2007-2008 Topps Chrome Basketball

OK, so tonight I was out with my son and we stopped by one of our local shops. We decided to grab some of the older packs that were sitting in a discount bin. He grabbed a handful of football packs and I grabbed up some basketball packs. Given there was a mixture of both hobby and retail packs, but the fun is in opening the packs and checking out whose cards you get.

The first pack that I opened was a 2007-2008 Topps Chrome Basketball pack. They stuck with the clean theme that Topps is known for, but then they went overboard with the chrome. The logo is chromed, the team name is chromed and the player’s name is chromed. The only color besides the player image is the 4 boxes around the player image in the team colors. It is unfortunate too because had the team name and player name been in the team colors the cards would have come out aesthetically pleasing.

On to a selection of the cards that I pulled:

61- Richard Hamilton

104- Kevin Martin

Veteran 57-58 Variation Kobe Bryant

Like I pointed out with the 08-09 Topps, the Variation cards use blurred photos which when mixed with chrome make an almost hideous card. Take the Bryant Variant card I pulled, the name/team bar is nice and clean. Good coloring and no fuzziness but the image has the appearance of a 3D photo without the glasses. You get a headache trying to focus on the player.

I like the idea of the 57-58 Variants but they should have used clean photos, it really ruins a nice subset.