There's Gold in Them Hills...Somewhere

I participated in a group break with my group of team collectors last night.  The release of Topps Chrome had been what initiated the order for the 5 box break.  But when all was said and done, Chrome was probably the least exciting break.  And that seems pretty typical for the product this year.  Most boxes don't seem to be yielding any colored refractors at all, and the breaks just seem generally uninspiring.  When our Topps Series 2 box is more interesting than Chrome...it's not a good sign.

Maybe collectors have been spoiled in recent years.  While I'm no fan of Topps and their million parallels, I realize that for box breakers the addition of new colors each year makes the break...well, more colorful.

Speaking of color, I picked up this Pedro Alvarez refractor from Finest off ebay.  Wanna play a round of guess what color it is?

If you guess gold, you're right.  But with all the color in the background, it's pretty tough to actually make out that it's a gold refractor.  If anything, the gold pops more in the scan than it does in person.  I really like the design to Finest this year, and it reminds me a lot of the 90's Finest sets.  But the colors seem to completely wash out of the colored ref's with the multi-colored background.  Though the X-Fractors from the set do look amazing.  But for $3.50 shipped, I can't complain too much.  It's a cool card at a good price.  But boy would a more pronounced gold background look nice with those Sunday throwback uniforms.