2023 Topps Home Run Challenge fail

I might have not seen it otherwise, but I decided to go on my Twitter 'for you' tab rather than the 'following' tab and saw Tweets about collectors getting email notifications from Topps, where their April entries were invalid - apparently you have to get your entries in by 1:00 a.m. / 4:00 a.m. the date of the game.

I entered at least several codes and won some cards in 2021, but maybe my personal interest had died down - where I may not have found as many code cards in the wild.

I was fired up when I 'won' an Austin Riley HR Challenge card last month- after learning about this news, I had to check whether my entry was affected and go figure, it was a non-winner due to this condition in their terms and conditions.

I always thought the deadline to enter a code card was anytime up to first pitch - where it was no problem entering a code the morning of or hours before a game was to begin.

Even if there was a little instinctive doubt about entering it in a timely manner as opposed to being proactive [at least the day before or before the deadline] - I didn't think I was canceling out a potential winning prize card by having entered the code when I did.

Despite the complaints on Twitter, I don't think Topps is going retroactively do anything - I had a code card for Adley Rutschman I was thinking on entering for Opening Day, but got lazy.

I'm not sure the time I entered the Rutschman code for another game and wondered if I would have had a non-winner even if he'd hit a home run - where I probably would have entered the code the day of the game, past the 1 a.m. / 4 a.m. deadline.

I am bummed I'm not going to be getting a winning HR Challenge card, but it was going to take 4-6 months to get one lousy card that maybe worth $4 of a player I'm not as emotionally invested in - because they sent this mean email invalidating winning Topps Home Run Challenge entries for April, I wonder whether I stop buying anymore Topps product, even though they are the only game in town for baseball cards.

2023 Topps oversized box toppers pickups

I was watching a YouTuber go through some of newest hauls and he showed off one of these cards - I didn't know what they were, but they are apparently bonus cards in 2021 Topps Series 1 jumbo boxes.

I ended up doing some browsing on eBay and ended up putting a bid and winning an Ichiro card from the set - regardless of the other players on the checklist, I can't go wrong with this all-time fan favorite.

The fronts are very generic and make me think these cards are MLB team issued cards from the 1970s or 1980s perhaps - though that is how the originals might have looked.

I'm not that collector who nitpicks at how faithful the details are replicated - when it comes to modern cards mimicking past designs.

I do like how Topps made good use of the colors on the back of the cards - where it's not as sleepy as the fronts.

Besides a copy of the Ichiro, it was kind of a no brainer to look for the Angels on the checklist - which ends up being Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout obviously.

In-hand, the cards end up being smaller [3.5 x 5 inch] than I assumed, but larger than a regular sized card - for the most part I want regular sized cards, though I may have to make exceptions for odd-sized stuff like these box toppers.