Product Review: 2008 Topps Finest

Right now Topps has a big goose egg when it comes to great products so far. Chrome was okay, if not only because of the price point, TSC and RC Progression were two of the worst sets ever produced, and Finest aint that much better. I would say I am boycotting Topps products, but really they are giving me nothing to WANT to purchase. Funny enough, Finest was so bad last year, that I didnt think it would be produced again. Then after seen what seemed to be a cool sell sheet, they pull a bait and switch (a common thing these days) and give us utter crap.

The Good

I think the Finest Moment autographs arent bad this year. However, I would always want to pull a base auto of my guy than a subset - with few exceptions. Of course, once you see the base autos, you may want these instead.

Normally, I dont like X-fractors because its so tough to look at the card without getting a headache. However, this year, they arent that bad, only because the photo is normal.

Also, the 1/1 gold Xfractors are usually really nice. The Peterson from last year was one of the best looking cards out there. Of course it went for 1500, so yeah, not getting that one.

The Bad

What is with the color schemes for these cards? Its a bunch of pinks and teals and I could not want these cards any less. Everything looks bad with these awful colors and I hope that next year they maybe decide that colored parallels are not the way to go with these cards.

The base RC autos look ridiculous, although they dont have recessed windows from what I can tell. I usually go to the money vacuum on wednesdays to see people break the new stuff, but no one touched this crap. Therefore, I only have scans and pics to go off of. Seriously though, the off centered autos only work when there is not a visible border underneath the sticker, or the border is around the sticker. Both are not true with these, and it looks like someone slapped on the stickers with no regard for human life. Also, I may just boycott Topps until they jump out of 2004 with these foil stickers. Awful.

Lastly, the price point on this product is baffling. Its understood that you will get two no namers and one better auto per master box, so why are they charging like they give you three better ones? Topps products must be priced by the same guy who picks Beckett's prices out of the pricing hat. Fuck that.

The Ugly

Besides 95% of this set being beyond ugly/stupid, there is one set that stands out above the rest. The NFL equipment patch autos from each RC could be worst looking and most poorly conceived cards in history. Topps went out and manufactured their own little NFL patches to put in these cards with an auto. Instead of making them 1/1s and using the event used crap they have laying around, they made their own and numbered each to 15. Are you fucking kidding me? Not only are these cards ugly, but they now contain manufactured patches. Wouldnt it be funny if they just put the patch over the guy's face? Or maybe put the sticker over the patch like they did in Paradigm. Who green lights this shit?

Overall, if you have to make a decision on a product coming up, either buy a box of Absolute, or 3 boxes of chrome instead of this stuff if you must buy a topps product. To those of you who look back, over the finest cards from the years before the meltdown and cry, I feel your pain. These used to be the best in the hobby, now they are one of the worst.