Topps Relief: 2010 Obak Box Break Highlights

Back from the land of San Jose, where taxi drivers make a killin'.



My wife and I flew back from seeing Dave Matthews Band over the weekend. We witnessed a really high-octane performance where the lights, drums, singing, and jams just beat our senses into pulp for over three hours. Highlights were a raging "All Along the Watchtower", a 17-minute jam of "Jimi Thing" featuring the opening act, and an encore finale of "Two Step" which is one of my favorite songs and one that I have always wanted to see live.



We got really lucky on the theme of the show. I have read some reviews of the show the night before in Concordia, and as can happen, Dave and his mates decided on a milder, more mellow set. The band definitely excels at both, but it was nice that the group decided to kick it into another gear for our show!



The only minus of the trip was that our hotel, while nice, was basically placed in the middle of a loop of freeways, so therefore there was really nowhere to walk to. So we were either at the mercy of overpriced hotel food, or a $15 taxi ride to somewhere else. We'll have to rethink that one next time. Regardless it was an amazing weekend.



Before we left on the trip, I had the pleasure of a dinged-up package appearing on our doorstep. Last week I jumped on Blowout Cards just in time to see that they had a new shipment of 2010 Tristar Obak re-appear in-stock. I happily jumped on the purchase. Obak is some different stuff, that much is certain. But after a Spring and Summer of Topps products and re-circulated images, it was high time to try something different. Right off the bat when you look at the packaging you know that you are going to be in for an experience. If you care to read about the history of Obak cards, it is right there on the package for you. Plus "hit" cards and parallels galore as well as a 1/24 chance at a "Hot Box" made me itchy to bust this thing open.

Here's a pretty cool feature of the box. This particular box is numbered 1935/3000. Pretty cool that only 3000 of these boxes were made. I wonder how that compares to Ginter?

Away we go, starting with the Heyward express. I am really excited to add a different brand of mini to my mini-madness binder that is taking shape. Always nice to add a few Heywards to the binder, but I do have some questions on these parallels...

The difference between the regular cards is pretty obvious, with a different photo and one referencing the Atlanta Braves. However, what is going on with the minis? I have a circle-backed mini and a....triangle-backed mini?? I don't really see any difference with the fronts. There is a different logo on the back, but I turn to my readers to help explain the variation difference on the these cards.

Here are a couple serial cards, Chicago rookie Starlin Castro numbered to either 50 or 75, and a Hank Greenberg numbered to 50.

Here was a nice little surprise to the box...

Here are the auto's for the box...

It's pretty cool to have a Jim Abbott and Don Baylor auto to add to the collection, but overall there is nothing too exciting about these. The autos kinda look like somebody scratched a blue pen through a thick chunk of white-out. There are some nice autos to be had in the set, but temper your expectations a little bit.

And we'll finish off with a couple nice minis

The Chick Gandil is a nice edition to the mini binder, and it was not until later review that I notice that there seems to be an alternate logo and back to this card. This is yet another unexplained mystery to this obscure baseball card box. It definitely makes the card feel unique though, and that I like.

This was a really fun break when you consider the wide-variety of subjects and stories that are covered on the back of each of these cards. I am going to definitely go back through these cards and discover the interesting stories that I may have passed over on first glance. This product is definitely a breath of fresh air after all of the same-old, same-old that has been passing through shops for the last few months.

I am basically only interested in hanging on to the mini cards, so if anything caught your eye or if you are curious about another base card that I might have, feel free to give me a shout!