Product Review: 2008 Topps Chrome Football

I loved topps chrome last year, the design was awesome, the cards were chic, the set was very simple. This year, well, not so much. A lot of stuff has been added, some good, some bad, some nebulous, but all will come out here. I think its interesting that topps has basically fallen on their face this year, and its obvious that things may not be what they once were. However, Topps Chrome has always been a favorite of mine, so lets get this show on the road.

The Good

Unlike the base Topps set, this product actually looks good with the pictures they chose in most cases. I think that the chrome foilboard has the ability to turn a crappy card into a medicore card, and in this case it worked. They went with the black border, which is always a good idea, so that was a plus.

Unlike last year, the MSRP dropped on this year's product to around Bowman Chrome prices. Instead of being 90+ for box with one auto and two refractors, you now get the auto plus a number of refractors for around 50-60. That is a HUGEMUNGOUS upgrade, as Bowman Chrome was always popular due to the awesome price point. There is no reason to think that anyone would ever pay the 90 bucks hapily, if not only because the A and B list autos were one per case and usually sucked. Good job on that.

Lastly, im going to file the addition of more colored refractors under good, because Topps chrome was WAY too simple last year. I hate parallels more than most people, but the chrome products are the one exception due to lack of a jersey subset and lack of many inserts. They added the copper and red refractors to the set, and they numbered them WAY differently than I expected. Copper is /425 and Red is /25 instead of /50 and /5. The box toppers are still the same with the Superfractor autos /10. Too bad those arent inserted into the product.

The Bad

This year Topps took it upon itself to add a patch auto subset to the RC pool. The cards contain the standard fucking gross Topps sticker, but this time you get a football sized patch with it. Of course these are really of little fucking consequence as they are all event used. Still, they are numbered /25 and people are going to go shitballs over them. They look a little better than I expected, but I can think of 25,000,000 other ways to spice up this set without going event used. Either way, this wont really factor into much because of the low numbering, but its still annoying to me.

The other thing that is bad is why they couldn’t use different pictures than the base Topps set? How hard would that be? The existence of chrome only invalidates the base set more, and that is why I never buy that product until it drops to 30 bucks per jumbo box. Chrome is cooler, and despite what an uniformed Chris Harris says, it is someone that EVERYONE can appreciate.

The Ugly

I have endlessly complained as to how awful the Topps stickers are, so Ill just say this:

Topps, you are proving to us that you are no longer relevant in the industry over and over again. You may have signed a bunch of baseball guys, but that is worthless unless you make a good product. Its time to step the fuck up and get some clear stickers. If you want to advertise your ceritifcation, use the back of the card. That is what it is there for.

Overall, this set falls somewhere in between the first and second world of collecting, and you can tell that Topps is trying to appeal to both with the patch auto additions and the colored refractor additions. We also know that there will be some kind of gimmick, so ill keep you posted. In the mean time, don’t get caught up in the shitstorm, keep your head above it and wait for Absolute in two weeks. ITS GOING TO FUCKING ROCK!