The NFL season has been over for more than seven weeks but that doesn’t stop the football card product train. 2014 Topps Museum Collection Football arrived recently with master boxes of four packs containing a quad relic, a jumbo relic, one on-card autograph and an autograph relic card among the 20 total cards.
Each mini-box also usually contains one parallel card among the five.
The base cards show an action photo set against a mostly gray background 
with the player’s name, position and team logo on the bottom. The backs have biographical information, seasonal and career stats as well as a snippet of player information.
The master boxes were selling very slowly at my local card store (Triple Cards in Plano TX) at slightly over $210 per box. Leading on-line retailers are currently selling the master boxes in the $155-170 range but are keeping the single mini-boxes at the $50 level. I’m wondering if it’s the price point, the early reviews, the fact that football’s off-season is here or perhaps a combination which made these such slow sellers in the shop.
Whatever the case, Museum is a high-end product and expectations are higher.
Here’s what we pulled from the box sent to us by Topps:
Base Cards: 11 of 100. We do realize this is an autograph and relic hit-driven issue but base cards in a product like that just might end up being the best long-term play for the money, considering it takes a minimum of 10 boxes to make a base set.
Copper Parallel: Mike Evans, Colin Kaepernick
Sapphire Parallel (#d to 99): Tom Brady, Percy Harvin
Canvas Collection ( reproductions of original art showcasing players on a canvas card stock.): Calvin Johnson
Jumbo Relics (#d to 115): Terrence West
Rookie Quad Relics Copper (#d to 50): Austin Seferian-Jenkins
Signature Swatches Dual Relic Autograph (#d to 200): Bishop Sankey (sticker)
Silver Framed Autograph (#d to 25): Matthew Stafford (redemption)
It seems like every box of 2014 football has a relic or autograph of Sankey or Sefarian-Jenkins and some collectors are disappointed to see sticker autographs in this product. The Stafford autograph helps to bring the box value nearer to the current retail value. Of course, collectors hope those redemption cards are filled in a timely fashion and it would be nice if we got to a point where they could be eliminated.
As for off-season issues sometimes struggling, I’ll say that at the most recent card show, I would say about 90 percent of the people who came to my table were interested in new football cards. I had just written about why would Topps keep issuing football cards long after a season had ended, and yet those football cards accounted for 75 percent of my sales volume. All that just goes to show you never know and sometimes what makes sense to you is not what is actually reflected in the secondary market.
If you look at Museum, especially at the lowest on-line price level with four major hits and five or six other better cards, it might be worth a shot, especially if prices continue to fall during the off-season. There are some nice cards popping out of these boxes and along with signed cards from the 2014 rookie class, the autograph checklist includes some all-time greats like Joe Namath, Terry Bradshaw, Bo Jackson, Dan Marino, Emmitt Smith, John Elway and Brett Favre, if you’re lucky.
You can get a look at the ‘most watched’ 2014 Topps Museum Football cards on eBay directly below.
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