First look: 2010 Topps Update baseball cards

First look: 2010 Topps Update baseball cards by Chris Olds

July 1, 2010, 4:45 pm
Filed under: First look, MLB, Stephen Strasburg, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps Update, baseball, baseball cards, MLB, Stephen Strasburg, Topps

The baseball season isn’t even at its half-way point, but that’s not stopping the end-of-the-year baseball card product announcements.

Topps released the basic product information and preview images for its 2010 Topps Update set on Thursday, a product that will recap the year with all of the latest rookies, traded players and season highlights.

The set will include 55 rookies — including Stephen Strasburg on card No. 661 (a different photo from his Million Card Giveaway card)  — along with Bat Barrel cards, Sketch Cards drawn by the players themselves, Relics from the 2010 All-Star Game and more when it arrives in mid-October.

The third and final portion of the 2010 Topps flagship line will include one autograph or Relic per 36-pack hobby box and one autograph and two Relics in every 10-pack HTA Jumbo box.

Oh, and there will be a redempion card for a 1/1 Strasburg autograph as well.

Back for a third go-round this year will be thee Million Card Giveaway, while the basic set will consist of 330 cards — 187 veterans, 45 rookies, 10 rookie debuts, 60 All-Stars, eight Home Run Derby cards and 10 Classic Combos. The familiar parallels — Silk, Platinum, Black, Gold and press plates — also return along with the insert lines that were found in the previous two series.

The Midsummer Classic will have a heavy presence in this product with All-Star Stitches memorabilia and autograph cards as well as All-Star jumbo patches, jumbo patch autographs as well as dual and triple Relics.

The Bat Barrel cards are manufactured memorabilia cards but will include a pair of parallels — black bats (numbered to 25) and pink bats, a nice inclusion given baseball’s Mother’s Day cancer awareness programs. Those cards are 1/1s.

The box-toppers for this product will be Rookie Refractors, which should include Strasburg.

For the first time, there will be Sketch Cards made by the players themselves, while the first wave of the You Sketch It sketches from collectors themselves (blank cards were placed in Series 2) will be found in this product as well.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

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