2014 Turkey Red Baseball Limited?

One of the simplest concepts Topps retail has created is the Turkey Red online exclusive box. For $19.99, a collector receives 11 cards including one sticker autograph in a product that tries to pay homage to the original theme used in tobacco cards more than a century ago. It’s a reasonable price to be guaranteed one autograph card as well as a group of players who are established veterans or solid prospects. Since these are somewhat limited in distribution (no ‘impulse buying’ at local stores), almost all boxes are going to at least return the investment in terms of retail value.

And many collectors do agree with this perception as when we checked Topps.com Monday night, 2014 Turkey Red was listed as out of stock. One message board keeps track and as of today their projected count was still less than 8,000 total boxes produced That type of production also keeps all the base cards produced to a reasonably small number as well.

This year’s Turkey Red design has orange colored borders with an illustration of the player in the middle and just their last name in the bottom left corner. The backs have the player name as well as biographical information. We were fortunate enough to receive two boxes for our review purposes as well as a few boxes which will be used as door prizes or our upcoming March 9 show. I’d like to thank Topps for their assistance in supporting our 1st Brotherhood (Men’s Club) Card show.

So how did we do from our boxes? Pedro Alvarez (2), Miguel Cabrera, Allen Craig, Paul Goldschmidt (2), Felix Hernandez, (2), Ryan Howard, Justin Masterton, Joe Mauer, Dustin Pedroia, Anthony Rizzo (2), Hyun-Jin Ryu, C.C> Sabathia, Pablo Sandoval (2), Joey Votto, David Wright.

Autograph (#d to 499): Yan Gomes

Autograph Black Parallel (#d to 10): Junior Lake

While we were a little surprised at receiving the duplicates in our two boxes, we certainly were happy with the autograph cards. Yan Gomes has won the starting catcher role with Cleveland (although at age 26, he might be beyond the ‘prospect’ stage and # to 499 means there are plenty to go around) while the Junior Lake autograph #d to 10 is the big prize–a very nice hit. At 23, he could be a star in the making (at least Cubs fans hope so).

No guarantees, especially with a checklist that’s tilted toward prospects, but for the price of a blaster box, Turkey Red is a fun alternative.

Quite a few have made their way to eBay. Click here to see them.