These are the first cards I ever bought or ever opened. When I was 12 (2003) I inherited my fathers baseball cards and baseball memorabilia. A lot of it was sold to help pay for things around the house. broken water heater, new septic pump and other things thru the years but we always kept the cards. I’d go thru and organize and look up in the old becket books and cross them off. I got older and put them away and never thought much about them. Then my wife got pregnant and we were so completely broke and I went thru the old cards again, we made some money and had a healthy baby. Going thru them me and her and my stepdaughter, we all kind of caught the fever. Not long after the baby came we bought a blaster box of 2018 Topps series 1 and this year we been into it more than ever. Love this hobby

I had just recently got into card collecting and 2018 Topps was the first real set I started to collect this year. At first there was noting better then going to your local store getting a pack of cards and opening them up to see what new awesome cards may be in there from this set.

It wasn't until about a month ago and many $$ that I was at my local target and I saw for $50 I could go a head and buy all 700 base cards....... What is the fun in that. I would never do that but isn't that the point behind collecting? Not being able to get the whole set with just one purchase at a chain store. But to buy, trade, and interacting with other card collectors to hopefully collect your set or find them hard base set cards? I understand that you don't get all the special cards but something about this rubbed me the wrong way.

Ever since then I have decided against collecting Topps at this point. Maybe I'm overacting but something about this really rubbed me the wrong way and took the fun out of collecting baseball cards.

Well, I've finally gone through enough of this set to give a full review.

I'm almost where RoundtheDiamond is, but not quite.

I think the look of the set is great. The photographs are clear, exciting, clever, just beautiful, really. The size of the set is nice, with almost all starters and some backups for just about every team. It's still a bit unbalanced -- how the Dodgers got 27 players, I just don't know. Milwaukee with 29? They still have team cards and leader cards and All-Star Rookies, and World Series cards, which are all good things, albeit flawed, as discussed below.

But there are too many bad things. The lack of statistics is still the worst. They haven't even included five full years. I don't understand how they've chosen what stats to give. So many examples. Kyle Schwarber only has three years of major league stats. They show only two. Many rookie cards talk about major league stats and games in the comments, but show no major league stats. Albert Pujols never played for St. Louis. Chase Utley is kinda mediocre. And, in the greatest irony of all, on the back of Justin Verlander's card, they quote the manager as to why Houston picked him up, "He's got the back of the Baseball card to show you." No, not really. He's got five years and career totals of the back of the baseball card to show you. Ichiro looks pretty bad over the last few years. Sad.

As to the Team cards, there's a decent blurb, but I'd love to see a manager inset and team leaders noted on the back.

As to the Leaders cards, I kind of hate them. When I was sorting the set, I saw lots of leaders cards, and figured they'd have WAR and WHIP and OPS and other modern stats. But no. They've got three cards with identical backs -- one for each of the top three leaders in only the most traditional categories, minus saves and stolen bases and even strikeouts. The cards don't even tell one what the player led the league in on the front of the card. Others may disagree, but I'd much rather have the three league leaders on one card. Or the leader from each league on one card, a la 1975. That year, card 319 -- strikeout leaders -- has Nolan Ryan AND Steve Carlton on it. How cool is that?!?! Apparently, not cool enough. Or have more categories of leaders, but just the actually #1 guys, rather than 1 through 3. This was just a bad choice.

And I LOVE post season cards. Made a point of getting them all dating to the mid-sixties. Still targeting others. But this is the I-don't-know-what year in a row, where only the games the winner of the series won are featured. 2017 and 2016 World Series were epic. Just seeing the four wins is just plain stupid. Eliminate a few rookie cards, a few 2nd and 3rd leader cards and have a proper World Series set.

Lastly, they haven't done a proper special set in a long time. I didn't like the Father/Son cards or the Boyhood photos cards of prior years, but at least they were different. And I loved the MVP specials of 1975, and the Hank Aaron cards of 1974, etc., etc....

Oh, jeez. I just noticed that there are no All-Star cards this year, either. I don't need a separate set of cards, but oh I loved the big Star on the All-Stars of the past, or the cool All-Star shield in 1978.

Ok...and the social media. I don’t care. I realize others do. Fine. It’s 2018 (although you’d think that would lead to WAR leaders). But does a Twitter address really mean no full stats? This is blasphemous, but ok, give in to modernity and put the social media stuff on front, right under the name, because it’s so important. That’ll leave room for stats on the back, I hope?

In short, Topps base set has lost tons of appeal for me. I still enjoy them, but not nearly as much as the vintage stuff. I'll keep buying the sets for a few years to come. Maybe until I stop collecting altogether. I'll spend hours sorting them into teams and putting the teams in order of player greatness and putting them all into binders. But I'll have a lot more fun completing my first set of 1960s and working backwards.

I'm sorry, Topps, you've lost your way.

I...HAVE...SPOKEN!

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