Thursday, August 09, 2012

Product Review: 2012 Topps Football

I have to say I wasn't planning on buying the 2012 Topps Football box until I saw a more in depth sell sheet and checklist of the product. It is loaded with goodies for everyone. A large base set of 440 is just the tip of the ice berg on these product. I always find it is way better to go Jumbo box on the Topps regular releases than the normal hobby box version. You get way more cards, subsets and hits. This year in the Jumbo box you will get 10 packs with 50 cards in each. The hits are 2 Autographed cards and 1 Relic per box.
If your an insert/subset collector you will have a field day on trying to obtain all of these cards. 18 in total from Hobby and Retail boxes, this doesn't even count for the 23 Autographed or Relic sets within the product. Did I mention this was loaded?
In addition, Topps has continued the Variation line with both Veterans and Rookies being produced. It was made aware that some players will have 2 different variations to find. This also has translated into some of these being Super Short Printed, but it is still early on the breaks so this might change.
Adding to the hunt is the exclusive Golden Ticket. Only 10 of these are out there and your prize could be an RGIII or Andrew Luck Autographed Football or your very own 2013 Topps Football card. Topps started these with the 2012 Bowman and have been a huge hit on the secondary market if found.
Lastly, Topps is going the Baseball route again with adding the Game Time Giveaway cards. These are going to run the same way Baseball was run where as you enter a code for a "Real or Virtual" Prize. Team Tokens and Players I'm sure will be involved with this promotion as well as real cards you can obtain. From the recent info you could receive a Die-cut card or even Autographed cards of certain players. The Website currently is not available until the time-frame of August 13th - 20th, so we might have to wait a bit to find out more info on these card codes.
So again with the info I read through I decided the best bet was the Jumbo Hobby Box. It gives me the best chances of the big hits and provides 28% more cards than the regular hobby box. Going into the break I was looking for some decent player hits for either the Auto's or relic, RGIII or Luck RC and maybe a nice low numbered Parallel card.
Lets see what the outcome was;
Base: 314
Base Rookies: 116
Base Black Parallel: Michael Bush /57
Base Pink Parallel: Casey Hayward /399
Base Camo Parallel: Greg Little /399
Base Gold Parallel: 5 cards /2012
Variation Card(s): 0
Rookie Patch Card: Stephen Hill (2 colour swatch)
Rookie Premier Autographs: Nick Toon /90
QB Immortals Inserts: 9 (2 doubles)
Paramount Pairs: 10 (2 doubles)
Prolific Playmakers: 11
Prolific Playmakers Autograph: Devon Still
QB Rookie Reprint Inserts: 9
1965 Topps Reprint inserts: 10
Gametime Code Giveaways: 11

This was a big box break. 500 cards to work through and see if any Photo variations were in there and then sorting out the inserts, parallels and base. This years design is really nice and I like it is different from the Baseball design. In recent years they have shared the same until now. This is a bonus for me, really stands out and speaks to us as collectors wanting this change. Topps did a great job on the inserts and subsets for this product as well. Even though there are so many to collect, the quality of them were nicely selected.  I really think the Camo and Pink Parallels are going to be a hit among collectors. They are really cool in person and I personally like the Pink cards and what they stand for. For each of these you can collect the base set players. The Autograph of Devon Still was a sticker autograph and not too excited about it, but the Nick Toon was a cool card to pull. It was on-card auto'd and numbered to /90. very nice design and signature to boot. The one down side on this break was my Rookie Patch card of Stephen Hill. It stated on the card it was a Patch but the relic is a 2 color swatch of white and green. In no way is this a patch as stated on the box and info sheet. I'm not sure if all the cards are like this or not but this was a disappoint for me. The Giveaway codes in each pack can be redeemed (once the site is available) for Virtual and Real cards. Full details have not yet been released so hopefully I can redeem a nice real card out of those 11 to add to the value of the box. Overall I would buy this again if looking to complete a set, but not to be looking for a hit.

Gambler Overall Rating: 3.92 out of 5
Cost: 4.5/5
Autographs: 4/5 
Memorabilia: 2.5/5
Design: 5/5
Rookies: 4/5
Fun Aspect: 3.5/5

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