The golden rule of Topps is that you don’t buy their products that cost more than 100 bucks a box. That’s bottom line, and I RARELY break that rule. The new Topps Prime cards fall just within reason, and to tell you all the truth, they don’t look that horrible. It looks like Topps may have finally pulled their designer’s heads out of their asses when creating new products, and this could be something that does for them what Topps Platinum TRIED to do last year.

First off, the Booklet cards are back, and so far they are in just about every Topps product this year. I hate booklet cards, especially the ones from Triple Threads, and these actually look like what Triple Threads should be trying to do. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these booklet cards actually look okay. Big player pictures, no ridiculous die cut windows, just simple layout with the right components. The one problem is that these cards STILL feature stickers that are built into the design, and to that I call attention to what the cards would look like if Topps actually got off their asses and got them hard signed. Hell, even if these were just clear stickers on that blue background, the cards would be THAT much better. I really like that these cards seem to feature many different parts of the player’s uniform, though the event used football swatches are still lame as all fuck.

Secondly, the base card design makes me revel in its simplicity. I freaking love it. Hopefully all the cards look like this, and they don’t fuck it up with all sorts of riff raff that Topps usually utilizes. Im guessing the rookie autos will just be off shoots of these cards, which makes me happy, but they easily could turn out like the abomniations from 2008 Stadium Club. Hopefully they do these like Topps Chrome and not like anything else. HEAR ME TOPPS? Don’t screw this one up.

Lastly, the relic cards remind me of an old school movie reel, and I don’t really like the way they look. That will be a minimal part of this set, so im not really that concerned.

Overall, this looks pretty good, I am actually beyond surprised that it turned out like this. When I originally heard they were trying to pull this off a few months ago, all I could think about was “Uh oh, here comes Topps (not) Unique version 2.0.”