2010 Bowman Sterling is starting to show up on eBay, and after viewing some of these auctions, it truly amazes me how absolutely horrible this product looks. Topps has made it a point to start producing vertically oriented patch/jersey auto cards, similar to those in Finest, and like I said then, they DO NOT work. When you try to fit a swatch window AND a sticker on a vertical card, its inevitable that the player will be partially covered up, and that is the biggest issue here.
Because the main box hits look so horrid, the rest of the product is just subsidiary details. I dont think I would open this stuff even if it were given to me for free, and that is the honest truth. It is that bad. There needs to be some sort of industry standard that prevents cards like these from being made, even more so as you start to see how much of the player is actually obscurred by the unneeded swatch of non-game used material.
On top of the design issues, the price point on a box of Bowman Sterling could be the worst in the history of the hobby. A box costs more than 200 per, and with the cards looking like this, and the checklist being what it is, you might as well just set the money aflame before opening. This is even more evident when you look back over previous year’s singles, and see how the main hits hold their value. People love to open high end products, but usually, if the cards look like shit, they rarely maintain a good secondary market value. The reason is that when compared side by side with another, better looking card, many collectors make the right decision. This is why Exquisite and SP Authentic are some of the best secondary market products for the main hits, and products like Triple Threads rarely hold up.
Even the non-jersey auto cards look like they are wearing WWF Championship Belts, despite looking comparable to the no name guys they used to run out to lose to Hulk Hogan. The dual auto patches have even less success, mainly because of the inability to get all the patches, pictures, and stickers in manageable organization on the card’s front. The bottom line is that for the price of this box, we should be getting a product more along the lines of Five Star, not Triple Threads without the die-cuts.
When you see the success that Topps had with the look of their Chrome, Base, Magic, Platinum, and part of the Finest sets, I wonder who is responsible for products like this. Their lower to mid-end products are so successful in terms of design, that stuff like Triple Threads and this leave me searching their design roster for the person who should be canned.
Here are some of the cards that have already hit, see what I am talking about:
Golden Tate Auto Jersey SUPERFRACTOR – Combining an almost completely obscurred player with the Superfractor chrome pattern is eye burning. This looks ridiculous.
Zac Robinson Auto SUPERFRACTOR – What is crazy is that rookie premiere players will have up to five superfractors in this set. Almost as bad as Triple Threads and the 80 1/1s per player.
Emmanuel Sanders Blue Refractor Auto Jersey /99 – I dont get why there is not a background on these cards. The flat gray or flat blue behind the player looks like the card is incomplete.
Tim Tebow Gold Refractor Auto /25
Colt McCoy Gold Refractor Auto Jersey /25 – More junk.
Eric Berry Gold Refractor Auto Patch Error /25 – Oops with the Decker sticker instead of the correct one. One more reason why stickers suck.
Who does topps fool with these ugly cards? Apparently most people. I for one will not even get the single cards from the set. With upper deck only able to use the ncaa license, my options are limited to older upper deck autograph cards. I am having a hard time finding the hall of famer upper deck autos because they sell so quickly most of the time.
I haven’t opened anything except chrome this year. It has really been an abysmal year, so bad in fact that I even look back on the panini products from last year and find myself talking about how much better they were in comparison (09 was horrific, but that’s how atrocious this year has been). Last year I broke almost everything simply because I was bored, but now I’m back to buying singles, which has made me much happier. I just bought an Eli Manning auto from last year’s Philadelphia and couldn’t be happier with it. But still, what an awful year of products.