Topps Finest has been a steady product over the past few years, featuring a decent quality of products, both base, autographs and parallels for a solid price point. For at least the past five or six years Topps Finest has offered either two or three mini-boxes of products, each with an autograph and a number of parallels for around $40-50 and a full box for around $100.
2010’s product mirrors 2009’s with two notable exceptions. First, Topps appears to have replaced the usual Superfractor and replaced it with a purple one, numbered 1/1. Second is that they’ve added In the Name Xfractor Rookie Book Cards, which are also 1/1s. These are huge foldout books spelling out the player’s complete name, one letter per card.
Release Date: March 24, 2010
Price Point: Approximately $8/pack, $50 per mini-box, or $89 per box at Blowout.
Product Loadout: 5 cards / pack, 12 packs / box (6 packs / minibox, 2 miniboxes / master box), 8 boxes/case
Hit Ratios: 2 numbered autographed rookie patch cards, 10 parallels and 1 2010 Rookie Card redemption / master box. Each minibox contains 1 numbered autograph rookie patch card and 5 parallels
Product Information:
- 125 card base set (1-125)
- 25 rookies (126-150)
- Rookie Card redemption program (10 cards)
Parallels and Game Used/Autographs:
- Base refractor (#’d to 699)
- Base blue refractor (#’d to 399)
- Base green refractor (#’d to 99
- Base gold refractor (#’d to 50)
- Base red refractor (#’d to 25)
- Base printing plate (1/1)
- Base purple refractor (1/1)
- Rookie variation base card (25 cards)
- Rookie Card Blue Refractor (#’d to 199)
- Rookie Card Gold Refractor (#’d to 50)
- Finest Moments Autographs (20 cards)
- Finest Moments Autographs Red (#’d to 25)
- Finest Moments Autographs Purple Refractor (1/1)
- MLB Rookie Card Logo Patches (25 cards, #’d to 50)
- MLB Rookie Card Logo Patches Purple Refractor (1/1)
- Autographed letter patch rookie cards (20 cards, #’d to 299)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card refractors (#’d to 75)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card blue refractors (#’d to 25)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card gold refractors (#’d to 10)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card red refractors (#’d to 5)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card printing plates (1/1)
- Autographed letter patch rookie card purple refractors (1/1)
- In the Name Xfractor Book Cards (20 cards, 1/1)
I’ve always liked Topps Finest, although usually my LCS overprices the packs ($10 and up is normal there). I like how the base cards look usually as well as the various refractors. The addition of the auto’d letters last year was a great addition, although I’m much less enthused about the book cards this year. We’ve already seen that while these look nice, there’s no good way to display or protect them and to be honest, unless Topps uses each one as a redemption, these are going to be so terribly easy to find it’s not even going to be funny.
If you can find boxes of the product under $90, its worth picking these up, especially for the first few weeks it’s on shelves. The set is also small enough that completing a set isn’t going to be that hard, although with only 60 cards a box, it’s going to take at least two if not three boxes to make a base set, and then quite a few more to get all of the rookies.
While I like the product as a whole and would love to bust a box, there’s really nothing in it that personally I’d collect. There’re base cards and parallels of Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt and Hunter Pence, and rookie cards of Chris Johnson and Tommy Manzella with the variations and parallels. Topps Finest is usually the first 2010 product that calls out to those of us who like ‘chrome’ cards as it’s shiny and has all the parallels you can want. The rookie card checklist looks fairly solid with Tyler Flowers, Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey, and Topps usually pulls out some great names for the redemptions. We’ll see how this looks at the end of this month.
