A 2011 Topps Football Repack Box Pans Out Nicely

I was looking to pick up a repack football box to do my Super Bowl prediction like I did last year and instead felt the call of a 2011 Topps football repack box instead. I picked up the Topps box, which contained 11 packs of 2011 Topps football plus 2 Chrome Refractors and 1 Super Bowl Legends code card. I decided to just bust this box for fun and I will pick up the random repack box next week to use for my prediction.

You start with a Cam Newton and Blaine Gabbert Chrome Refractor and a Super Bowl Legend code card, and this is before even opening a pack. Once the pack busting began I hit a pretty solid lucky streak until I came across a nice surprise. The last few packs were pretty average s but I was happy no matter what even though I did pull 11 duplicates.

Here are some of the better pulls and inserts from the box:

A trio of Seahawks including Mr. Skittles, Marshawn Lynch

A nice group of rookies

My required Clyde Gates rookie card (This year’s Mardy Gilyard)

Takeo Spikes, does this guy have bad luck or what? He has been in the league 12 years now and played over 200 regular season games but he has never been to the playoffs. 

The former (potentially) starting QB for the Jets and the future (potentially) starting QB of the Jets if rumor unfolds in to truth.

The inserts:

Faces of the Franchise

Game Day

Super Bowl Legends

Super Bowl Legends code cards

Which turned in to these

Chrome Refractors

Bowman Football

Beginning top left: Cooley, Bradshaw, Best, Johnson, Peterson, Mallett

The surprise highlight of the box:

A Bowman Football First Color Logo Ndamukong Suh parallel #31/50

In retail packs these are 1:1060 (even in hobby packs they are 1:350)

2011 Topps NFL Review

Schedule Release Date: July 2011
Box Configuration: 36 packs per box, 10 cards per pack
SRP: Unknown


Box Break:
1 Autograph or Relic card


My Thoughts:
This set is just a continuation of the baseball set and I am not sure if this was Topps attempt at just calling it in because football is currently in lockout or if the designers truly felt it was easier to just follow suit and move on to working on those awesome Triple Threads designs (said sarcastically). As far as the base set goes, the design is exactly like baseball. It is clean with a decent layout and this works well for the base product. The only problem is the overloading of parallels and inserts which is just an attempt to give the collector value for their money. Card companies need to learn that this is not what collectors want; they want a well-designed base set and if you must add “value” then limit it to one or two inserts, no parallels and a great checklist.

This release really just seems to be a situation of a hot mess. Topps seemed to want to include lots of ideas and did not know where to stop and just call it a release. We see a set built on a Super Bowl theme, a retro portion (based on the 1950 Bowman release), sketch cards, parallels and a varying array of autos and relics and honestly nothing besides the Super Bowl theme really carries over to the rest of the set. Topps claims the autographs are on-card but the Face of the Franchise dual autograph card is clearly a sticker autograph.

We are going to see the first cards Da’Quan Bowers, Cam Newton, AJ Green and Blaine Gabbert. There may not be an NFL season but at least there will be an NFL Draft and we get to see their cards, but they will not be seen in Pro uniforms.


Pros:
The first autographs of upcoming rookies

Super Bowl autos and relics

Decent base card design

On-card autographs


Cons:
Way too much, just really way too much being shoved in to really be a cohesive collection

The Super Bowl theme insert is just an ugly design

Sticker autographs

Rating: 

I give this a 2 out of 5, I don’t think it really deserves much more because of how little Topps did to differentiate this from the baseball set. The Super Bowl theme is strong armed in to the set and the rest of the checklist is just a Hodge-podge of a collection.