Cards on Cards contest winnings: my first 2025 Topps pack

I was an award winner in the Cards on Cards college football contest, and my prize was a 36-count pack of 2025 Topps. These are my first 2025 cards!

Here's my first card in the pack. Topps says the design is supposed to look like a subway map. Lots of bloggers think it looks like the '82 design. Personally I'm reminded more of 1992 with the rounded border on top and bar on the bottom.

My favorite part of the set is the colored foil border. It brightens up the otherwise-bland design. I thought it looked especially nice with a bunch of cards in hand, seeing the different-colored foil bars shining in the light. I couldn't get a good picture of that effect, though. It's weird to me how much hate the foil is getting on other blogs. (Especially the two big Dodger blogs - did Ron Cey once get attached by a foil monster or something?) Foil is also supposed to be very "90's" which is also supposedly terrible - again, i don't get it. One funny thing is that a very "90's foil" thing happened with this Kershaw card, as part of his name that was printed on the foil didn't print right.

Overall I think these cards look better in hand when you have a few of them at once. They don't look great in a photo but in person the colors pop more. It's not as good a design as last year, but it's OK. The player photos are still "pitcher pitching", "batter batting", etc. Even the fielding and celebration photos look pretty similar to each other. You'd think you'd at least get a "batter batting" where the ball is meeting the bat, or a double play turn, or even a different angle once in a while.

I got two Yankee cards in the pack - ironically the first was of a Met. I wish the Yankees got blue foil instead of the gray foil, which doesn't shine as well as the other colors.

Some "hits". Two Stars of MLB inserts. Unfortunately one is a Met but the other is one of the game's biggest stars. This set was looking very similar year to year and got freshened up nicely this year. I think the gold looks good, though again other bloggers seem to hate it. The 1990 Topps card is pretty good, it's a design from my youth that hasn't been overdone yet, so it was a bit nostalgic. Elly de la Cruz is another big star which is nice. It's funny that the 2025's don't have batter strikeouts but they do show up on the 1990 design, so you see he had a whopping 218 strikeouts! Finally, just a base card, but to get the base card of the best player in the game is pretty awesome. I don't usually read the stats on the back but I did in Ohtani's case, and they're mind-boggling.