2010 Topps Baseball Update Series Box Break

Just when I thought I had wrapped up the 2010 baseball card season....

Having been away from the hobby for a while, I assumed sets still had just a Series 1 & 2, so imagine my surprise when I learned that I had a THIRD full set to collect if I wanted to complete the Topps 2010 set!

I debated wether to buy the regular box or the jumbo pack box - in the end $55 made a lot more sense than $90, though the 2 additional hits and extra cards in the jumbo box would have been nice....

My box contained:
Set completion: 254 of 330 (77%).  No duplicates, for the base set or insert sets (not counting the Topps Attax cards), so good job on collation Topps!

(As an aside, I'm sure I'm not the first person to comment on this over the years, but the way cards are collated these days drives me nuts.  Sure it's nice to get no duplicates when I buy a box, but when I then buy a pack from another box and get the same 7 "random" cards in the exact same order as another pack, to the point where ALL 5 of the packs I purchased in addition to the box were ALL DUPLICATES, it is frustrating....)

The highlights:

Obviously his buzz cooled off considerably after the injury, but it's still nice to pull card #661:

My rookie refractor:

The box promised one autograph or relic, and I was pretty pleased with the one I got.  Sure they're manufactured bat barrels, but still - it's Rajah~!

There was one other nice pull - one of the short print parallels:

I'm not sure what the rarity is on these things, but either they are very rare or my luck has been terrible.  I went through 2 whole boxes of Series 1 and a box of Series 2 without pulling a single one.  I finally got one (Tris Speaker from Series 2) in a random pack I bought, and now this is my second one.  I haven't pulled any of the "pie in the face" short prints either!...

On the whole this was a pretty good box.  I'm a big fan of the Cards Your Mom Threw Out and Vintage Legends inserts, so I was happy to learn those were extended into the Update Series.  I also got a chuckle from one of the More Tales of The Game cards, seeing as I was in attendance at the infamous All Star Game Tie.  :)  Hopefully I can at least finish off the 2010 base sets before moving on to whatever Topps has planned for their 60th anniversary set!