Topps Football Box Break 2014

By now, if you pay any attention the inner workings of the hobby, you are probably aware that Panini has signed an exclusive contract with NFL Players Inc., but there are still several options available to card companies which will transpire over the next couple of years and we will see how football card collecting will evolve. For now we have two years of Topps continuing to produce football cards as they have done for six decades.

The 2014 Topps football card release is now in stores and similar to baseball is going to be bought by many collectors for whom it is a late summer tradition. The design is again similar to the company’s flagship baseball product with 36 10-card packs per box. Each box is guaranteed one autograph or relic card with at least one rookie card in each pack. That is an important difference between baseball and football as baseball definitely has a greater emphasis on mixing yesterday and today while the football release doesn’t have as many retired player elements. However, Topps does once again highlight some of its past designs with some of the inserts such as the 1963 minis.

Topps is also gaining some media attention for including fantasy football information included with this year’s issue.

These boxes are slow but steady sellers at my local card store (Triple Cards, Plano TX) at $64.25 per box while leading on-line retailers are currently between $50-55 per box.

Base Cards: I counted 297 card with no duplicates out of the 440 base cards. You do need two hobby boxes to finish a set. I do not believe there were any photo variations in this box.

Gold Parallels (#d to 2014): Ed Dickson, Stephen Hill, Reggie Wayne

Camo Parallel (#d to 399): Robert Quinn

Black Parallell (#d to 59): Jadevon Clowney

Power Player Parallels: Tom Brady, Reggie Bush, Eric Decker

1963 minis: Reggie Bush, Joe Flacco, Nick Foles. Matt Forte, Julio Jones, Luke Kuechly, E.J.Manuel, Clay Matthews, Zach Mettenberger, Aaron Murray, Philip Rivers, Sammy Watkins

1000 Yard Club: Keenan Allen, Dez Bryant. Julian Edelman, T.Y. Hilton, Andre Johnson, Chris Johnson, Marshawn Lynch, LeSean McCoy, Demaryius Thomas

4000 Yard Club: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford

Punt Pass and Kick Champions: Madison Bradley A couple of notes about this set. Man I wish back in the day they did this set as in 1971 a young Andy Reid, with his name misspelled was a contestant and actually appeared on ABC Monday Night Football as a ginormous 13-year-old. Also, major football card dealer A.J. Firestone’s daughter has won the competition in the past and I wish there were cards of her to sign because wouldn’t that be cool to pick up as part of a trip to the National.

Play 60: Wesley Hill (Kid): Kelvin Beachum

Unleashed: A.J. Green, Robert Griffin III, Adrian Paterson, Patrick Peterson. Aldon Smith, Ndamukong Suh, Reggie Wayne, Wes Welker, Kendall Wright

Fantasy Football Strategies: Dez Bryant, Victor Cruz, Matt Forte, Rob Gronkowski, Cam Newton, Jason Witten

Fantasy Focus: Antonio Brown, Reggie Bush, Andy Dalton, Marshawn Lynch. Jordy Nelson,Matt Ryan

Relic card: Jace Amaro

We hit the relic card rather than the autograph but we did land a Clowney black parallel. As we stated, perhaps a few more cards of former greats in the insert sets might not be a bad idea but otherwise Topps Football is the same brand we’ve known over the last several years.

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