Bucket or Chuck-It: 2013 Topps Opening Day 1/2 Price!

Target stores in the area are offering packs at 1/2 Price through August 3rd I think. I had decided to bypass Opening Day this year, but at .49/pack it was worth a look.  Here are some highlights from 3 packs

Picked up on Phillies card in the 3 packs, but it was a good one - Cole Hamels.  His OD card is shown here with his base card. The Opening Day card actually came out first since the Base card was part of Series 2.

 Insets Bucket or Chuck-It?

 Mascots - A staple of OD. The Blue Jay on a blue background makes for a lame photo - Chuck-It.

Blue Parallels - A bit of chrominess, darker colors - looks good on Braves card. As I have noted before the added color on 2013 Topps really helps the design. Also like that they didn't totally blue-out the background beyond the player -  Bucket!

Opening Day Stars - some sort of 3D front honoring a couple of stars. They look decent.  but it's a Met - Chuck-It.

Opening Day Play Hard -  decent shot, bursting through the card, great name/theme. I will give this one a Bucket!

Moving Rookie Cup - once again the Rookie Cup on Topps Opening Day is hovering in a different spot then on base.  At least it has returned to it's gold/yellow state.  This is a Chuck-It.  Too many icons on one card. 

Overall - Bucket, I picked up 3 packs, for me they yeilded $1.50 of entertainment. 

2012 Topps A&G Gold Minis......Dislike. And a Variation Question. .

Ok My name is Phnungo and I admit I am a sucker for the rack packs that have 3 packs plus a mini pack of 3 parallels.  The product doesn't matter.  I largely view parallels a scam, but I enjoy them in small doses.

This interest is waning with the 2012 offering of Allen & Ginter.  The three packs come with 3 mini "Gold" Parallels.

 2012 A&G Gold Minis Hank Aaron, Padro Alvarez, Dan Uggla. 

It is pretty hard to tell the Gold Minis apart from the regular minis.  Same size, cardstock, basically the same color.  The border artwork on these gold cards is more detailed and looks good, but you can barely tell the difference from the regular minis.

  

2012 Topps A&G 
regular mini Mike Moustakas 
Gold Mini Hank Aaron
Regular Hank Aaron

The Moustakas is the standard mini.  The Aaron mini is the gold variation.

My question is does anybody know what is going on with the Hank Aaron card having differnent poses on the mini and the standard size card.  I haven't been following 2012 A&G that much this year.

A note on collation

The Three minis I pulled in the mini pack were all present within one of the single packs of A&G in the Hanger.  note 2 - I once saw Moustakas and Alvarez play in the same minor league game in Wilmington DE.