Before 2011, I would have put the Finest brand on life support. Over the last few years, it has risen back to the top of the football market with high end cards early in the year. It has been a true resurgence, with really nice autograph content and some really killer design work. After seeing the first few cards from the sell sheet and initial eBay auctions, Im not sure this should be considered even close to what it was last year. Its unfortunate, because I think Topps had a real winner before.

Here are some of the initial cards up:

2014 Topps Finest Johnny Manziel Jumbo Patch Auto X Fractor /15

2014 Topps Finest Teddy Bridgewater Jumbo Patch Auto /15

2014 Topps Finest Brandin Cooks Red Refractor Patch Auto

2014 Topps Finest Jordan Mathews Auto Patch Refractor

2014 Topps Finest Alshon Jeffrey Gold Refractor Jumbo Relic Auto

The biggest drawback to the 2014 edition is the change from a lot of on card rookie content to none. Topps obviously had a choice, and I dont think they made the right decision. The first option was to go with college pictures retouched to be NFL, much like Inception and now 2014 Topps Football as well. This would allow enough lead time to get on card autos this early in the season. The second option, which they went with, was to do stickers with RPS shots from the Premiere. It doesnt make Finest as nice, but it avoids ANOTHER set with the same pics from Inception.

Anytime you take stickers and use them in place of a hard signed autograph from previous years, you are going to face some backlash. Look at how Certified and Absolute have done since they swtiched to stickers. The buzz was and has been a complete disaster.

Secondly, I dont like the jumbo relic autograph cards as much this year, as I think the card is way too heavy handed with the complementary design elements in the background of the card. Hell, the border around the swatch window is so unnecessarily thick that it touches the nameplate at the bottom. Terrible decision again.

Although the checklist is nice, and the other cards are relatively on par with previous Finest sets, I cant help but think this stuff will be significantly less successful due to the bad decision making that was made on the main cards for the set.