Topps Platinum has started to pop up on eBay and though some of the cards remind us of chrome-y like goodness in a good way, others remind us of horribly laid out cards with oddly placed pictures, patches and stickers. Jeff from New Card Smell has posted his thoughts if you want a more positive take on things. My commentary is not going to be as favorable.
Im sure most of you are familiar with Bowman Chrome’s disastrous rookie auto jersey cards from this year
. You know the ones where the jersey window obscurred a good part of the player picture? Yeah, I get a similar vibe off these cards, mainly because they are using the player picture in such a weird way.
Instead of building the card around a good and well thought out space for the player picture, they decided to shove it behind three photoshop layers of sticker spaces and chrome backgrounds. When you try something like that, your competition with SPA ends in a loss.
Now, you may say that this product is not meant to compete with SPA, but its tough to ignore when the price point and the box set up is pretty much the same. The difference is that SPA is all on card, and one of the favorite sons of the hobby, while this is a rehashed chrome bastard to get rid of stickers. I dont mind the regular base cards all that much, they could pass for chrome if they came out around the same cards. However, when you start getting up into the autos and especially the auto patches, things get awfully ugly.
We will see how more of the box breaks shake up, but so far, this stuff looks to be not worth your time.