Many years ago during one of Topps’ visits to Beckett I was chatting with one of their executives and he stressed more than once that Topps’ goal is create brand loyalty. While in today’s collecting world that is not always possible, for the most part, Topps has done an excellent job of maintaining continuity. While I, personally, would love to see Stadium Club return (hint, hint) most of their baseball issues can be traced in a logical progression each year. We know Topps Heritage is going to feature the 1965 design in 2014 and the 1966 design in 2015. We also know Topps will experiment with some of their issues such as the recently released Five Star to see if there is a staying power to a new concept.
This mantra of creating a brand tradition has also become part o
f the trend to sell Topps.com exclusive products. For the past few years in baseball they have issued a Mini box to coincide with the National Convention and a Heritage “high” numbers boxed set. In addition on the football side they’ve done a Turkey Red set the past two years. The concept is remarkably simple. Sell an 11 card per box concept with one guaranteed autograph for $19.99 and proudly advertises no autograph redemptions.
2013 Topps Turkey Red Football has nine rookie cards, a parallel mini card and the autograph card. The cards themselves have multi-colored borders with the player’s photo in the middle. The player’s name and team name are on the bottom.
We recently opened two boxes of this rookie-only product, which is fighti
ng the stigma of no rookie superstar quarterbacks.
Here’s what we pulled:
Base Cards: 18 of 100 (all different) We did not get any pose variations. Our best rookie base cards were probably Cordarrelle Patterson and Montee Ball
Mini Parallels: Matt Barkley, Zach Ertz
Autographs (stickers): Nico Johnson, Kayvon Webster
Johnson hasn’t seen the field much but has an Alabama pedigree while Webster was a pretty solid corner for the Broncos before getting hurt earlier this month.
A total of 70 players are reported to have signed autographs for this product and obviously some of those are going to be busts. However, it is nice to open a no-nonsense issue where you know what you are going to get in advance. For long term value, it’s too soon to tell.
Click here to see what’s been listed on eBay.
Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected]
