One Of My Favorite Days of the Year: Topps Chrome Preview Day!

Saw the Chrome sell sheet on FCB, and I am both ecstatic and kind of sad at the same time. I absolutely love Topps Chrome and I dont think this year will be any different from the looks of things. However, they have added in Bowman Chrome cards and some weird subsets for the second year in a row, and I have a feeling I may get pretty annoyed with this.

First off, the cards look great, as did the base cards from flagship Topps. The autograph cards are still stickers as expected, but they arent done horribly. They still feature borders that call your attention to the fact that stickers are on the cards, but with Topps Chrome, you cant see them any other way. Plus, the boxes cost around 50 bucks a piece, so they get a pass in my book.

Secondly, they are adding in red zone rookie autographs for this product as well, and I am wondering if only part of the checklist will be in base Topps and others will be in Chrome. I would expect we will have to wait for Bradford and Tebow to be in chrome, if that were the case. Who knows, maybe its just a value added type of thing. In that case, the more on card sigs, the merrier. I just hope that the red zone cards are numbered similarly to the rookie premiere autos, as it would be terrible and tiring to have to redo the fake auto fiasco all over again.

Also, I really like the Bowman Chrome cards this year, and it sucks that they wont get their own set. I would much rather have Bow Chro than Finest any day of the week. Hell, take Platinum too, I dont care. Low end Topps = win.

On the bad side of things, the dual autos look kind of stupid, and the patch refractor autos /25 are pretty bad for the third year in a row. Did that patch really need a border on it? No, it just covers up more of the player. Plus, who needs the event used stuff in a product like this anyways? Its like 2008 Topps Stadium Club all over again.

I am eager to see the Topps reprint autos that they mention without pictures, because those could be some of the coolest cards ever. When this was done in both baseball and football a few years ago, people went nuts over them, but a lot of it had to do with hard signed signatures. If they arent hard signed, I will probably pass. Who knows, they could be cool.

Im not saying I will buy as much of this stuff as I did last year, but its going to be close. I love the 2010 Topps design and that should transfer into some awesome stuff from the rookies. The final product will be eagerly awaited here on my end.