2010 Topps Feetsbowl

Wooooo! Football season is here! More or less, anyway. College is about to start up and the NFL will be kicking off soon enough. I got a fantasy draft in an hour and a half so that counts. I've gotten apathetic towards most football products but I still like the Topps flagship. I picked up a few packs out of habit, here's a rundown of what you will find.

First 2010 Topps Football card:

Early Doucet of the Cards. If I had opened the bottom half of the rack pack my first card would have been Matthew Stafford. Oh well. As you can see it's a direct copy of the baseball design. It looks good enough on football I suppose but I miss the days where Topps gave every set a unique design, no matter how horrible the design turned out to be. The only weird thing is the team logo in the bottom left corner. Like on the baseball set, the logo is large to the point of gaudy, but some of the logos incorporate the city or state name as well which looks odd. Shuffling through the cards I got it looks like if the team existed in its current city in the early '80s, then there's no city name, otherwise the city or state is included. Cincinnati Bengals blows my theory, but it works for most all other teams.

Here's the back of a card:

Same back as baseball, this one of Ricky Williams' up and down and back up again career was interesting enough to scan.

There's a few subsets at the end of the set including this All-Pro subset:

That is a weird looking uniform for the Jets, but I love the old-school Oilers helmet on the right. When I first saw the All-Pro logo I hoped it was on the base card like back in the old days, but nope, it was a subset.

The team cards look kickass.

Here's a rookie card:

The rookie logo is 3D tilted for coolness effect but not overly large. The packs all claim "A rookie in every pack!!!". I found 6 in the rack and anywhere from 1 to 4 rookies in  the normal packs.You will have rookies. Rookie cards also seem to be the only place you'll find an Offensive Tackle in the set, though I could be wrong.

This is kinda neat, they used the 2010 Rookie Premeire poster shot as a checklist card. I would always pick one of these posters up from the local card shop and it would get trashed before I thought about hanging it up.

Ok time for the inserts. We'll transition into it with an insert that is a base card from another set.

Here's an Attax Towncard of Tom Brady. Take my code, please. After looking though some Panini Adrenalyn cards, I think I like their game better. These waste one card per pack.

Now for the Proper inserts, at least the ones I pulled.

Peak Performance cards are back and they are not as dreadfully boring as the ones in the baseball set.

This one is particularly interesting as it is a card of Jonathan Dwyer, celebrating his run in the ACC championship game for Georgia Tech, while wearing a Steelers uniform that was either photoshopped or taken at the Rookie Premiere day.

The Peak performance cards also come in relic flavor.

If these photos of the rookies were actually taken at Rookie Premiere day, then the swatch on the card came from the jersey in the photo which is kinda neat. I would pull a Panther though....

Rookies have TONS of inserts all over this set. Here's another one:

This is a throwback to the 1952 Bowman set. The Chiefs didn't exist in 1952, and neither did cards with dudes wearing dreads. It's a pretty nice looking set as far as Retro goes, and there is also a greyback parallel of this set that is some ridiculous odds like 1:50 Wal-Marts apparently. I didn't get one so I don't know how it looks.

Topps double-Bowmaned their set with this retail only insert:

Here's a sneak peek of the 2010 Bowman set, these are 1:4? packs in Wally World and Target loosey packs. I was lucky enough to get one of this dude on the Broncos. Better than that other dude on the Broncos, I guess. You know, Pigskin Strasburg..

Veterans and rookies are all over the insert sets, this one is a little of both.

For the 75th anniversary of the NFL Draft Topps has this rather nice looking insert of some of the best draft picks. It's a welcome change from the retros and the holdover inserts from baseball, that's for sure. I got Dan the Man, which appears to be a theme in my packs.

Here's another boring-ass baseball holdover insert set. Blech.

Gridiron Lineage. A Patriot and a Cowboy on the same card. Whoop-de-damn-do. Like in Baseball, I shall collect any of these with an Atlanta player on it and shun the rest.

These aren't cards Yo Momma threw out...

They're just reprints. You probably threw out your old football cards yourself anyway. Here's another Dan Marino. I love reprints so I'll be keeping this one. The picture quality on the front is atrocious. It looks like they scanned it at about 96 DPI.

Here's the back:

Other than the card stock and copyright date, there's no indication that this is a reprint. Expect to see shady eBay sellers hawking these off as originals. Also expect idiots to buy them. Sigh.

There's also Transmogrifier cards out there too.

Yep, another Marino. Now let me show you all the Falcon cards I got!

EL ZIPPO. One rack, 5 hobby and three retail packs and not one %#@! Falcon. Typical.

Topps Gridiron Giveaway

Here's a taste to hold you over while I get my 2010 Topps Football post together. I picked up a few packs yesterday and was fortunate enough to snag a Code Card with Dan Marino on the front:

The Transmogrifier for football is more or less the same, just at a different address:

www.toppsgridiron.com

The URL listed on the card immediately resolves to http://football.toppscards.com/ but that's an issue for the Topps marketers and web admins to sort out. We collectors get to the same place either way. The page is set up exactly like the Baseball Transmogrifier so if you've redeemed codes there, you'll have no problem. Your baseball login works here so there's no registering twice.

The recently redeemed cards list shows a mix of new garbage, junk wax garbage and one vintage card thrown in. Here's my code:

Ha! Ha! You thieves just tried to steal me code, but it has already been redeemed! Wanna see what I got? You have no choice! I'm showing it anyway!

'88 Ozzie! Sure, it's from the junkwax era, but 1988 had a nice looking design and you can't go wrong with Ozzie Newsome. I am happy with my first redemption. That doesn't mean I won't try to flip the thing.

This is the first time I've tried a trade since Topps boosted the search function. Player name is still there obviously, but they've upped the Year search to a range instead of a single year. You can also now search by team and position. Team search works well, and there are also a few WLAF teams sprinkled in there from a subset in 2000 Topps. Unless you are searching for a quarterback don't bother with the position search. A search for Linebacker netted about 6 cards, none of which were Jessie Tuggle. To find him, you need to use Middle Linebacker. Just search by team or name unless you really want to collect every single Defensive Half Back card Topps ever put out. US Senator is also listed as a position for some reason. Tackling dummies, maybe? Dummies at any rate.

I really wanted to trade Ozzie for a 1990 Jessie Tuggle rookie, but none were to be found. This is probably going to end up like my Baseball Transmogrifier 1989 Mark Lemke debacle. I have literally offered up every single card in my online collection for that damn card, but there is only one out there and the guy who has it probably hasn't logged on since March. I wanted to make a trade offer for something so I chose another 1990 rookie:

Prime Time! Let's see how fast this gets rejected. Maybe a Browns fan picked up Deion. If you want to throw offers my way for Ozzie feel free, I'll try to check my trades daily so I can REJECT them utterly. Gotta have mah Deion.