Category Archives: 2010 topps

2010 Topps 1/1s Sell High Despite Technology

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Everyone chases the superfractor. Its like the holy grail of low end cards, even though most superfractors look ridiculous with the pattern of the xfractor. 2010 Topps has no superfractors, but they have platinum 1/1 parallels of the base cards, and suprisingly, they have been selling like superfractors. Some of the big names have already been pulled and a few of them have already sold for HUGE prices.

Brett Favre would definitely be one of the 1/1s I would like to pull, but I would never have expected him to sell for this price. The final price landed at more than 95% of his autos, and even some of his more rare cards that have patches AND an auto. Pretty amazing to see that a card with almost no technology on it could sell for this much. Panini should take notice with the millions of parallels they put in every set.

Sam Bradford was recently posted, and though the price is low at the moment, it wont stay there. I would expect this card to end a lot higher than the Favre, mainly because this is Bradford’s first Topps rookie in his pro-jersey.

Hell, even Calvin Johnson sold at a pretty good number for his 1/1 and he is not a player that would carry that kind of price tag on cards like this, ever.  It just goes to show you that Topps knows how to do 1/1s in the right way, and I can only hope that one day they figure out how to do high end cards in a way that even somewhat resembles what they do for low end.

Here are a few others that are selling/sold for interesting prices:

Joe Flacco – ends 9/7

Marcus Easley RC 1/1 (Bills)

Jerod Mayo

David Hawthorne

Darrius Heyward-Bey

Baltimore Ravens Team Card

Pumping Some Iron Into the Gridiron Giveaway

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We all love free shit. Its part of human nature. If you bought any Topps Football over the last few days, you know all about the Gridiron Giveaway, the sister program to its immensely successful baseball counterpart. If you havent heard about it, things are pretty simple. Redemption codes are inserted into most of the Topps Flagship products, both retail and hobby, for collectors to input online at ToppsGridiron.com. When the code is entered, you are assigned a topps card that is now yours, spanning over 50 years of stuff. While most cards are dogs from the late 80s and early 90s, there are some vintage cards definitely worth your time. There are also mentions of memorabilia being given away, and considering this is all an add on to the already awesome set, its pretty nice that we have this chance.

Today on Twitter, Jeff from I Am Joe Collector made an awesome suggestion of adding exclusive rookies and autos to the program, and I sincerely hope that Topps takes heed and gets it done. Going even further than that, this is a wonderful opportunity to get people to buy as much of the product as possible, a la Baseball and the Strasburg 661 card that went for $300+ upon release. Although I would never buy codes to chase the exclusives or the autos, I definitely think there are thousands of collectors who would. Add in Chrome paralllels of the SP Variations for Topps Football and you have a hit like no other. Because Chrome will most likely have their own variations, it gives Topps a unique opportunity to create them. When you could also do autographs and exclusives of the rookies per Jeff’s tweet, this program could be epic. The problem has to stem from the time and money needed to do that, mainly because the Gridiron Giveaway is a ridiculously cheap program to begin with.

Personally, I think the program needs more legs to succeed like it did in baseball, mainly because so many of the baseball collectors go for low end over high end. Football is a much different animal, and you need a lot of extra stuff to bring around collectors like me who could give a shit about base cards from 1988. This is the ticket, no doubt.

SCU BREAKS: 2010 Topps Football Jumbo

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Stopped by Sports Cards Plus here in San Antonio to pick up my pre-ordered box, and I must say that I got pretty lucky with the results of my break. Not the GREATEST players, but still pretty nice to pull a 1/1 or 1/4 depending on how you look at it.

Here are the results…
Autos:
Mike Kafka RPA Auto 6/90
Dexter McCluster
James Davis
Other Hits:
Frank Gore 1/1 Magenta Printing Plate
CJ Spiller Jumbo Jersey 1/20
Havent checked for set completion, but I will.




My Initial Thoughts On 2010 Topps Football

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When I first started to get into football cards, I could never understand why anyone would buy regular Topps when Chrome was SOOOOO much better. Well, Topps took this type of feeling to heart when they started to build on their flagship set, and this year is one of the most ridiculous Topps sets ever to be produced. Like with 2010 Allen and Ginter baseball, Topps incorporated well thought out high end concepts into their most popular product, and I must say, from what I have seen, its a touchdown and a two point conversion.

The first thing about this set that I need to comment on is the Rookie Premiere autos. For the last two years, this site has been at the forefront of battling the fakes that always show up with each of these sets, and this year, I can go on vacation. Topps, in partial response to the criticsm of people like me, has serially numbered ON THE FRONT OF THE CARD, each and every Rookie Premiere auto. The normal blue autos are numbered to 90, and the reds are numbered to 10. This is such an epic win for my interest in these cards, and I will not hesitate to congratulate Topps on a job well done. The hobby thanks you for taking a stand the RIGHT way.
Second, I commented a few days ago that a lot of the top rookies had TERRIBLE pictures for their Topps cards. After searching on eBay today, I saw that some of the rookies included in that group have some VERY cool variation cards. Clausen has a throwing one, Spiller has a catching one, and Bradford and Tebow also have theirs. Im hoping these cards have Chrome variations because they are a great addition to this set. Its really too bad that the close ups werent the variations, because the rarer ones are definitely 10000000% better.

Moving on to some of the other autographs in this product, I love the ones centered around the 75th NFL Draft. Rather than bordering the stickers like Topps loves to do, they have really done a great job hiding them in the design. For a low end set like this product, the autos are tremendous and should get a lot of money on the secondary market. I even have a slight draw to the Gridiron Lineage dual autos, even though the cards are done in typical Topps fashion. The difference between these cards and ones like in Topps Unique last year is that the borders actually work, and none of the players are covered up. The concept of the set features some good combos of players too, so the low numbered autos should get some nice coin if pulled.

I think another amazing addition to this set is the sketch cards that are randomly inserted, as these types of cards have become incredibly popular for good reason. This Montana sketch that showed up on ebay is so cool, that I may chase others if they look as good as this one does. How cool would it be to get a card like this autographed by the player at a show? I think it would make one of the coolest pieces ever.

Whether or not a box break lives up to everything that it can, the singles listed so far definitely live up to the billing and then some. Even venturing outside of the singles, into the addition of the Gridiron Giveaway, even more is put into this product. Like the Million Card giveaway in baseball, Football has a sister project, and the codes are inserted similarly to Topps baseball. Because football has down years, but nothing like 1987-1992 in baseball, the cards are probably going to be a little bit better in terms of what you can get. There wont be big pulls like the incredibly valuable vintage commons available in baseball, but there definitely will be some very nice cards that collectors can look forward to.

Lastly, Ill be heading to my local shop later today to break some of this product, hopefully with great results. I have had a pretty shitty week so far, and I am counting on a worthwhile and fun break to kick the blues away. Maybe ill get lucky, despite the fact that my wax prowess lately has shrunk to that of kitten. My want list is located here on Blowout, if you have any of the cards I need, count me among the buyers. Email me at the contact link up above, or PM me over there.

2010 Topps Football is Live, But Only Some of the Rookies Get the Pro Photo Treatment

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When I saw that 2010 Topps Football had hit retail shelves, I was extremely excited to have the chance to see what the rookie cards looked like before the hobby boxes hit shelves later this week. When I actually sat down and looked at some of the cards that were showing up on eBay, some looked to be everything I didn’t want in a card. Others, on the other hand, were great, but seemed to feature a tactic that Topps rarely uses outside of their sell sheets these days.

First the good. When you look at the top rookies of the class, almost all of them have great pictures and good looking cards. I like the Ryan Mathews’ card because its not the typical running back pose, but its not Mike Williams or Mark Sanchez with the price tag on the football from last year. I also like Toby Gerhart‘s pic, as well as Sam Bradford’s, and surprisingly even Tim Tebow’s card too. Dez Bryant has a nice pic like the others, but outside of these guys, there is some major disappointment in the way the cards were produced.

The main weird thing I have noticed is that for the first time in a LONG time, Topps didn’t update the pictures on the cards from the sell sheet. Usually they use different pictures for the mock up previews than the ones they actually put on the cards, and to see them use the same pics is odd. The other odd thing is that there are a lot of rookie cards where there is some evident paintshopping or airbrushing, and Im not sure what to think about it. I like that there isnt a with a tent in the background like there were for some of the cards last year, but im also noticing some parts of the shots that don’t look real.

When it comes to the bad part of all of this, we have some rookies that got a terrible picture with their first Topps card. Jimmy Clausen’s card looks horrible, same with CJ Spiller’s grimace displayed on his. Ndamukong Suh’s picture is really stupid looking, which sucks, because they had a cool opportunity to get a beastly shot from what I heard.

The reason these pictures are so important, is that the Chrome cards that have dumb pictures are usually worth less from my tracking of the autographs from years past. Because of the odd pictures Topps selected for 2010, its pretty obvious that some of these cards are going to fall under that experience. Either way, its not hard to get a cool shot from the hundreds or thousands that are taken at the rookie premiere, and I would MUCH rather have the stock pose for the position than one that looks like this ridiculous Arrelio
us Benn picture. I know that the brand managers have great power over the pictures that are used, and I don’t understand why they cant save the experiments for the subsets instead of the first rookie card that actually makes a difference in the year.

Funny enough, this is one thing that Panini did a great job on with 2010 Elite, as every picture fit great with the final product.