When it comes to mid-year releases, Topps Platinum has become a collector favorite for cards that deliver those higher end autos that you usually cant find until mid December. Although 2009 was a complete design disaster in my eyes, 2010 was a vast improvement, especially in the box hit patch autos, the two per box rookie autos, and the low numbered jumbo patch autos. The design was a winner last year, and this year, it looks to be very similar to the cards from Bowman Platinum in baseball, which has been very successful thus far.
Unique to Platinum this year will be the on card rookie autos, an element that I will never under sell, especially in a product like this one. On card autos bring these types of products to a completely different level, and I am VERY happy to see Topps continually commit to a new direction with their signatures. Frankly, it makes the competition look both lazy and lacking of all effort in their autograph cards for the year.
To start, I love the way the Patch Autos look. It’s a great, great design, to say the least. Even though these will be stickers, it wont matter much as they look to be a very well designed example on the chrome stock. I also like the on card refractor auto design, as the borders look like they are taken off a chromed out muscle car, and the auto could not be featured in a better way. The jumbo non-auto patches look pretty good as well, but without an auto, I wont buy them.
As for the jumbo patch autos, they look terrible, as again Topps fails to understand that the player is much more important to a lot of collectors than the enormous patch. I would much rather have a smaller patch and a better looking card, than one that looks like Mark Ingram is peaking out from being squashed by a block of falling jersey. The duals are done in a similar fashion as last year, and I think this is one type of card that Topps really needs to work on. Both of these elements will be a TINY part of the whole checklist, so I am not that worried.
All in all, this product looks to be a long kickoff return for a TD to start the second half of the card season.
Here are the photos, the rookies will be in NFL uniforms when these are done:
Just because you are desperate for something decent does not make this a good product. The same rookie auto jumbo patch stuff they will crank out all year because they don’t know how to do anything else.
Wow that Ingram looks awful. If that was in front of me I would have no idea that is even him. I like to be able to make out who it is without reading the print.
I actually think this is a complete upgrade from 2010. The jumbo is the only realy fail in the group. This will be good with the on card stuff.
I like it okay, but please tell me that this spells doom for sterling football. How could it offer anything different than this?
Yeah Sterling is the biggest waste of product during the whole year.