point, but it only takes a little more than a single box to gather all 330 base cards, which isn't too bad.
Add in comparable content to Topps Series 2 and rookies like Longoria and this is worth a look, either to add to the two initial Topps series or to assemble on its own.