Much like last year’s gridiron giveaway, Topps launched a new 2011 giveaway for their base brand, with the purpose of celebrating the winners of the 45 Super Bowls. Although the giveaway was well conceived, the actual execution was worse than god awful. Not only did the website go up about 3 weeks late, but the lack of substance that was given away compared to its sister giveaways, left a bad taste in the mouths of collectors who bought the packs.

Now that the die cut giveaway cards have started to show up in people’s mailboxes, much of the previous disaster may be forgotten due to how cool the giveaway cards turned out. Designed to be reminiscent of Super Bowl rings, the design is actually much cooler than I expected. Of course, the cards themselves are quite hard to pull in the giveaway, and the prices are definitely reflecting that.

Here are some of the ones already listed:

Tom Brady Gold Super Bowl Ring Die Cut /99

Aaron Rodgers Gold Super Bowl Ring Die Cut /99

Joe Namath Red Super Bowl Ring Die Cut

Granted, these cards are really a small focus of a base product that delivered well above expectations in other areas. To add cool inserts that still give collectors value outside of the actual cards of the pack is a good thing. Joe Namath is said to have on card autographed versions that will eventually be given away, but Im not sure how many of them are going to exist. Too bad those were not as easy to obtain as I originally thought they were going to be.

With how great the baseball die cut diamond cards sold, its great that football got a much cooler version. I hope these are back next year, maybe with more of a focus on existing stars. Who knows, maybe more on card autographs too?