When you look at the general composition of the buyback market, two words come to mind, both positive and negative. The first work is “scam,” as there are so many fake buybacks out there that many of them you see arent real. Scammers use the buybacks, especially those out of 2006 Bowman Originals baseball, as a way to pawn off their wares on unsuspecting people. The second word is “awesome,” as the real ones usually take either iconic or cool unsigned examples, and turn them into a sweet piece for any player or team collection.

Since the buyback was first inserted into sets, Upper Deck has used it as a great way to add some great content to their sets. For their 20th Anniversary, they had Ken Griffey Jr sign a few of his 1989 Upper Deck #1 with a “twenty years” inscription, that currently sits a top many Griffey collectors want lists. They also did it in a recent basketball release with some re-purchased Michael Jordan RCs that they had autographed. They had them signed by Jordan, and they are also some of the most sought after cards in recent basketball memory. In football, it rarely happens, with the exception of one ridiculously awesome set. Back in 2003 and 2004, Ultimate Collection football included an extensive buyback subset inserted into packs, and now that I have seen the results, I think we definitely need another version of it. Now that Upper Deck is without an NFL license, it may not be possible, but I am not familiar with how this works in terms of do’s and dont’s.

Here are some of the cards that are currently up on eBay:

Troy Aikman Ultimate Buyback Auto

Peyton Manning Ultimate Buyback Auto

Derrick Mason Ultimate Buyback Auto

John Elway Ultimate Buyback Auto

Jeff Garcia Ultimate Buyback Auto

Rod Gardner Ultimate Buyback Auto

Considering how many iconic cards Topps has released over the last few years, I would absolutely love to see a new Topps buyback set, this time with more focus on certificates of auth to avoid a lot of what has plagued their previous buyback sets in the past. How cool would it be to have a hard signed version of any of the Topps base cards from the top stars of the league? Topps’ base sets always look amazing, and I know I would love to purchase the examples from my favorite players. When you add in that almost 100% of Topps’ veteran autos have been on stickers for the last five years, this could get some new blood in the water and drive a secondary market that football has lost recently.

Panini already offers signed base cards in most of their sets, and though they are on stickers, they still exist. Plus, with foil being the stock of choice for many of the Panini sets, we know the results wouldnt be as cool. However, if they wanted to get some of the full game photo base cards from Threads signed without the foil, I would still be on board 100%.

The bottom line is that this needs to be done RIGHT, and that confidence is not something I would have right now. In fact, the buybacks done by UD over the last few years may be the last of the right type we may ever see again.