Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Panini, Topps, Upper Deck | Tags: 2010 NFL Week 3, Anquan Boldin, Austin Collie, Monday Morning Collector, NFL Trading Cards, Sam Bradford
Every Monday morning throughout the NFL season, we’ll pick a rookie, veteran and breakout player of the week. Here are our selections for NFL Week 3.
Veteran of the Week
Anquan Boldin, WR, Baltimore Ravens
(142 receiving yards, three touchdowns)
Boldin bolted Arizona in the offseason, telling anyone who’d listen that he still was a No. 1 receiver. So far in 2010, he’s played like it – and then some. On Sunday, Boldin double-handedly pushed the Ravens past Cleveland, snaring three touchdown passes in the 24-17 victory. It marked just the second three-touchdown game of his career and his 142 receiving yards were his most since Week 11 of the 2008 season.
Through the first three weeks of 2010, Boldin has 20 catches for 287 yards and three TDs. For perspective, consider that Larry Fitzgerald, Boldin’s former running mate in Arizona, has caught just 12 passes for 152 yards and two touchdowns.
Cards to Grab:
2003 SPx #191 JSY AU RC ($50)
2003 Bowman’s Best #104 JSY RC ($15)
2003 Leaf Limited #147 AU RC ($80)
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL, Panini | Tags: 2010 Panini Gridiron Gear Football, Aaron Rodgers, NFL Trading Cards, Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow
Panini America officials on Monday released preliminary product information and images for 2010 Panini Gridiron Gear Football, a product that arrives in early December carrying a $6 pack SRP and slated to deliver two autographs, two memorabilia cards, 18 rookies and nine additional insert or parallel cards per 18-pack box.
The two autograph cards per box will be numbered to 330 or less.
2010 Gridiron Gear will mark the sixth consecutive installment of the product known in recent years for picking up the pioneering Rookie Hidden Gems Autographs pull-out swatch concept that first appeared in 2001 Playoff Honors. The idea is still coveted all these years later. The product also includes the tried-and-true Plates and Patches prime-patch jersey insert (numbered to 100 or less), NFL Gridiron Signatures featuring “on-field” autographs of retired and current NFL stars (numbered to 50 or less).
And perhaps it’s just my blatant Tim Tebow bias on display, but that Rookie Orientation design is quite attractive — you know, as far as card aesthetics go.
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL | Tags: 2010 NFL season, C.J. Spiller, Detroit Lions, Jahvid Best, NFL Trading Cards, Panini, Tim Tebow, Topps
The statistics speak for themselves: Two games, 268 total yards and five touchdowns. Indeed, in way more than surname, Detroit Lions do-it-all running back Jahvid Best is, ahem, the best rookie of 2010 so far – by far.
He’s off to a roaring start in the NFL with consecutive scintillating performances in narrow losses to the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles. If the former Cal Bear burner keeps this up, he’ll have Offensive Rookie of the Year honors wrapped up by Week 6; heck, at this pace, he’ll have MVP honors all but clinched by then, too.
In two short weeks, Best has separated himself from 2010 rookie classmates such as C.J. Spiller, Ryan Mathews, Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow on the field; as a result, he’s also swiftly catching up with them in the hobby.
In this exclusive interview, Best discusses his collecting cousins, seeing himself on a football card for the first time and just what he thinks about what Ndamukong Suh thinks about him.
What does having your own NFL trading card mean to you?
“It means a lot. It definitely means that somewhere some fans care about me and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s who I’m playing for; so it means a lot to me.”
Filed under: Card gallery, First look, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps Supreme Football, NFL Trading Cards, Topps
On the heels of releasing 2010 Topps Platinum Football and just days before the launch of 2010 Topps Finest Football, company officials on Friday unveiled preliminary information and images teasing 2010 Topps Supreme Football, the company’s new high-end, hit-per-pack product due out in January.
Supreme promises one “low-numbered autograph, autograph relic or relic card” in every four-card pack/box. According to the product’s promotional materials, each 16-pack case of Topps Supreme will yield three Autograph Relics, two autographed Rookie Cards, one single autograph, one multi-player autograph, an additional autograph from that lineup and eight memorabilia cards.
As you might imagine, Supreme features a savory ensemble of tantalizing book cards highlighted by three unique Eight Autograph cards numbered to 5. Other book cards are used for Autographed Six-Piece Relics (numbered to 25 with a 1/1 Patch version), Autographed Double Jumbo Relics (numbered to 10 with a 1/1 Patch parallel) and Eight Piece Relics (numbered to 25 with Patch and Blue parallels numbered to 1 and 10, respectively).
Filed under: Beckett Media, First look, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps Finest Football, NFL Trading Cards
The man-handling Beckett Football team mauls an early box of 2010 Topps Finest Football while discussing, of all things, Twitter, a 17-year-old shirt and 1993 Collector’s Edge John Elway Prisms. Oh, yeah, the guys also pull a few pretty sweet cards.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps Finest Football, Atomic Refractors, NFL Trading Cards, Refractors
Beckett football fanatics Dan Hitt and Tracy Hackler mauled an early box of 2010 Topps Finest Football on Friday, revealing a sparkly spectacle steeped in Refractor and Atomic Refractor printing technologies with a slightly high-end predisposition.
Sporting a $10-per-pack SRP, each six pack mini box (two per master box) revealed either a dual relic autograph card or a rookie patch autograph card (both of which are really nicely done), a healthy dose of dazzling sheen and a rather ho-hum base set.
The must-see episode of Box Busters should be posted shortly. Until then, enjoy this shining first-look gallery of the contents of a second box of a landmark product that’s been around since 1993.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Panini Epix Football, NFL Trading Cards, Panini
Boasting a plethora of downright dazzling printing technologies, Panini America’s 2010 Epix Football is sure to command a special place in the hearts of collectors who coveted the concept when it first arrived more than 13 years ago.
When it hits hobby shops next Wednesday, it may just capture the hearts of a whole new audience, too.
Although it’s a been-there-done-that idea, Epix feels rather, well, epic — partly because it’s been gone for far too long and partly because its blast-from-the-past parallels and namesake inserts feel unlike anything else in the football market today. It’s an absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder type of thing that just works.
In a hobby perhaps overly preoccupied by autograph and memorabilia content, it’s nice to see a product deliver that plus whiz-bang print wizardry simply for whiz-bang print wizardry’s sake. Epix packs an appealing variety of visually-stunning effects with unique appearances that seem to change depending on how the light hits them.
According to Panini America Football Brand Manager Carlos Torrez, the product’s base-set Silver, Gold and Platinum parallels are produced with a holographic pattern UV-coating called “holokote.” Each card surface produces a mesmerizing pattern in direct light. Blessed with the luxury of direct sunlight, that effect is only intensified. (For the record, even the product’s Tim Tebow-graced packaging is printed using holokote.)
Holding a holokoted Epix card is like clutching one of those beloved Mattel hand-held electronic football games, but with the added benefit of color photography. For those who don’t know what that is, I pity you.
As for other random thoughts from an early box of 2010 Panini Epix Football . . .
Filed under: Beckett Media, First look, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 NFL Week 1, Detroit Lions, Jahvid Best, NFL Trading Cards, Topps
Topps kicked off its season-long Rookie of the Week program earlier this week by naming Detroit Lions running back Jahvid Best as its Topps Rookie of the Week on the strength of Best’s debut two-touchdown performance against the Chicago Bears.
The program is being conducted all season long at participating Topps Home Team Advantage, or HTA, hobby shops. Customers in those stores who purchase 2010 Topps football products are eligible to receive Rookie of the Week redemption cards.
Every Tuesday during the NFL season, Topps will name a new “Rookie of the Week.” Holders of redemption cards for that particular week can log onto the program website to receive their free Player of the Week card.
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps Platinum Football, NFL Trading Cards, Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow
Join Beckett Media‘s Dan Hitt and Tracy Hackler as they have their way with an early box of 2010 Topps Platinum Football. It’s safe to say that one of them pulls one of the “Best” autographs in the product. Watch to find out which one.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Topps Platinum Football, NFL Trading Cards, Rolando McClain, Tim Tebow, Topps
Football collectors, buckle your chinstraps. It’s about to get bumpy.
There’s an honest-to-goodness new-product free-for-all – you know, the thing that happens when you have more than one manufacturer in a given sport? – going on all around us, just in time for the start of football season.
Some might call it “Christmas in September.” Mostly, though, we collectors just call it awesome.
Indeed, the just-days-old 2010 Panini Threads and two-week-old Topps are about to be joined by the third new product in as many weeks: 2010 Topps Platinum, due out next Wednesday.
We managed to get our hands on an early couple of boxes earlier today. We’ll save one for a Friday-afternoon episode of Box Busters. As for the other one, well, we busted it so we could bring you these random thoughts and revealing images:
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Panini, Topps, Upper Deck | Tags: 2010 NFL season, Aaron Rodgers, Alex Smith, Brandon Marshall, NFL Trading Cards, Peyton Manning, Ryan Mathews
Man, we thought the 2010 NFL season would never get here. I mean, it seems like forever ago that Drew Brees and the Saints – yes, the Saints – were winning Super Bowl XLIV, setting off a celebration in the Gulf Coast region that still hasn’t ended.
Everywhere else, the euphoria quickly subsided, vanquished by the dark recesses of something called the off-season. But now that a new season has arrived, officially starting Thursday night when New Orleans hosts Minnesota in an NFC Championship Game rematch, happy days are here again.
In honor of that, we present some of our choices for the must-collect players of 2010. We’ve profiled five players here. For the complete list of 10 – you know, 10 for ’10 – check out the October issue of Beckett Sports Card Monthly, on sale everywhere next week.
Some of our selections are no-brainers, a few will leave you scratching your head and one or two will likely have you questioning our sanity (if you don’t already). Perhaps the rationale behind each pick will help our case.
Either way, here’s to another fantastic NFL season. And by all means, if you disagree with our list send us yours (readersrock@beckett.com) and you might be profiled in a future issue of the magazine.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Limited Football, Joe Namath, John Elway, NFL Trading Cards, Panini, Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow
Panini America officials recently pulled the curtain back on 2010 Limited Football, one of the company’s most-anticipated higher-end products that’s due out in mid November packing three autograph or memorabilia cards numbered to 199 or less in each seven-card, $100 box.
Highlighting Limited once again this season are a pair of the set’s calling-card cornerstones: Material Phenoms autographed memorabilia Rookie Cards numbered to 199 or less and the legend-laced Limited Cuts autograph insert that includes such names as Bob Waterfield, Bobby Layne, Red Grange and Walter Payton to name four.
New for Limited in 2010 are the America’s Team Signatures and Autographed Materials cards (#’d to 100 or less), a continuation of Panini’s season-long, cross-brand tribute to the Dallas Cowboys’ 50th Anniversary team.
According to preliminary release information, a typical case of 2010 Limited (15 boxes) should deliver at least seven cards from a stacked insert roster (NFL Shield, NFL Shield Signatures, Rookie Lettermen, Limited Cuts, Jumbo Prime Signatures and Material Phenoms) or a stacked autograph guest list (Dan Marino, Tim Tebow, Tony Romo, Sam Bradford, Peyton Manning, C.J. Spiller, Brett Favre, Ryan Mathews, Troy Aikman, Dez Bryant, Tom Brady, Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, Emmitt Smith, Joe Namath, John Elway, Drew Brees, Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson).
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Panini, Topps | Tags: 2010 Panini Threads Football, 2010 Topps football, New Orleans Saints, NFL Trading Cards, Sean Canfield
The New Orleans Saints parted ways with Oregon State rookie quarterback Sean Canfield earlier this week, cutting the seventh-round pick on Tuesday in the name of readying the final 53-man roster.
Canfield, it should be noted, finished his first career NFL training camp with three carries, minus-3 yards rushing and 135 different trading cards. In fact, it is Canfield’s two most recent releases – Rookie Cards in 2010 Topps and 2010 Panini Threads – that got us into a poll frame of mind.
Apparently, the 239th player taken in the 2010 NFL Draft was a mandatory checklist inclusion deep into the summer. How else to explain Topps giving Canfield a suspect airbrush job (he’s wearing a faux Saints uniform while throwing an Oregon State football) and Panini America settling for a backpacking-in-the-parking-lot picture?
So, we wanted to know what fellow football collectors thought about that.
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Topps | Tags: 2010 Topps, NFL Trading Cards, Topps Gridiron Giveaway
It’s about time.
I finally had the opportunity this afternoon to spend some quality time with the ballyhooed football card phenomenon known as the Topps Gridiron Giveaway. I’m a better man – and collector – for having done so.
The promotion, a direct descendant of the wildly popular Million Card Giveaway that debuted in 2010 Topps Baseball earlier this year, made its pigskin premiere last week inside packs of 2010 Topps Football.
Equal parts nostalgia and new media, the program is backed by a failsafe concept – not to mention an easy-to-use website – that seems universally embraceable: Free Topps football cards.
For those who don’t know how the program works, here’s a little background: Gridiron Giveaway code cards are seeded one in six packs of 2010 Topps Football. Each of those cards includes a unique alphanumeric number on the back and is guaranteed to be a winner.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Panini Threads Football, NFL Trading Cards, Panini
Perhaps more than any other product on Panini’s pigskin roster, it is Threads that has struggled the most to gain a definitive identity with collectors, tossed about in the company’s sea of venerable brands that includes Prestige, Elite, Classics, Contenders and Certified.
While that likely won’t change when the 2010 edition of Threads goes live next Wednesday, give company officials the highest possible marks for knocking conventional card design on its side – literally – with the industry’s most memorable horizontally oriented base set in quite some time.
It’s a rather small accentuation in the grand scheme of things, but it feels revolutionary from the first pack because collectors are so accustomed to pulling just another vertical base card.
Not in 2010 Panini Threads.
The horizontal card fronts place a premium on mostly stunning photography that offers more than normally meets the eye. For vivid examples of this, check out the base-card images below.
Filed under: Beckett Media, NFL, Panini, Topps | Tags: 2010 NFL Players Rookie Premiere, Dallas Cowboys, Dez Bryant, NFL Trading Cards
FIRST IN A CONTINUING SERIES OF EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH THE TOP 2010 NFL ROOKIES
By Tracy Hackler and Jon Gold
Most pre-draft buzz pegged Dez Bryant as a guy with top-five skills and a Mr. Insignificant attitude. Still, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made no bones about wanting him. That Jones got his man – he seemingly always does – means that Bryant landed on football’s most collected team. That, of course, sent Bryant immediately ascending to the top of the rookie hobby heap.
But then he goes and suffers the dreaded high ankle sprain early in training camp and essentially goes undetected all summer by all but the most astute collectors or Cowboys fans.
That’s all about to change in a big way.
Bryant is ridiculously talented and really, really good. Certainly he’s too good to be lugging Roy Williams’ shoulder pads around and at some point sooner rather than later, he’ll be too good not to be in Dallas’ starting lineup.
The former Oklahoma State standout only improves an already-stacked offense that also includes Tony Romo, Miles Austin, Jason Witten, Felix Jones and Marion Barber.
Even without the benefit of a full training camp, Bryant is an early favorite – along with San Diego’s Ryan Mathews – for Offensive Rookie of the Year honors. Hot List appearances later this season are virtually guaranteed.
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Classics Football Hall of Fame Autographs, Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, NFL Hall of Fame, NFL Trading Cards, Panini America
Panini America Football Brand Manager Carlos Torrez confirmed today that all seven subjects in the 2010 Classics Football Hall of Fame Autographs set (Emmitt Smith, Jerry Rice, Floyd Little, John Randle, Dick LeBeau, Rickey Jackson and Russ Grimm) have returned their on-card autographs to Panini headquarters.
Torrez said the outstanding redemption cards — released as part of 2010 Classics Football in early August — will begin being fulfilled “in the very near future.”
Filed under: Beckett Media, Card gallery, First look, NFL | Tags: 2010 Crown Royale Football, NFL Trading Cards, Pacific Trading Cards, Panini America
You can count on one hand the number of sports card products that are instantly recognizable from five feet away with just a glimpse of the base card. The rather regal Crown Royale is one of those products — and Panini America is giving the elaborate testament to mid-’90s technological decadence a full-blown football set for the first time since 2002.
Due out in late October, 2010 Crown Royale Football looks to be a true-to-its-roots updating of the trailblazing original, the creative, die-cut brainchild of former Pacific Trading Cards owner Michael Cramer. Panini has tinkered with the Crown Royale concept sporadically since acquiring the rights to it and other Pacific names and brands in 2004.
Until earlier this summer, that tinkering was confined to the occasional insert or promotional card. But in July the company released 2009-10 Crown Royale Basketball, setting the stage for its more deeply rooted football counterpart later this fall.
It’s a high-end product ($25 per five-card pack with an autograph or memorabilia card perk) with a familiarly non-traditional design sure to send longtime collectors immediately back in time to 1995, when the first Crown Royale arrived.
There’s something distinctly, refreshingly Chaucerian about the insert designs that makes me want to set out on a pilgrimage to the hobby shop. In a category often criticized for the perceived sameness from product to product and season to season, Crown Royale definitively bucks that trend despite being a 15-year-old idea.
The Beckett Blog 