Cards From The Rookie Premiere II

Another preview that we saw following the NFL Rookie Premiere are these mini tallboys that will be inserted in to the 2012 Topps Football release set to be released in August.

The original 1965 Topps Football tallboys were larger than current cards, measuring in at 2.5 x 4.6875 compared to todays standard 2.5 x 3.5 sized cards. We have not seen many over sized cards since the 1994 Fleer NBA Jam Sessions release so it is pretty cool to see these mini tallboys making their way in to packs. These tallboys will be slightly smaller than a current sized card (1.8675"x 3.5) and this was done to ensure the cards could fit in to packs.

The 1965 Topps insert set will contain 140+ retired and veteran players plus there will be on-card autographed rookie versions (these are the images I am including in the post). No insertion ratio has been announced and while Topps has announced that none of the autographed rookie cards will be short printed they have not stated anything about the retired and veteran cards.

Cards From The Rookie Premiere

The NFL Players Rookie Premiere is done and now comes the time for Panini and Topps to start pounding out the NFL sets to make sure they hit the shelves on time. Over the last week both card designers have been updating their social networks quite regularly with pictures of the rookies in action as well as the hard signed cards that the players have signed over the three day event.

I have to admit Panini has done a better job with some of their designs. Both the NFL Draft Tickets and Destinations autographs look significantly better than previous years but the autograph set that stands out for me is the Rookie Inscriptions cards. When used properly acetate cards can come out looking sweet, like the Shadowbox cards from Upper Deck.  I love a solid acetate design and the Inscriptions is definitely cool, though I do wonder how the autographs are going to hold up over time.

Some of the players added in personalized messages and there appears to be different colored inks used, I am not sure if there will be different serial numbers or if it is just random. Panini did print out personal editions for the players to take home but Tracy Hackler said that there will be acetate versions inserted in to packs of 2012 Elite Football.