It’s mid June, the picture of the 2018 baseball season is starting to shape up, and the release of 2018 Topps Series 2 comes just in time to generate some excitement in the month leading up to the All-Star Break.

The “guts” of the set are fairly consistent with typical flagship releases with a 350 card base set and a whole range of insert cards to chase. Continuing with the 2018 theme, the 1983 design inserts seem to hold the most popularity with collectors. Interestingly, the Series 2 checklist for both the 1983 set and the Salute set only contain 99 cards instead of the 100 we have seen over the last few releases. The fact that the Salute set is numbered to 100 and is missing card number 97 has led many to speculate who the original subject was for the card and why it may have had to be pulled.

Several early season rookie call ups and their subsequent inclusion into the release have made this one of the most anticipated Series 2 releases in some time. Card number 700 will be Shohei Ohtani’s flagship rookie card and looks to be one of the most sought after base cards in some time. Time will tell if his injury ultimately derails the huge momentum the hobby is seeing this year.

Ronald Acuna and Gleyber Torres were also able to sneak in as short print substitutes for the base cards 698 and 699 respectively. The base 698 will be Ryan Sherriff and the base 699 will be Drew Smyly, but collectors can expect the two SP rookie cards to falll about 1 or 2 per hobby case.

There are another 75 SP photo variations and 25 SSP variations included packs with the standard SPs falling about 1-2 per box and the SSPs falling around 1 for every 2 or 3 cases.

The last three digits of the serial number codes on the back of these cards are as follows:

SP - 112

SSP - 114

RC SP - 249

Another interesting discovery are a couple card numbering errors. There is no #364 and instead there are two different #365 cards. The same situation is true with cards #565 (missing) and two #564s.

As is typically the situation with flagship releases, the autograph checklist is huge and contains a mixture of veteran and rookie autographs with the veterans in much shorter supply. The potential relic cards are also a mixture of game used memorabilia and manufactured relics.

The promotional “Silver Packs” are once again proving to be popular, and if you aren’t familiar, provide a chrome version of the 1983 parallels. They are a separate set from the standard insert set including a smaller 50 card checklist and different photos.

I had the opportunity to open 2 cases worth of packs which is two cases worth and you can check out the video of the results below! Lots of color including one low numbered guy we’ve already discussed!

That Ohtani is awesome and is going to go a long way to help me continue my case preorder plan into 2019!

I ended up selling nine of the 12 jumbo boxes I had preordered, but I hung onto 3 of them to bust myself.

You can watch me open the first of the three boxes here.

The jumbo boxes didn’t quite match the excitement of the silver packs. Out of the three boxes, my autos were an RC auto of Felix Jorge, a Manny Margot, and a Josh Hader Salute Insert Auto /25, but unfortunately, it had two dinged corners right out of the pack. That stinks.

I did get a Gleyber Torres rookie SP which is pretty solid, and I also got five other short prints. The six relics were a combination of three manufactured and three game used relics. My favorite as a Cubs fan was this Willson Contreras jersey card!

All in all I am very happy with the breaks and I’ll walk away with a complete set of base and silver pack 1983 Chromes and a few other singles for the personal collection.