If there is one company that has made a more dramatic turnaround as of late, its Topps, and I have to credit them for not taking the market opportunity lightly. Since the middle part of the last decade, football cards have been a three plus company race. Now that there are only two officially licensed companies, there was a definite choice to make. Business as usual, or change the game to make a splash. So far, Topps has taken the latter, while Panini has gone backwards completely.

Topps previewed some images earlier for their new Precision set to be released later this year, but I was skeptical at the nature of the cards. Now that there is a little more information, I like it a little bit more. I had a sinking feeling that we could have another Topps Signature Series Basketball on our hands, but this is looking more like a later year version of Inception with veteran hits in it.

The similarities to inception doesn’t stop with the format of the product either, as the rookie patch auto bears a distinct, although nice resemblance to its counterpart. I like the way the game photo blurs in with the background, and I think the full player photo is exactly the way it needs to be on every card of this sort.

Lastly, I love player inscriptions, especially the ones from Five Star last year. Although the inscriptions for this product will be a minor part of the overall run, I love that it is being included. It took me a while to figure out what AJ Green was writing, but it looks like he wrote his full name. With autographs being commonplace in every product, inscriptions make things fresh. The 1/1 inscriptions from Precision look to be something that many of the player collectors can chase.

Its going to be one auto per pack, with auto relics and veteran sigs as well, which means it should look more like Supreme’s configuration than something like Prime. Could also end up being a Bowman Sterling type format which would be a detriment to the product, in my opinion. I hope they made the right choice, because otherwise this may be a one and done product.

Here are some more of the cards: