By William Robinson
This past week saw the release of the flagship product from Topps for this upcoming 2021 season. I was lucky enough to obtain a jumbo box of 2021 Topps and so today I’m going to review this product. Let’s start off with the price. A jumbo box of Topps 2021 cost me 225 dollars! These things have been steadily increasing in price year after year. I remember when I first bought a jumbo box in 2012 that it was 125 dollars. Now it’s 100 dollars higher. Compared to the rest of the hobby maybe this is a bargain. That being said finding retail or any other sniff of this or any other card product is basically impossible outside of online. The retail flippers have killed the hobby most likely by making it next to impossible to buy. However, that’s an article for another day.
This article is a review of Topps 2021. Let’s start with the design on the front of the card: As you can see below the card is a white bordered card with embellishments along all sides. This is the 70th anniversary of Topps and you’ll see Topps celebrating that history on these cards. The base cards have a silver foil 70th anniversary stamp which I personally like. The team is at the bottom and the player name is located above that. The cards come in vertical and horizontal placement.
I’ve heard many complaints about the design so far and some are fair and some maybe less so. The name is super duper small and difficult to find, the RC logo is also tiny and can be easily missed. Many say that the design doesn’t feel like Topps but honestly, I think it does. Personally, I like them, but I hope that they don’t make the same card for the next several years like they have done lately.
The back of the card has the entire stats from the players career on them. They also have codes that indicate whether or not a card is SP or whatever. Base cards have a code of 213, SP 230, SSP 231, and Ultra 232. The backs are super clean and really that’s about all I have to say about them.
The main inserts that I got were 1986 themed cards. Personally, I dislike 1986 Topps and so these inserts were not desirable for me. I ended up with 10 of them from my Jumbo box which accounts to one per pack.
There were also other inserts that were themed from various other years of Topps. To me these cards are way too much like archives and so aren’t desirable either. I wish that Topps would hire some creative designers to come up with something fresh and new and not just tired old retreads.
The Home Run challenge cards return and these basically look the same. So, we aren’t going to spend much time talking about them. One thing that I must warn you about is the Topps throughout the years inserts. They feature amazing cards of the past in reprint form. They will look like autograph cards! They are not and so as many new collectors are rushing into the hobby looking to make a quick buck, they think that they are pulling amazing cards when in fact they are not. This is going to turn a lot of new collectors off of the product.
Finally, there are many variations just as usual. There are Rainbow foil (1:10 packs), Gold (/2021), Vintage stock (/99), Independence Day (/76), Black (/70), Platinum anniversary (/70), Father’s Day blue (/50), Mother’s Day Pink (/50), Memorial Day camo (/25) Printing plates 1/1, and 70th Anniversary /1. There are also gold foil variations in hobby packs that are every other pack. There are green foil parallels in retail and blue in retail hangers. There are also clear cards that are only in hobby boxes and not jumbo hobby boxes. I pulled two decent variations in my box.
There are other inserts as well. One is a doubleday insert which includes on one side the rookie card of the player and on the other side the final card of the player. I pulled Ichiro which was kind of neat. This is actually a really fun idea despite it being another reprint of the card. There are also die cut cards which are in the shape of the number 70 which is pretty cool, I pulled a Pedro Martinez.
There are other reprint looking inserts as well that in the chrome version. These are 52 Topps in the hangers and 86 Topps chrome in the silver packs. Honestly, I think they are hideous but if you like 86 Topps then they’ll be your bag. My favorite is the 51 Topps Tall Boy Box toppers. I got Javier Baez in my jumbo box and actually went on line to buy Ronald Acuna just because I thought it was so cool.
In summary this is a fun set. It has a TON of rookies in it. I pulled 56 base rookie cards out of a jumbo box. It’s got some big hype rookies in it such as Alec Bohm, Christian Pache, Ian Anderson, Nick Madrigal, Casey Mize and Jo Adell just to name a few. It would be wonderful if these were easy to find and you could go to the store and scratch the itch whenever it strikes as this would be a fun set to collect. However, at the greatly marked up prices of scalpers I am not excited. The insert sets are very boring and that leaves us with the variations as the only chase cards. My advice is the same as usual. Buy a jumbo box just for fun, then go online and buy whatever cards you want out of it.