Friday, August 06, 2010

Things I Learned at the Topps Meet-and-Greet

1) Despite the open bar, it did not degenerate into the shoutfest I initially feared.

2) In honor of their 60th Anniversary in baseball cards, Topps is planning a huge promotion for 2011 Baseball. They didn't get into much, but I suspect that it will be something along the lines of what they did in 2001.

3) Something they did pass along: real diamonds.

4) Topps Total ain't coming back. Ever. (Sorry, Junkie)

5) Gimmick cards remain as decisive as ever. An informal poll of those attending showed about half like (or at least tolerate) gimmicks and half hate them.

5a) In so many words, they insinuated that "Scoreboard Abe" was a bad idea.

6) The name "Stephen Strasburg" came up a lot.

6a) Strasburg will have a variation in TU&H.

7) Topps is content with MLB, NFL, WWE, and UFC licenses, and will not look to add "minor" sports (i.e. Bull Riding, Poker, Lacrosse, et al).

8) Clay Luraschi is the luckiest SOB in the world. And yeah, I'm jealous.

4 comments:

Don said...

Good stuff. Did the meeting give you any kind of warm fuzzy feeling that Topps is listening?

Also, in regards to gimmicks. You said that "Scoreboard Abe" was a bad idea. Did they say anything about the "Pie in the Face" cards? Personally I did not mind the legends as they were announced, but the pie cards were total BS.

This question is more of an anal one. With Stasburg being 661, and only available in factory sets (I don't count the million dollar money grab), will this be more of an A-Rod in 98 situation where the card was added to the set after the checklist was finalized, or will the Update set be numbered starting at 662? I ask this as a set collector because I don't know if I should include Strass in my base set.

dayf said...

BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Can we at least get a decent fucking dollar-a-pack product again?? One that isn't a rip off of the base set at a quarter the set size?

John Bateman said...

I wish Topps would get rid of the foil and a few inserts from the base set and sell 20 card packs for 2 bucks

madding said...

The Update set always starts over at 1 (UH1, UH2, etc.)

Was any sort of reason given for the anti-Topps Total thing? That sucks, to put it lightly.