2024 Topps 206 NPB

There are many things that are popular for absolutely no reason that I can understand.  I won't list them here as, for the most part, I don't care if other people like things that I don't like.  I think one of the worst aspects of social media is someone saying that they like something and someone else replying and telling them that they're wrong to like that thing.  I mean, why harsh someone's mellow?

However.

The popularity of last year's Topps 206 NPB set boggles my mind.  What a boring set, with 216 head and shoulder portraits (or, as I like to call them, mug shots) of players, border color parallels and mini parallels.  I even found the "alternate image" parallels to be kind of dull.  About the only thing I had any positive feelings about were the "stadium background" parallels.  

Obviously most people did not feel this way about the set.  As I mentioned, it was very popular.  Popular enough that Topps brought it back for 2024 - it was one of the three NPB sets that Topps released in mid-December.  I got some cards from it from Jason which arrived earlier this week.  I actually had only bought seven cards but he threw in several more for no additional charge which gave me a good overview of some of the parallels.

The design of the base cards look pretty similar to last year's - same head and shoulder portraits, similar backgrounds, same set logo in the top left corner.  About the only real difference I can see is that the names of the player and team across the bottom uses a bigger font than last year*:

#16

* Calbee has taught me to look for subtle changes in card designs

The card backs look a little different from last year although Topps continues their dedication to putting as little effort into them as possible - although in fairness this is in keeping with how they've done the MLB versions of this set as well:

Here are the other base cards I had asked Jason for.  I had pretty much just wanted some of my favorite players:

#158

#123

#51

Jason sent me a couple of the very common brown border parallels, including one for Yanagita:

#51

#75

#7

He also sent me an "alternate image" parallel for Yusuke Ohyama:

#5

He sent me three different parallels for Yoshihiro Maru - the brown border, the mini and the "alternate image" mini.  Looks like the background is subtly different between the full size card and the mini:

#74

#74

#74

Looking at the official checklist for the set from Topps, I think every card has a mini parallel but only 60 cards (five per team) have "alternate image" parallels.  Those same 60 have a mini "alternate image" parallel too.  The checklist does not list the border color parallels.  I suspect that the all the cards have brown border parallels.  There are also at least three different numbered foil parallels - "Foil" (/99), "Blue Foil" (/75) and "Gold Foil" (/50).  There are at least two back parallels - carp (or koi) which is /8 and "beckoning cat" which is /7.

There's one other parallel which I thought was kind of interesting.  36 cards (three per team) have "Comic Book Variation" parallels which have a different design and a different background to go with the same mug shot as the base card:

#182

I like this design although I think I'd like it better if was on a full bleed action photo rather than just a  portrait.

There's an insert set of min-sized cards using the T205 tobacco card design.  There's only 24 of these (two per team) and they're numbered separately so they're not technically parallels (although they may be using he same mug shots as the base cards):

#T205-5

#T205-19

I actually like these quite a bit.  However, I think getting all 24 of them would be kind of boring as, again, they're all mug shots.

You've probably gathered at this point that I'm not a big fan of this set.  Besides the dullness of it, it just seems like it's almost identical to the 2023 version.  It seems strange to me that Topps dropped the Bowman NPB set (which I've also had issues with but I didn't think it was boring) to repeat the 206 set.

The issue I have with the set may simply be that I'm a set collector.  All I can think of is how boring it would be to look at all 216 cards in the set in a binder.  I guess other folks who aren't set collectors might not be as bored by it.  So I apologize for harshing your mellow, everyone.

You can, of course, look at all the cards over at Jambalaya (including some of the more rare ones).  You know, in case you need help falling asleep.

And once again, thanks to Jason for sending me these cards.  I do appreciate it, even if I'm not a big fan of this particular set.