Many of our readers are familiar with Triple Threads as a higher end product which really appeals to today’s more aggressive collectors as fewer people look to complete these sets and more accept the risks inherent of opening packs where the cost per card can be up to $15 per.
Such a release is the 2014 Topps Triple Threads Baseball issue. All-time greats such as Cal Ripken Jr., Marino Rivera and Hank Aaron mix with today’s 
stars such as Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout and Bryce Harper to give the modern collector/investor some major autographs to chase. There are also many relic cards issued to very low numbers which are always heavily sought after including: bat knobs and various All-Star special relics. All of these cards tend to bring very strong money in the secondary market where many of these cards end up immediately after release.
To some collectors, the saddest part is the really pretty designs and other medium hits are really tame in comparison to the big hits.
The base card design this year features the player photo surrounded by an ornate gray design. The player’s name and team is on the bottom. Autographs are on stickers.
Each of our packs had two parallel cards and you can tell how these are set up as the bottom of the card has a different color. Meanwhile the backs have biographical information, a brief blurb and career statistics.
Each master box contains two mini-boxes of seven cards each. Each mini-box has both an autograph relic card as well as another relic card. One of the two 
relic cards is a triple relic (or more) card.
When I dropped into my local card store (Triple Cards, Plano TX) the owner mentioned he sold out of his allotment at tad less than $220 for the master-box. He said while no big hits came out of his boxes, most of this clientele seemed to enjoy opening the product. Meanwhile leading on-line retailers are currently between $160-165 per master box.
Here’s what we pulled from our master box:
Base Cards: Joe DiMaggio, Ken Griffey Jr., Rickey Henderson; Felix Hernandez; Derek Jeter; Andrew McCutchen
Amethyst Parallel (#d to 325): Carlos Gonzalez, Ozzie Smith
Emerald (#d to 250): Ryan Braun
Onyx (#d to 50): Hyun-Jin Ryu
Unity Relics (#d to 36): Nolan Arenado
Threads Relics Gold (#d to 9): Todd Frazier (The word Soprano is spelled out because Frazier uses the theme to the Sopranos as his walk-up song)
B
lack Parallel (#d to 35): Christian Yelich. This is a parallel of the base card which contains both an autograph and several jersey relic pieces
Unity Relics Autographs (#d to 99): Albert Belle
No huge hits for us, unfortunately. We actually did best with our base cards with some former, current and future Hall of Famers but Triple Threads is a hit-based product. We will say it’s always interesting to see what Topps cooks up with the die-cut messages on its relic cards.
The cantankerous Belle is a curious choice for an autograph subject and the card we pulled is on the secondary market for $5-10. The Yelich auto is around $10-15 but he’s got a bright future so that one that might be a keeper.
At $14-15 per card, this is a major roll of the dice especially with all those sticker autos, but if you can eventually snare a box for under $10 per card, it might be worth a shot and hope you have a little better luck than we did. You can see 2014 Topps Triple Threads singles, boxes, box break spots and cases on eBay here.
2014 Topps Triple Threads football is due for release December 17.
