2014 Topps NFL Rookie Premiere Preview

Hard to believe, but this year marked the 20th anniversary of the Rookie Premiere showcase which gives the newest NFL players a chance to get together, learn about the business side of football and just as importantly for the NFL and the NFL Players Association, it’s a central place for players to come together, be photographed and bring some PR to both the players and the league.

For the football card companies, this event becomes an important part of gathering autographs from players they have contracts with and also acquire event-worn material. While we as a hobby realize it is not game-used at this point, the items procured from the event by the card companies do provide the league to get NFL team colors paired with the players who were drafted by that team. There is no doubt they also have more time to sign autographs then in many cases during the season.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the rookie premiere event, Topps is producing a special 2014 NFL Premiere product sold in a box of 25 cards, although each box won’t contain a set. Rather, this one is similar to Topps Turkey Red.

Each box of 2014 NFL Rookie Premiere will contains 19 randomly packed base cards, five parallel cards and one autographed card. The full set will contain a mix of 37 of this year’s rookies mixed along with 63 star previous attendees for a total of 100 cards. There are several different base parallels with announced print runs ranging from 1 to 299 including:

• Black Parallel – #’d
• Orange Parallel – #’d to 299
• Blue Parallel – #’d to 199
• Purple Parallel – #’d to 99
• Green Parallel – #’d to 75
• Yellow Parallel – #’d to 50
• Platinum Parallel – #’d to 25

For the autographs the parallels will have print runs of between one card produced to 99 copies:

• Red Parallel – #’d 1/1
• Purple Parallel – #’d to 99
• Green Parallel – #’d to 75
• Yellow Parallel – #’d to 50
• Platinum Parallel – #’d to 25
• Red Parallel – #’d 1/1

Each case of 12 boxes will have one autographed relic card featuring an NFLPA Rookie Premiere Jersey patch paired with an autograph of an NFLPA Rookie Premiere star player and there will also be some dual autographs randomly inserted as well.