Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

Topps needs to step up their game

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

nevermore

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
3,371
514
New York
Frustrated with Topps lately, they have been cutting corners on production quality.

They got rid of the small authentic stamp on the back of autographs with the black hologram a while ago. Then, I bought a Torre Archives auto to find that the authentic stamp is not a foil stamp but printed on. That just looks so ameteur! Like someone printed the card at home. Come on and shell out the extra bit for foil stamps.

With archive buybacks this stamp is randomly placed, grossly off centered in many cards. Completely ruins the look.

The back of these auto cards is glossy, not paper backs like the original cards.

Even their high end stuff looks all the same, gray silvery.

They need to start paying attention to these smaller details again!

/rant
 

joey12508

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
38,452
16,111
Winterfell
the bowman products been going down hill for a while. remember what a gold refractor use to look like compared to now?


SaOpX50.jpg
 

Philip J. Fry

Well-known member
Aug 9, 2008
5,772
389
Ohio
Their Chrome products have gone downhill in general. Compare a 1993 Finest (regular or refractor) to today's; the etching today is lazy, at best (if it even exists at all, like Bowman Chrome). But as long as they're the sole manufacturer with an MLB license, it won't matter because collectors will still buy it due to logos/team names on cards.
 

brian26

Member
Nov 12, 2010
679
10
The chrome etching actually went away for a couple of years (like 2010-2011 or 2011-2012). But yeah, looking back on 2003 and 2004 chrome, they look a bit better than todays.
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
Everything's gotten worse unless you pay for it. I remember reading about Hershey bars. When they came out they were like a square weighing 4 ounces for a nickel. Sizes bounced around for a while before becoming standardized in the general shape we have today. But price was always the driving factor, it had to be a nickel, and the amount of Hershey's chocolate a nickel bought you shrank over time. By the time WWII came and went, it was like the size of a business card but still a nickel. Then they decided to let the price float while maintaining the size, more or less. It would go up and down a tenth of an ounce or so depending on the cost of milk, sugar, and cocoa.

Similarly, we've had a stratified market for a long time now. You can pay what you want for a pack of cards, from 99 cents to $500 or more, but quality is ever sliding down as prices go up. A $5 pack of cards buys you a lower quality card than it did a decade ago, and a lot lower than two decades ago. Inevitable, but still depressing considering what a simple thing a baseball card is. I'd love to see a breakdown of the costs it takes to print a baseball card, from raw paper stock to photography to MLB/MLBP/MLBPA licensing to jerseys and autograph contracts to running or outsourcing a printing press and packaging plant. Spending even an extra cent per card for slightly better card stock can make a huge difference in quality but that adds up I guess.
 

Members online

Top