When 2012 Topps Archives Baseball was released earlier this year, collectors flocked to reclaim the nostalgia of the cards from their youth, done with current players and some fun additions. It was truly a product for the kid in all of us, which included a few nice additions in the autograph checklist to get people even more excited. A few months ago, Topps committed to creating a football version of the product and yesterday, the sell sheet was put out to everyone. As it was with its sister product, Archives Football gives us a reason to buy for nostalgia, but also because it is an awesome looking product.

I have long called for reprint autos of the more iconic cards of our generation and beyond, as they have been some of the most awesome cards ever released. In many past post, I have called attention to the best ones of the 2001 product, and I am excited to see how this turns out the second time around. Even more than that, I am ridiculously excited that the autographs will be signed on card, as there has not been a product besides 2010 and 2011 Five Star that offered hard signed non-rookie autos. Five Star is out of most people’s price range, and Topps has shown that they are determined to make it work for a lower end product.

Here are the ones from 2001 that are some of my all time favorites:

2001 Topps Archives Reserve Johnny Unitas Auto

2001 Topps Archives Reserve William “Refrigerator” Perry Auto

2001 Topps Archives Reserve Eric Dickerson Auto

2001 Topps Archives Reserve Marcus Allen Auto

2001 Topps Archives Lawrence Taylor Auto

The designs in play for the historical cards are collector favorites from and 1985, 1986, as well as the iconic 1976 design from Walter Payton’s rookie year. The 1985 and 1986 designs are easily some of the best of all time, and I hope that the base cards are done similarly as well for the players that compose each year’s checklist. We got a preview of Arian Foster’s 1985 base card, and if the rest of the examples look like this one, Ill be happier than a body builder directing traffic.

As for the other styles, it looks like we are going to get 1982 mini autographs, and 1984 autographs with updated pictures, as well as a bunch of other fun designs that will be applied to the rookie class of 2012. Im confused as to why this is a 2013 product, to be released mid-April, but maybe it has to do with the licensing situation of rookie content mandated in every set. Maybe Topps will elaborate soon.

In the end, we need more sets like this. We need more of a focus on generating fun checklists and on card autos for non-rookie players. Hopefully Archives will become a yearly thing in football, because there is nothing else that fills that hole like there is in Baseball.

I love this, and I cant wait to see how it turns out. For god’s sake, they are putting the cards on the box bottoms even! That is attention to detail!