A foggy review of the new 2010 Topps!

Ta-Da! One lousy image. The foggy part of the post is that I am completely aware that there are other images out there on scattered blogs, but truth me told I cannot for the life of me remember which blogs those were, so this appears to be the most widely distributed base card. Shazzam! Not too shabby looking. My only quasi complaints on the design are the crazy "Twin Peaks" font for the player names. I dig the Cards logo and the color match, but the name just does not seem quite right. I have seen some other images of David Wright and a couple others, where the color matches the team and theme of the card, so all-in-all I would have to say that this looks pretty promising.

One important question. Who else went totally blind trying to collate these last season? Nothing like throwing a tiny black number on a dark blue circle. Just curious what the backs look like but because the "1B" looks exactly the same, my guess is that the numbers on the back are going to be the same also, thus ridiculously difficult to read.

Being foggy, I don't really recall too many of the insert sets, but from the images I have seen, it looks like only the cream of the crop is being displayed (does anybody really think they are going to pull the Pujols Patch or the Fielder Patch that is the ENTIRE Milwaukie M. More likely you will pull a Eric Gagne patch of a plain, white preseason jersey swatch. Anything is possible though.

I know they are doing Turkey Reds again, which normally I would be excited about, except that I am collecting that set this year and they look virtually identical except for the dark wooden border and the creepy munsters looking font on the turkey red logo, which I don't really care for.

There is some other set called "cards that your mother threw out" which basically looks like another way to throw in SP old-fashioned cards. I don't know whether these are the actually cards or reprints, but I know that with my luck I will add yet another Mike Greenwell into my collection.

But as snarky as all this may sound, I actually look forward to the set for a couple of reasons. You get 36 cards in a box, 10 cards in a pack. There are a plethora of subsets to chase. Boxes pre-sell for under 50 bones, and every time I open up some of these suckers, Topps always surprises me with something that I did not expect. Just when you think you have seen your hits, a silk, black variation, short print, or a cool looking old-timer card shows up. Topps, you are the masters of surprise and king of the affordable box breaks, and for that, I thank you...now please call Nick and I about Ginter!

Oh yeah, one more subset to cover. Looks like Toppstown is back and kicking. Something about using a webcam or scanner to bring your players to life. I have never tried this, but if it really works, i would like my toppstown players to clean up Jacoby's toys, vacuum the floor, do the laundry and make dinner each night, please.