14 Comments

Hard to get excited about a product I can’t afford to buy. If you can-great for you!

If I’m spending that kind of money I don’t want a mostly-rookie/prospect product like the football version is. That’s an awful big risk for players that will mostly be forgotten in a few years. Tribute is worth the lofty price tag because it’s mostly stars & HOF players. I will be avoiding five star baseball unless they follow a different formula than the football version.

i can see it now
drew stubbs and angel pagan auto in every case

I bought the football this year for the first time. Total waste of money. If your going to make that expensive of pack of cards. You need to give at least one fair hit you can at least sell for $75. My best card was 3 color Kyle Rudolph auto RC. Sells online for $30 or less.

The two biggest problems are that most people won’t be able to afford a box like this, and those that can, are more than likely only going to pull cards worth half as much as they paid for the box. I know collecting is not an investment and there are never any guarantees, however why does it always seem like there is almost never an equal value given for what you paid? Just frustrating.

I think a lot more detail needs to be given to the public as to who you can pull from a box. At such a high price i will think the cards are # to no more then 10 or 25 and signed due to that you only get i think 5 cards for $400.00. I will what and see !!.

@Charles Petit – We, collectors, are the answer to your question. Not everyone chases the same 10 guys, so they have to expand who’s in the product. When they do that, people get some not so great players. And if you include high runs (say /199) of AU or Patches from the top stars, then people say they’re over produced. And if you include a lot of HOFers, then people say their older stuff loses value. If prospects are put too much into a product, then people are skeptical because they may pull a dud (when you have as many prospects as baseball has, you have a 99% chance of pulling a dud). They base their MSRP of production costs (licenses, supplies, labor, design, marketing, shipping, etc.) and some extra for profit (and sometimes they get greedy on the profit). But unfortunately, they can’t guarantee what the second market is going to be like. They may think the picture and design look hot, but someone might think it’s the worst design ever. The only way for card companies can give us what we want is by allowing us to make our own product, but that won’t happen.

Given that this is Topps, there is almost no chance of even getting close to $400 of value in a box, even with 4 on-card autographs.

Here are some names that i do not wanna see unless they are SSP’s: Pagan, Stubbs, Rasmus, Lind, Nunez, Delgado, Hanson, Bumgarner, Ogando etc. etc.

Don’t make 10 variations for each “cheap” player and only one variation of Koufax/Aaron/Mays etc.

Please no bait and switch this time: don’t mess this one up topps… you’re running out of names for your products and once you burn that bridge, you might as well not rebuild it.

Topps is only putting out this product because of Darvish knowing full well people will buy this product just for that. Other than that, I believe some of the other posts that this will be a big waste of time and money like their football product this year. I would prefer Panini National Treasure brand base for baseball with all the HOFer’s and Rookies as well as the case hit.

My sentiment here is the same as everyone elses. This is an unnecessary product. Most people won’t be able to afford it, and the ones who can have other choices like Triple Threads and Tribute. Why in the world would you make another product nobody wants? Another product like Lineage on the other hand, which was much more affordable and a hell of a lot of fun to open, would be welcome by everyone..

I’ll be happy to buy the loose cards for a fraction of what the person opened it for paid.
In order to sell a product like this you need to have a serious in demand card to drive it.
Consider 2006 Topps Sterling. You had the Josh Gibson bat plate card, hard signed autos
of HOF’s, and cut signatures of Mantle. Oh, and the packs/boxes were not $400 and the
base set was quite attractive.

So, what exactly are going to be the true hit cards? A true hit is one that will pay back the
cost of the pack/box. The last time I could see a product like this working would be 2001
and only after the all star break and somehow managing to get autographs for both
Pujols and Ichiro secured.

There is a reason why Bowman Chrome is successful. You get the hard signed auto and
the base rookie cards still have potential value. Bowman Sterling was OK Fair cost for
what you got plus you had the bonus pack with a limited card. First year was on card autos
for the base rookies and if it had been a better crop it would have been a classic.

If you look at the market and talk to the collectors and actually listen maybe you will design
a product that will work. I could see Topps 5 star being a reward box sent 1/dealer who
buys $10,000 or more product during the year. Just don’t let the distributors intercept them.

so heres the recap: basically no one thinks this product is worth a damn & Topps doesn’t care.

And; the same issues are being raised by several people who wrote their thoughts on here & Topps doesn’t care.

There seems to be a general concensus that the same players are over-used & Topps doesn’t care.

And I love how everyone is suppose to get excited by “on card autographs” (something that shouldn’t need to be a selling point…..it should be the norm)

thats just a few of the things I read here

and…………Topps doesn’t care :-)

I can’t afford this stuff but I think it will be great for those who can if Topps only uses big names in the product. I mean who wants that auto 1/1 patch of a bench player?

I’ll let other people break the $400 boxes, then I’ll pick up the singles I really want and same
some $$$$