2024 Topps Chrome NPB

Among the cards I got from my friend Jason yesterday were a bunch from the 2024 Topps Chrome NPB set that was released last month.  Like the 2023 version of this set, this is not simply an ugly chrome version of the 2024 Topps NPB set that came out last May.  Instead it's a whole new set which different players and different photos.  To be honest, if Topps had published a non-Chrome version of this set last May, I'd have been a lot happier than I was with the dreck they actually published.  The photos in this set are pretty good (and were taken in 2024 instead of 2023) and the player selection is better than the earlier set.

I didn't buy a complete Chrome set.  I REALLY don't like the Chrome finish on the cards - I think it makes the cards really ugly and they don't scan well - so I wasn't interesting in getting all the cards but there were a handful I asked Jason about.  Most of these were either favorite players or I liked the photo (although there's a couple I don't remember why I wanted.)  Here's what I got in the package yesterday:

#104

#209

#210

#184

#94

#9

#131

#180

#28

#57

#43

#183

#98

You're going to have to take my word on the fact that these look much better in person than in the scans.  Well, not MUCH better because they obviously still have the ugly "chrome" finish on them (have I mentioned I'm not a fan of the "chrome" finish?) but better than this.  Jambalaya seems to have done a better job scanning the cards than I have so you can check out all the cards over there.

Besides not liking the "chrome" finish, I'm also not a big fan of the myriad of parallels that this set has.  I was surprised, though, that there was one parallel that I liked.  Known as the "kanji" parallel, it replaces the English text on the front of the card for the player's name, team's name and position with Japanese text (which isn't necessarily Kanji).  I got both the base card and the "kanji" parallel for Iori Yamasaki's card:

#120

#BKV-5

It's difficult to tell from the scans but these are actually the same photo - I have no idea why the scan of the base card turned out so much darker than the parallel.  Also I guess that technically this isn't a parallel since the "kanji" card has a different number.

The complete set has 216 cards which, as always, breaks down to 18 cards per team.  All three of the NPB sets Topps put out in December - this, Stadium Club and 206 (which I'll post about tomorrow) - have 216 cards in them so I got curious if they all had the same set of players.  I'm a computer programmer so I wrote a little application to compare all three checklists.  What I found was that all three were different.  There are 283 players represented in at least one of the three sets.  There are 157 who appear in all three sets, 25 who are in Stadium Club and 206 but not Chrome, 14 who are in Chrome and Stadium Club but not 206 and 12 who are in 206 and Chrome but not Stadium Club.  There are 33 players who only appear in Chrome (including Stewart and Kishi from the cards above), 22 who only appear in 206 and 20 who only appear in Stadium Club.

I do want to thank Jason again for selling me these cards.  Despite my feelings about the "chrome" finish on them, I like what I got.