If there is one target that I have had no mercy for over the years, its Triple Threads. In fact, my hatred is so well documented, that I frequently get updates from the readers of this site with the many fails this set produces on a regular basis. Although I know that Topps is going to continue to run this crapfest out into the market each year, it still makes me sad each time I see the sell sheet pop up in my inbox. I just hate everything about it, and one day, hopefully soon, more people will start to see what I mean.

Its interesting though. Triple Threads is a product that brings about a very unusual situation with collectors, mainly because you rarely get a mum response when asking for opinions. People either love it unconditionally, or hate it mercilessly, and both groups always take the chance to shout their feelings from the mountain tops of the boards. The thing is, I think this product is the first and only product where collectors love it or hate it because of the way jersey relics are positioned in the general outlay of the set’s theme. The people who buy box after box of this junk seem to latch on to the amount of “relics” present on each card, and stand by the appeal of card so packed with relics that the player picture is reduced to the size of the set logo. The people, like me, who hate it, cant seem to support a set that focuses more on packing said swatches onto a card, rather than making it look good in the process. To us, its more about visual appeal, and less about drooling over 84 windows cramped into a tiny space.

Triple Threads also has a fight when it comes to the stickers that Topps refuses to let go of, especially in high end products like this one. Topps claims that amount of backstock prevents them from moving to hard signed cards, but last time I checked, they still go out of their way to obtain as many sticker sheets as they can. This year’s set may feature some hard signed cards of the “rising stars,” but most of the main box hits still feature ugly foil stickers for no reason. Not only that, the product’s design still draws your eye directly to the stickers themselves, because Topps takes extra steps to force your initial glance right to that spot. That is completely stupid to me, as stickers were created solely to hide the fact that the cards werent hard signed.

Yet, as always, collectors line up to pay ridiculous amounts for boxes that contain little to no redeeming value, especially when you figure that one of the only 2 hits will be a single color jersey card, and the other will most likely be a scrub auto. Its exceedingly rare that a product with so few hits costs as much as a box of TTT does, even more so when one of those hits is not an auto. Topps has tried to make up for the lack of box content with an overabundance of 1/1s and parallels, but Triple Threads has morphed into a product where the parallels’ numbering doesn’t factor into value. Because of sheer numbers, cards numbered lower don’t always carry more value with them, and that should tell you a lot about what comes in each box.

Lastly, I have never grasped why people buy a product centered around spelling out stuff in die cut windows. Each year, Topps takes it a few steps further, trying to get more ambitious in the words and sentences they spell out. More often than not, the cards turn into some of the worst looking eyesores in the history of cards, only exacerbated by ones that have to employ 1-2 extra cards in the form of a booklet. Yes, this is the only set that has ever been created that needed extra cards attached to the standard ones, just so they can finish a sentence in jersey swatches. Just completely and utterly lame.

In the end, there is a lot of potential in this product, but because the design and concepts are never updated with each new set, that potential is squandered. Topps has built enough of a fan base for this set, that even slightly over delivering would create a buying frenzy. As the haterade is continually refilled by people like me, I will not hesitate to rip into Triple Threads every time Topps doesn’t change it. However, if they were to improve it the way that they have improved so many of their other sets, I may have to change my tune. Right now, after seeing the overwhelmingly terrible examples from this year’s set, I don’t think ill be learning a new song any time soon.