2/14 Hunting through Group Breaks

 2023 Series 1 has dropped, and I did anticipate the checklist to check if Topps' flood of rookie cards would include Ethan Small and Gabriel Moreno. When I saw that they did, I had to get in on some group breaks to scour for new cards for the 2/14 collection.

How'd that go?

3 Ethan Smalls, the base, a gold foil parallel, and a Chrome 1988 out of the bonus packs. While his first MLB numbers weren't mind-blowing, neither were those for his teammate Corbin Burnes in his rookie year, and he was also all over releases. Can't miss out on the possibility!

These cards moved his total to 5.

Even if Moreno's time in Toronto has ended, I'll still prefer his Jays cards over his Diamondbacks ones, no matter how much success he may find in Arizona. I love that the powder blues are now in the 2/14 collection as well. His total is '8'.

What other goodies were pulled alongside these, other than a bunch of team sets?

Not too much for the Brewers slot, with the most interesting being this 1988 blue parallel. Team colour (if not shade) matches are always nice little bonuses.

But, I did luck my way into a bonus Rip Party pack with the Brewers spot. It just contained the base parallels with the Rip Party logo, but it is highlighted by some decent names with Mullins and Robert, the latter sporting a sweet alternate uniform.

Definitely more volume, and variety when it comes to parallels on the Toronto side, with the big one being that Vladdy. It is an Orange Foil /299. It is joined by a gold foil, a gold /2023 and a rainbow foil parallel. 

I'd probably like these playing card parallels a lot more if they were like the inserts out of O-Pee-Chee where they can be assembled to form a complete 52-card deck of cards. If hockey players can survive with some of them ending up as the Queen in a deck, so should baseball players.

I also got the base parallel of this, but a /299 one is more worthy of a show-off. Also, getting a Shawn Green in a 2023 release is nice little surprise. 

And let's add a hit for good measure. They're even better when the swatch colour matches the photo colour.

There you have it!