2010 Topps Finest In-Depth Preview

That was fast, Topps has already released information on 2010 Topps Finest baseball, and it’s time for another in-depth preview here at Houston Collector.

It appears that in 2010, Finest will be similar to 2009 with a few wrinkles. You’ll still get 2 mini-boxes per master box, with 2 numbered autographed rookie patch cards, all signed on-patch. You’ll also get 10 parallels, and 1 rookie card redemption. The autographed patches will be numbered to no more than 299, and will also have the same parallels with everything else, although they’re replacing the superfractors with purple refractors, which are still one of ones. Reds are numbered to 5, Golds to 10, Blues to 25, and refractors to 75 for the patches. A new addition is In the Name X-Fractor Rookie Book Cards, where the foldout spells the player’s name, with each letter autographed. While I like the concept, there’s a huge problem with foldouts. First, unless they’re redemptions it’s entirely obvious which pack has them, which defeats the purpose. Secondly, the only way to show these off is to have them standing up and open unless you find some way to encase them. I mean, the idea itself isn’t horrible in theory, it just … isn’t something that works as a card, in my mind.

The rookie redemptions will have blue and gold refractor parallels which are numbered to 199 and 50, respectively. There’s a twenty player Finest Moments autograph set, which have red parallels numbered to 25, and purple which are one of ones.

The base set consists of 150 cards, with 25 of them being RCs and presumably short-printed. The refractors are numbered again this year, to 699, with blue refractors to 399, green to 99, gold to 50, red to 25, and printing plates and purple refractors as one of ones. It looks like xfractors are out of the picture for now. Each RC will also have logo patch variations, all numbered to 50, but also having a one of one purple refractor version. The autographed rookie letter patch cards are cards 151-170 in the set, as well.

As far as as what I’m going to be interested in, there are base cards of Lance Berkman, Hunter Pence, Roy Oswalt, Chris Johnson and Tommy Manzella, with the RC logo variations of both Johnson and Manzella. Still no Bud Norris, which is a bit annoying, since I don’t recall him being one of the redemptions in 2009 Finest. Still, it’s a decent checklist that I’ll be looking at, and a decent checklist for RC collectors with both Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey having patch autos among the list.

2010 Topps Finest will hit in late March, around the 22nd, and should be selling for around $90 per master box, depending on where you look.