2013 Topps Magic Football hit the market late in the just completed season, with the throwback product returning for another season in the long line of products released each season. Magic is a popular product thanks to the promise of three autographs per box and a few other nice hits.
The very colorful unopened boxes have 24 packs with eight cards per pack. The base card design feature white bordered cards surrounding a player photo with the team logo, name and position on the bottom. The backs feature biographical information to go with an magical memoranda blurb, My local card store (Triple Cards, Plano TX) says he did have a delivery issue with these boxes and thus has only sold a few packs overall. He did mention how soft any and all football products are for him right now. He is attempting to get around $96 for these boxes. Meanwhile leading on-line retailers are currently between $65-75 per box.
Magic is mostly for those who like to build sets. It’s short on relics and while it’s a big list of autographs, many have complained that many of the players who’ve signed for this product haven’t seen even one snap this season.
There is one mini per box with colored parallels to chase and once again, an insert set designed like the 1948 original. There are three other insert sets, focused on rookies, quarterbacks and running backs.
One-third of the 330 card base set are short prints so we’ve broken it down into a 220-card base and separated the list of short prints In our breakout below.
Base Cards: 137 of 220 with one duplicate (Chase Thomas) which is a little more than 60 percent of the complete set. The reason I mention Chase Thomas is both of these cards appeared in the same pack as back to back cards. Odd.
Short Prints: Troy Aikman, Tom Brady, Tony Gonzalez, Stephen Hill, T.Y. Hilton, Steven Jackson, Travis Kelce, Sean Lee, Santana Moss, Troy Polamalu, Tony Romo
Mini Parallel: Darrius Heyward-Bey, Randall Cobb, Sharrif Floyd, Johnathan Franklin, Mike Gillislee. D.J. Hayden, Mikel Leshoure, Quinton Patton, Adrian Peterson, Eric Reid, Steven Ridley, Tony Romo, Alex Smith, Manti Te’o, Conner Vernon, Patrick Willis
Mini Parallel Green: Jared Allen, Johnathan Cyprien, Kenny Vaccaro, Bobby Wagner, J.J. Watt
Mini Parallel Black: Frank Gore, Nick Mangold
Mini Parallel Orange (#d to 50): Brandon Marshall
1948 Magic Mini: Jimmy Graham, Eddie Lacy
Aerial Attack: San Bradford, Tom Brady, Andy Dalton, Matthew Stafford, Michael Vick. Russell Wilson
Ground and Pound: Maurice Jones-Drew, Darren McFadden, Alfred Morris, Ray Rice
Rookie Enchantment: Dion Jordan, Tyler Eifert, Zach Ertz, Terrance Williams
Autographs: Ray Graham, Johnathan Hankins, Tyrann Mathieu. All of the autographs are stickers.
With the Super Bowl behind us, we can look back at the 2013 football card season and realize it was 
about what we anticipated. While we had a few players make an impact like Eddie Lacy and Giovanni Bernard, at this point all football card collecting fans are waiting for 2014 and hoping that Johnny Football Manziel and Teddy Bridgewater can put the same type of excitement into new releases that Andrew Luck, Russell Wilson and RG III did in 2012.
We did receive exactly what we were supposed to receive from 2013 Topps Magic and while there no big hits nor did we necessarily expect one, at least having three autographs in a box helps make up for the weakness of the 2013 rookie class. I wonder if perhaps a fourth autograph card in this product, maybe from a former player, would have made for an even stronger selling point.
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Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected]
