Remember that whole fiasco about not short printed but still ridiculously short printed Strasburg mini in 2010 Allen and Ginter? Well, it looks like things may be revving up again in terms of the way Strasburg’s auto is being included in 2010 Topps Chrome baseball. Aside from the fact that his surgery has severely damaged the potential of this product being everything Topps had hoped, his autograph was still a chase card for everyone who was still buying in.
Well, now that the product is relatively live, and there are a lot of autos posted currently on ebay, its easy to see that his autograph is no easy pull. In fact, there are at least 10 of many of the players on the checklist at this point (including MANY Heywards
), but only a few Strasburgs
, and they are both parallel versions of the card
. With this product already having problems due to how much his value has dropped, is the news that his base auto is incredibly short printed a good thing? Topps Chrome in baseball is not like Topps Chrome in football. It also falls quite short of the popularity of Allen and Ginter being able to carry on a set without Strasburg’s card being readily available. So, if his autograph is short printed to the point of practical scarcity, is it actually more damaging than helpful?
Personally, I know that there are few sets that carry more importance than Bowman branded products, and Topps Chrome had a shot at being extremely relevant this year despite this handicap. They were including on card USA team signatures, Stras and Heyward were doing great to bolster value for their on card autos in the set, and many things werent even revealed about Chrome yet. Now, im not as sure that is still the case with the fact that there may only be 300 total autos of his in the product, with less than 100 being the base one that everyone wants.
This is going to piss off a lot of people who bought in hard for Chrome expecting Stras to be as prevalent as he was in vastly inferior sets like Tribute, Triple Threads and the like. I feel bad for those people, because the handicap on Chrome presented by the severity of his injury just got that much more problematic. People want the base auto and im not sure that they are going to get it.
Lastly, is anyone else wondering how Topps can put out ridiculously awesome on card autos for this set, but leave Football with stickers? One could only wish, right?
The problem with Topps Chrome compared to Tribute and Triple Threads is that they make so much more of Chrome. So even though Strasburg only signed 500 cards for Tribute, they were not that hard to pull. But even is Strasburg signs 1,000 for Chrome, they will be much harder to pull in Chrome because they make so many boxes.
I like the new Topps Chrome except for a 2 big issues. 1) is that they didn’t even make a Buster Posey Base Rookie Card and 2) there are tons of players in their former teams jersey. Rich Harden is the worst because he never played for the Cubs this year, yet his card has him in a Cubs Jersey and even the card label says Cubs. I could understand if this was Topps Series 1, but this came out after the regular season ended!
Just posted my Chrome Strasburg base auto on Ebay
People could be holding their Strasburg cards in hope of a resurgence in prices!