Topps Archives...late to the party again

I picked up some '16 Archives in Dallas earlier this week while I was up there for a convention, Opening and flipping through the cards on Monday night was a much better idea than subjecting myself to Chris Berman hyperventilating over batting practice dingers in my empty hotel room.

My first impression...well after the initial shock of paying $6 for 18 card 'bonus' packs...was that I like them. But I always do. Not enough to buy more but the throwback designs are fun. I've about given up on ever getting Orioles out of retail packs I buy. But with me keeping a fantasy baseball player binder I can usually find a few cards I can use. Archives provides some variety on those binder pages.

Here are the highlights of my packs. The borders were sliced off by my scanner but I didn't feel the need to re-scan them.

Any Spahnnie card is a welcome sight.

As is a Koufax.

Jim Abbott escaped the wrath of my fickle scanner. He got to keep his border. Probably due to the 1953 design which runs the color to the edges.

And the Kipnis card confirms that. Only these two made it intact thru the scanning process.

A few others:

Rizzo and Cutch make the fantasy binder kicking their Topps base cards to the curb.

And one more thought...when I opened the second pack the first three cards were dupes of those I'd gotten in the first pack. Of course in keeping with my current card karma the dupes were ho-hum ones, current players I was vaguely aware of.

All in all I'm happy with the cards I got but I won't be chasing the set or any part of it. I like the concept and design but the cost per card is just too high for me.