Last year, Topps released Tier One as a relative experiment to see how it would fare in the baseball market. It had been a few years since a product like Ultimate had been released with licensed logos and autographs, which meant that it had worked previously. The issue that Topps ran into last year was a lack of differentiation in the hits, as many of them looked very similar to all the other cards in the set. Here is an eBay search that illustrates the point. Of course, there were a number of cards that had some awesome designs, but I was relatively disappointed with the final box that hit shelves.

Here are some cool ones I saw:

2011 Tier One Nolan Ryan On Card Auto /10

2011 Tier One Manny Pacquiao On card Auto

2011 Tier One Roy Halladay On Card Auto – Really cool, as Halladay hasn’t had many auto cards.

This year, it looks like Topps is keeping parts of the formula from last year, while also adding in some new content that should prove to make Tier One successful. I love the look of the cards with the black backgrounds / silver and gold autographs, as I think it’s a nice change from the usual look of the autographs. The design is well conceived with the borders framing the large player photo and the big space for autographs.

The duals also look well done, but I am not a fan of the studio shots over game shots. At least the player pictures aren’t the size of dimes, like they were last year, which makes for very balanced cards. More big spaces for autographs also plays well, as the signatures need to be a prime focus of a product like this.

We just got our first look at some of the Bat Knob cards on Twitter, and I am always up for some prime pieces of lumber in cards. Although I like the nameplate better than the knob, its a good idea. However, I really think these cards could have been a lot cooler with a horizontal orientation. I understand that vertical has been the favored orientation for cards since the beginning of their existence, but with jumbo relics now being more common, we need horizontal to be the default.

As for the jumbo relic autographs, I cannot say enough horrible things about the way they turned out. These should have been horizontal cards, not vertical, and the tiny place for the player perched atop the swatch window looks ridiculous. Even with on card autos, it doesn’t matter. These are AWFUL.

My biggest observation here is that there is an obvious dedication to providing hard signed autographs of non-rookie baseball players in a majority of Topps’ product. Although I give them EXTREME kudos for this, I want to know where this type of dedication is for Football. Having a renewable rookie class eager to sign autographs is not an excuse for allowing a calendar year to pass with only ONE product that has hard signed current and retired stars. The football market has been expanded thanks to the wonderful work that Topps has done in improving their designs over the last three years. However, I am still left wondering when the baseball autograph dedication will trickle down to the rest of us.

Here are some previews of actual cards from Twitter: