A Marketside Pizza Party...That Somebody Had Earlier This Year

Right as the 2016 MLB Baseball Season started, some collectors who rely on one of the big box stores (that would be Walmart or Target) made an unusual discovery upon wandering the frozen food section of their local Walmart.

Pizza Courtesy of Dean aka The Cardboard Examiner

That's right...Walmart was including Topps cards as a "prize" in their house-brand pizzas. Each pizza would include 3 cards and a Topps bunt code card, along with some coupons for some early season baseball card products (think Series 1, Gypsy Queen, Heritage, and Bowman).

I don't get to go to Walmart often, and by the time I was able to (around middle of April, I think), either the store I went to didn't have them yet, or they were all gone. I'll go with the former as there would be no way the store could have run out of this stuff...

But I digress.

Now this wouldn't be the first time Topps would include cards in a food product (not counting their gum). For many years, Topps has included cards in various food products, from cookies to pizza. However, in almost all cases, because these were only approved by the MLB Players' Association, the player's cards mostly featured a headshot and an airbrushed (and in many cases, really badly) cap. With Topps holding the exclusive rights with MLB Properties, now Topps can add logos and such to these kinds of cards.

There are 50 cards in this set, so if you were to try to collect the full set by doing nothing but buy the pizzas, you'd be in for a very expensive shopping trip. Walmart sells their Marketside Pizzas from anywhere between 7-10 bucks, depending on the type of pizza you prefer (plain cheese goes for around $7, pepperoni is about $9, and the ultimate meat for $10). So if we were going on the hope that one could get all 50 cards in the set without hitting a double, we'd be spending at least anywhere from $119 to $170 for seventeen pizzas. And for those who buy pack after pack of regular cards, you know that the odds of completing the set is near impossible.

I love pizza as much as the next person, but I don't think my family would have approved of me buying a ton of pizzas for the sole purpose of getting these cards, so my best option would be to see if anyone was able to pull of completing a set and then see if they were willing to trade or sell their cards online.

As news of the discovery of these cards started to come out, people were, indeed, putting these cards on the Bay. And cards of the usual suspects (Trout, Harper, Bryant) were going for big dollars ($10-$20), while cards of superstar players (think Sale, Perez, Machado) were going for anywhere between $5-$10. But no sets to speak of. Of course a 50-card set that could only be collected 3 cards at a time, of course nobody would have been able to get a full set right away.

It's now August. The season is now in pennant chase mode. We're getting a clear idea of which teams will add games in October. By now, somebody has to have been able to complete this set. I'm sure they went through the usual channels, whether it was on the Bay, trading, or other online means (ain't the Internet grand??!) And sure enough, sets have been popping up on the big auction site. As of today, August 10, 2016, the furthest record of a complete sale of a set of 50 cards comes from a BIN in May for $65.00. Someone was able to sell a couple of sets for almost $75.00 BIN. Auctions ended anywhere between $30-40.

Last week, one sold for $25.00 BIN.

That one, was bought by me. Today the cards came in the mail.

2016 Topps Marketside Pizza Set of 50 cards.

So I am adding this 50-card set to my 2016 Topps set binder. In the coming days, I will also be getting the 9-card Lids set.

2016 Topps New Era Lids Exclusive 9-card set. Coming soon.

So while I may not have been busy on this humble, little blog, rest assured that I have been very busy on the Hobby front.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama