For 2015 Topps has taken their flagship product, Series Two Baseball Cards, in what appears to be a different direction from previous years when it comes to design, electing to go with bold graphics and plenty of color. We like that direction. This also makes it way to inserts and base auto hits. Another change is the expansion of the base card set from 330 to 350 base cards. Manufactured relics return and look great as do Coin & Stamp cards and Photo Variations. With great photo selection and cropping this year all of this adds up to one of the better Series on sets to come along in a while.
For the purposes of this review, we classify Series 1 as trading cards. There are a wide variety of configurations in both retail and hobby. We opened a box hobby box which contained 36 – 10 card packs with a promise of 1 autograph or 1 relic card per box.
Here are some of the cards we pulled.
I’ve always enjoyed the nostalgia of Topps Archives Baseball. Yes, this sort of thing is done with Heritage and other reprint inserts but Archives allows for seamless interchangeability between players photos and card styling from different decades done in combinations you don’t see in other products.
2015 Topps Archives Baseball Cards concentrates on previous design years of 1957, 1976 and 1983 with a little bit of 1990 thrown in as an insert. It still provides a reasonable challenge for set builders, while also servicing hit seekers looking for fan favorite pulls that can’t be found anywhere else.
For collectors who were around during the original releases of these cards, this redo will feel familiar while, at the same time, seem current and should bring back feelings of when you first opened these packs. Unlike the popular Heritage line, collectors won’t have to wait 50 years to see their favorite releases get the updated treatment.
This year Will Ferrell’s stadium hop playing all positions is featured along with buyback stamped and autographed cards.
Archives Baseball falls under our classification of trading cards. Hobby Boxes contain 24 – 8 card packs with 2 on - card autographs per Hobby Box.
Here are some of the cards we pulled from our hobby box.
For the modern card collector, the foundation of what started the hobby, the base card, can often times be overlooked. All one has to do is watch box or even case breaks and the breaker rushes through the cards to get to the hits, only to sort the base cards later, perhaps even give the option to skip them all together. The base cards are simply ignored.
With 2015 Topps Stadium Club Baseball it is impossible to ignore the base cards. They are stunning. Largely due to the photography as that is more prevalent than with any other card, these full bleed cards with little enhancement pop as you look at them. Kind of like the best type of cooking, with the photo as the star there is little need for embellishment.
But you wont get short changed on the hits either. Fully realized on-card autographs and the return of Lone Star Autographs provide plenty for hit seekers. All of this will make set builders very happy as well as those looking to pull a great auto.
Stadium Club falls under our premium cards category with each master box containing18 packs with 8 cards per pack and two on-card autograph card per box.
Here are some of the cards we found in our box.
This year’s edition of Tier One Baseball from Topps feels very familiar, and not just because we pulled the same EXACT main hit as we did last year. Boxes generally follow the pattern of relic, rookie auto, box hit. As with years past, if you look at our post “How we review and classify cards,” by definition, collectors who go for an Ultra Premium box of cards should understand “these are "High Risk, High Reward" cards” and “not every box will be a winner.” While it would seem about 1 in every 6 boxes contains a really nice hit, and one rather large hit lands once in every 12 boxes, which is a good ratio for ultra premium cards, it’s the in between boxes that will make collectors a little hesitant. With numbering like #/399 for single swatch relics of players that can be found in practically every other Topps release this year and previously, and some box hit player autographs that are better suited for fan favorites found in Topps Archives, the content of 2015 Topps Tier One rides the line between offering a product priced at a point the allows those normally out of the price range of an Ultra Premium product to get in and playing the losing side of “High Risk, High Reward.”
Each box of Tier One Baseball contains 3 cards, two autographs and one relic card. Certain boxes will contain an extra relic hit for a total of 4 cards.
Here are the cards we found in our box.
Topps Museum Collection Baseball cards are now a standard collector favorite. 2015 Topps Museum Collection Baseball doesn’t disappoint, providing sharp design and a nice variety of great looking hits, excellent photo selection all around and a cohesive set that does justice to it’s Museum moniker.
Museum Collection fits nicely into our Premium Cards category. Each Master Box contains 4 mini-boxes with 5 cards per mini. Each Master Box will contain 1 on-card autograph, 1 autograph relic, 1 quad relic, and 1 jumbo relic.
Here are the cards we pulled from our box.
Collectors should be familiar with Topps Supreme Football by now. This 1 pack - 4 card - 1 hit wonder provides a nice middle road for collectors looking to take a chance on pulling a big hit but wanting a price point that is closer to a hobby box of standard cards. 2014 Topps Supreme delivers this with good design but the trade off is sticker autos for veteran players, but the rookie class is on-card.
2014 Topps Supreme Football fits into our Premium Cards category. This Hobby Exclusive comes with 1 pack per box, 4 cards per pack, with 1 autographed card.
Here are the cards we pulled from our box.
Thanks to social media and eBay listings I quickly found out about the damage to 2015 Topps Tribute Baseball. The overwhelming majority of autographs were smudged, streaky or broken straight out of the packs. Rumblings about the entire release having issues flooded Twitter timelines and card forums. Speculations as to what happened and how Topps was going to handle it ran rampant. In public I remained silent. I had ideas of what had happened and how Topps might respond. But it was clear this was going to be a no win situation for Topps.
EVERY card company has had issues in the past and the usual response is “any damaged cards will be replaced,” a fix it as we go approach. But today Topps did the most bold thing any company can do which is also the right thing. Topps has issued a complete recall of 2015 Topps Tribute Baseball.
Any collector that still has a sealed box should return it to the point of purchase by March 27, 2015 and they will receive a full refund. If you bought your box from an online retailer I would contact them about methods to return boxes.
For those of you that opened boxes or are being shipped cards from box breaks or bought early singles on the secondary, if you have a damaged autograph card that is not still sealed in a pack, you have the option to contact Topps Customer Service and arrange for an exchange of that card before June 30, 2015. Exchanges will be made for another card of equal or greater value, PLUS a bonus autograph or relic. Values for exchange will be determined by Topps at their discretion.
Collectors are angry, and rightly so. No one wants to open a high end product and find any damage. Finding damage to almost every hit in a box probably wasn’t even a thought for any collector or even Topps. So clearly something went wrong. From Topps' statement the damage is due to UV contamination on the card. As a collector with a lot of experience autographs I can tell you this makes perfect sense.
As an avid collector of autographs I know the quality of autographs can vary wildly with surface types, (straight paper, magazine, Glossy card finish, chrome/mirror card finish, photographic matte & glossy paper, straight baseball leather, pitted football leather, synthetic leather, etc.) type of pen (ball point, Sharpie, Staedtler, paint pen, etc) speed and strength of the player’s signature and believe it or not WEATHER (extremes of cold, sun, humidity, etc.)
For example, if you want a player’s autograph on a baseball, if you get them to sign with a Sharpie chances are that auto will become a faded blur over time, if it’s cheap baseball, sometimes within months. Sign a vintage card with ball point pen and the ink will disappear over time leaving just the indentation of the signature. Hang a signed photo in a frame without UV protection in a well lit room and over time both the autograph and the photo will degrade.
