Stadium Club is back

I was looking online for some stuff to help me write my 2007-2008 Topps Basketball review, and I stumbled across this auction. TSC? Stadium Club?? 2008??? This week is just full of surprises. I had no idea Topps was resurrecting their first premium brand, let alone that it is set to hit stores next week. It was just a few days ago that we were getting all nostalgic for TSC thanks to Kevin's break of a 1995 baseball box. The cards were more often then not very nice with an elegant design and excellent photography. Then one day it was just gone... I didn't even notice it had been discontinued until one fall when I remembered that there hadn't been a Stadium Club set at all that year. Now that it's back in basketball, does that mean this is a trial run for a baseball set?

Be warned, this product does not share much in common with Kevin's '95 set. 2007-2008 TSC is a high-end product with an auto or relic, Chrome rookie and numbered parallel in every six card pack. Not a lot of room for base cards in there. 12 pack boxes will run about two or three hundred bucks so each pack is going to retail for 20 or 30 dollars. It will be interesting to see if Topps copies Upper Deck's idea for Ultra and has a super expensive pack for the hobby and an el cheapo one for retail. I wouldn't mind if they copied UD on this, just as long as someone double checks to make sure the stats are on the back of the rookie cards.

I wouldn't count on a baseball set though. Topps is cutting sets, not adding them. They could replace one of their high end relic-heavy products with TSC for the brand recognition though. Oh man, I just had a terrible thought. With Upper Deck doing throwback SP rookie cards and adding retro Game Used card designs in their 2008 set, you don't suppose Topps might think the time is right for a Stadium Club Heritage set do you? The very idea both fascinates and horrifies me.