Cracking a Box O' Series Two

For my second post in as many days, I've decided to share the results of a Hanger box of Topps Series  Teo that my oldest daughter picked out for me as we browsed around an unfamiliar Target tonight. We're out of town, trying to enjoy a few days to ourselves since school ended last week. It's kinda a vacation, but kinda not. Between my wife and I, we will have worked remotely every day and/or night that we'll be away before returning to the office next week. At least we've been able to steal some time to have some fun in between meetings. Anyway, back to the subject at hand...it turns out that there is a Target a few hundred yards from the hotel/suites where we are staying. We had to pick up a few things to keep in e room for the next few days so my oldest and I walked over to do some quick shopping. Once we had grabbed all of the things we needed, we found ourselves in the card aisle. Fortunately, she doesn't mind because there are all manner of other interesting items sitting on the shelves adjacent to the cards(My Little Pony cards/figures, Frozen stuff, and Star Wars stuff happen to keep her busy). I made a deal that she could pick a MLP mystery figure for her and one for her sister, but she had to pick a hanger box for me. She quickly told me which one out of the four I should get and we were on our way. 

By popular demand, here are the contents of the mystery packs:

They were both quite happy with this, by the way. Here's the hanger:

Shortly after returning to the room and getting stuff unpacked, she ripped into her figure, and I ripped into the box.

Leading off, we have a pair of RCs from my two favorite AL teams and two nice Future Stars. I particularly dig the Baez since it's not everyday you see the cold weather gear front and center on some baseball cardboard. Plus, he's one of my favorite non-Yankee/Rays/former Bulls players. This is the first Maile solo RC I've seen and I include the Sanchez just to note that the photo is slightly less pixelated than the zoomed in version Topps used on the Opening Day version.

In my small sample size, I'm pretty sure that the horizontals will rule once again in series two! I love the photo on that Ichiro and this is the third different time a (slight) variation of that Ortiz has shown up on he blog. The Cubs duo card is pretty sweet and I couldn't resist scanning my first Goody RC. So, I feel like the base cards are pretty decent from what I've seen. How would the insert portion of the box look?

Well, it opened strong since I pulled a gold parallel of a Yankee. That's a decent action shot of Didi and I'm thrilled they didn't crop the ball out of the frame. The '200' card highlights Ichiro setting the rookie record for hits in a season while topping 200 back in 2001. I haven't decided yet, but I'm considering hunting down the Chasing 3000 set. They're decent looking and the subject matter fits my collection for multiple reasons...

More inserts and another parallel. I mean how much better could a box get? I snagged a gold and a rainbow parallel(both with quality players, some PC RCs, and two different Kris Bryant inserts among some other cardboard of personal interest that didn't make the cut to get scanned. The upper left Bryant is apparently from the Target exclusive Changing of the Guard insert. Nice design. However, as great as I felt this was, that MLB Debut Car-Go happened to be the third time I saw his name in this pack so I went back and dug a little bit.

Yup, sure enough, I had pulled these two base cards and the Debut. A quick search of Cardboard Connection told me that the card on the right was a Jackie Robinson Day SP variation. It's tough to tell, but he is wearing number 42. The search of Cardboard Connection also told me that the card back code method of identifying the variations is in effect for series 2. I hope Topps decides to continue this going forward as they have in the past.

That was one of the best hanger boxes I've cracked in quite some time. I really need to stick to allowing my daughters to pick packs or boxes for me. Thanks for reading.