[gyrodata]

I haven't bought boxes of football cards in several years. I like the stuff I have had in the past with Chrome having incredibly well-kept cards, but very few boxes ended up being worth the price.

Never opened Finest or CR...

Any suggestions for price-to-value, look, hits, etc? Maybe even from another product this year?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks.

[gyrodata]

Thx for the responses!

[jkiddlridnour]

Chrome is your best bet this year.

[tebowcollector15]

id go with contenders

[jkiddlridnour]

id go with contenders

+1

If you can somehow get Chrome for under $100 I'd go with that, otherwise, go with contenders.

[joe callahan13]

For me-

1: Contenders
2: Chrome
3: Crown Royale

The Crown is not an actual recommendation though. I just love the look of them, so I like the set. I usually get pretty bad boxes from it, but at least they look cool. :-)

[Jbittman]

I have been very lucky with my Crown this year. The silhouette cards are very nice patches (99% of the time). Have gotten some sweet primes and also the Blue Parallels are #/5 and usually come 2 per case. (Mine were JJ Watt and Adrian Peterson). Chrome was a let down for me this year and never actually broke Contenders.

[ZSDOne]

I never have really gotten into Chrome and never got a hobby box of it because it is too expensive for only getting one Auto which very likely could turn out to be a $5 auto. Of course, if you hit the right autograph it can be very big money.

Personally, I'd go with 2012 Topps Magic or 2011 Contenders - both look much better and are basically autographs only on the hits. Although Topps Magic hobby isn't really out yet, but the retail is and the cards look great (maybe even better than 2010 Topps Magic) and its 3 autographs per box.

2011 Contenders has a much, much, much better look than this year (sorry, but 2012 Contenders is ugly to the extreme - way too busy and just look at the box breaks to see how atrocious the on card autos with often some of the autograph blocked look this year - i guess the upside is that you are guaranteed 5).

If you want to get some nice looking cards which probably will be close to useless, try Topps Platium or Topps Prime.

If you do insist on a 2012 product to get 2012 rookies autos though, it is worth it to spend the money to get Contenders. Apparently my opinion on how ugly they are is in the minority so they like earlier Contenders sets should have good value. Beware of getting the box that only has autos of undrafted/late round pick practice squad guys or RPS guys who barely see the field and may well have already been cut by the team that drafted them.

[jkiddlridnour]

2011 Contenders has a much, much, much better look than this year (sorry, but 2012 Contenders is ugly to the extreme - way too busy and just look at the box breaks to see how atrocious the on card autos with often some of the autograph blocked look this year - i guess the upside is that you are guaranteed 5).

One problem with this. The rookie class for this year is WAYYYY better than last year

[jplarson]

I always enjoy breaking Topps Finest, but I'm never looking to sell so I don't consider returns on investment.