Over the last few years, I have become a fan of Museum Collection baseball. Well, at least PARTS of Museum Collection. Some of the parts of it I could do without, but others are some of my favorite cards any company makes. This year’s baseball product mirrors the Football version almost to the letter, and that isnt necessarily a bad thing. Some of the cards are very successful, where others have the same issues it’s sister product did. Its a high end chase for some very nice cards, and Im interested to see what is in store as more of the product is opened.

Here are some of the bigger cards already up so far:

2016 Topps Museum Collection Mike Trout Auto /25

2016 Topps Museum Collection Jose Abreu Framed Auto /10

2016 Topps Museum Collection Corey Seager RC Auto

2016 Topps Museum Collection Jeff Bagwell / Craig Biggio Dual Auto

The focus of Museum during the last few seasons has been a combination of the framed autographs and other high end on card autographs, and 2016 is no different. Being that the framed cards are some of my favorites to collect, I was interested to see if they remained the same from Football. They look good as usual, although Im not a fan of the wood parallel that Baseball has used for the last few years.

I also really like the on card autograph content outside of the framed cards, especially the horizontally oriented ones. I think they really improved this over the stickers in football, and the parallels look even better with sepia toned photos and silver signatures.

Although the dual relic autos dont look that gross, the one part of Museum that I literally despise is the triple relics that add one more 1×1 square to the dual look. The L shaped approach of the configuration intrudes on the player, and makes the design so packed that everything looks strained. There are also jumbo relics where the player photo is about the same size as the product logo, one of my biggest pet peeves. On a high end product like this, silhouetting a larger player picture over the patch would be so much better. I hate when the player is a secondary focus to the relic, especially when the product logo has as much prominence. Its completely wonky.

For one of the first high end products of the year, Museum fills a gap that has been present since the release of Topps Series 1. I think that by the time products like The Mint roll around, the only cards of note from this will be the chase content and framed cards, so get your cards up if you are a seller. Sticker auto relics just arent special anymore, and I think that products like this should have a focus to maintain a 100% hard signed approach. As a whole the stuff is right on par with previous years, and Ill definitely be looking to chase down some singles of the guys I collect.