Yesterday, Beckett Media posted a first-look into 2011 Topps Finest Baseball. Being my favorite Topps product of all-time and The Hobby’s true first introduction of “high-end” when it made its debut in 1993, I was very interested to see what the product would look like. As you can see from the image below and the rest of them on the Beckett Blog, everything looks about right.
It wasn’t until I began reading the product details that an alarm went off in my head. This year’s Finest is officially the Player Collector Killer thanks to a whopping 14 different parallels of each card in the base set. What’s even more surprising is that each box, which consist of 12 packs, will bring you just 6 parallels.
Those kind of odds remind me a little of Finest’s entrance into the Hobby in ’93 when each box, if you were rich enough to afford one, would land you just one single parallel. Of course, back then Finest only had a Refractor but that was what made those parallels so valuable and extremely expensive even today.
One has to wonder just what kind of effect Topps’ Parallel Craziness will have on The Hobby. Wasn’t creating too many parallels the main reasons Donruss lost their baseball license back in the day? Will collectors see 14 parallels as overkill or will it become just one more reason to spend, spend, spend? Only time will tell as collectors won’t have a chance to bust Finest until September.
