Earlier this year, Topps offered the Game Time Giveaway, a promotion based in their flagship product, designed to create a fantasy football style competition among collectors. With every code redeemed, collectors would either receive a token for playing the game, or a card that would be available for delivery. These cards have recently started to ship and arrive, and after seeing them in person, this giveaway might be a lot cooler than originally expected.

Here are some of the ones that have started to show up on eBay:

2012 Topps Game Time Robert Griffin III Gold /99

2012 Topps Game Time Andrew Luck Base RC

2012 Topps Game Time Adrian Peterson

2012 Topps Game Time Emmitt Smith Gold /99

The cards themselves are on a thick, chrome-like stock, diecut to look like a football with tabs. The design is pretty simple and awesome looking, and I believe that its worthy of some of the prices that collectors are shelling out for the rookies available in the set. There are also parallels numbered to 99 and 10, which have been garnering a few extra dollars.

If we travel back to last year, Topps tried a similar, Super Bowl themed giveaway with last year’s base set, which included similar die cut cards of all the Super Bowl MVPs. They also featured hard signed Joe Namath signed cards, as he was the spokesperson for the program. The cards sold well too, but the giveaway was much more focused on generating ways to get collectors free swag. This year, the giveaway was not as robust, and was focused more on the game portion. Topps’ inclusion of the rookie class this year is something that made the codes much more desirable, but its tough to compete with any cards aligned with Super Bowl wins. I mean, check out this 1/1 Jerry Rice jeweled card, and how much it sold for. For a free code offered in a pack, it is a windfall of cash. The only problem last year was the major issues with the giveaway site, which soured some of the collectors who were waiting to enter the cards. Although there was a delay in getting the site up this year, it wasnt the same level of disappointment.

To be honest, anytime added value like this is added to a product, I am not going to complain. Its free fun, and gives a reason to buy more packs, as the codes themselves still have value about 1.50 a piece. Lots of the unused cards still sell VERY well. Obviously, now that new products have come out, these arent as valuable any longer, but at the time of release, they were selling for a considerable amount of money per piece. This meant that with every jumbo pack, collectors were automatically generating value back on their purchase, should they decide to sell the codes. Its a great marketing ploy.

That’s not the biggest part of this, as the tokens do serve a purpose. Based on the teams you unlock on their site, you can pick five to play the field each week. If your five teams generate more points than any other user, you can win autographed versions of the rookies in the set. I was lucky enough to win 9th place one week, and secure a Doug Martin autographed card. An awesome feat for no money. I can only imagine what will happen when the Luck and Griffin are in hand and posted on eBay, as well as the full sized memorabilia you can win if you carry the most points through the whole year.

The only part that kind of sucks, is that that the diecut cards dont fit in the standard magnetic cases, as the edges are a HAIR too big. They fit in normal top loaders, but its annoying to not be able to protect them the way I want. I was lucky enough to unlock Adrian Peterson (YES!) and Michael Vick back when Topps was first released, and now that I have them in hand, they have to stay in the holders they came in. At least the cards look awesome.

Ill update as soon as I get the Doug Martin in hand, but I have to give kudos to Topps for following through in this way.