Hello and welcome to Talking Cards Podcast with Brand Salami and the Juice. It is just the juice here solo today. It's been a crazy week for the both of us, so I do apologize. I do apologize for the late episode this week. And yeah, it's gonna be just me today. Um, but what I'm going to do is a more in-depth breakdown of today's biggest release. That is Topps Chrome Football. So yeah, this week has been all about football, about tops chrome football. Everyone trying to get those boxes at a somewhat reasonable price, which is all but impossible at this point. The prices on these have skyrocketed. I know that I did a quick little mini sode on it a couple weeks ago when pre-order was first up, but now we have a now we have a lot more information. We have odds. So yes, let's talk about it. It released a couple days ago, and we do have the full checklist now. It was retailing at $3.99 for a hobby box. That's 20 packs per box, four cards per pack. I think you only get them on secondary for like $1,200. Those are one auto per box. Visually, I am a fan. It is the 2025 Topps design, same as baseball. It lends itself to football really nicely, nice clean look. No complaints here. As far as the design goes, the looks of the product as a whole. I'll give a more in-depth breakdown of that too. Let's start off with the base set checklist. This is 400 cards. Vets are numbered 1 to 300, rookies number 301 to 400. So about a three to one ratio of vets to rookies. This is a large checklist, but not unexpected for a topp's chrome product. This is what this is about what we've been seeing in other tops chrome releases, and it's right in line. You are going to see these huge checklists because this is the topp's product. This is what you want when you're looking for a topp's rookie card, topp's autos. This one holds the most value as far as tops goes. Gonna try to get this coughing under control a bit. So for this 400 card checklist, we have a ton of parallels, over 50. Some exclusive to different SKUs, of course. You'll see some retail only, some breakers to light only, the geometric, pulsars for hangers, things like that, red, white, and blue for blasters, I believe. And then we do have edge variations, 50 vets and 50 rookie, 50 vets and 50 rookies, image variations. We have 30 vets and 20 rookies on that. So yeah, a lot of color, which at least if they're going to do a print run like this, you can expect to get some sort of color. I know a lot of people hate how big these rainbows are now, but if they're gonna 10 times the hobby, it's better than getting a box full of no color at all. So I'm I'm for it. And one big thing about this is of course, we are not seeing this during the football season because Topps just got their license. One big positive about this coming out so late after the season, they knew which players to focus on. They knew which ones to do for the variations and the SPs. So they didn't have to guess which players were going to become hot. You know, there's no Cal Rayleigh situation like we saw with baseball where he was not getting the love that he should have gotten in the past year of Topp's releases until way after the season was done. So that is one great positive. But of course, obviously in the future, I'd expect and I'd hope that we see this earlier in the football season, hopefully during the actual football year. As far as the checklist itself goes, the vets that you're gonna look for, you're always looking for the QBs, of course. The current guys, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Jordan Love, as a Packer fan, I'm looking for, of course. Caleb Williams, people will be looking for, and I won't, but I understand. And then, of course, Tom Brady is in this. One thing to point out, his auto is as a buck. I believe his kaiju is as a patriot. So if you're doing player breaks or anything, or team or team breaks, actually, something to be aware of. The big vet to look for that you don't want to overlook is Stafford. So they are doing the MVP buyback with this. They did extend it to football. So Stafford will start at $20 per base card as far as getting it back for credit. So definitely be on the lookout for those Stafford card, base, refractors, anything you can get your hands on. Those are going to get you at least $20 a piece and up. Of course, the rookies we're looking for. Again, the QBs are the big guys. Jackson Dark, Cam Ward, Shador Sanders. And then you got the other guys, Travis Hunter, Cam Scadabo. I wrote Travis Hunter twice. I guess, you know, he does play two positions, so that's fair. Ash and Janty, a few of the guys, but really, you really want to look for quarterbacks. The other guys just don't hold their value. Even like the all-time greats in the Hall of Famers and football, if you're new to it, they just don't hold their value like they should. It's like QBs are hitters and everyone else is a pitcher. But even pitchers, I think, get hold more value than the non-QBs. Like a guy that's a generational talent like Megatron or AP, those are the two that come off the top of my head. I guess because I had to see them twice a year against the Packers. But even got guys like that, like yeah, you're gonna get a decent amount, but not like if their talent matched the QB level. All right, next up, let's talk about the auto checklist. So for this, this is heavy. We got 70 vets and 94 rookies. You will mostly be hitting rookies, mostly guys that you don't know or care about. And that's what you're going to have to expect. 38 parallels for the autos. So again, huge rainbow for the autos, but not unexpected. Assume the vets are short printed compared to the rookies, it will be really, really hard to hit a decent rookie out of this. These prices are insane. Ultimately, I will give you my final reasons on why, but at the prices are at now, this is this is an easy pass to me. Which is hard to say because it's such a fun product and so many of the cards look great, but we'll get more into that. But then we have the legend autos. We have 28 legends, just 10 parallels. We got some really nice names here. Brady is the one on this checklist that where he's a buck, so beware. We got Drew Brees, Dan Marino, Ed Reed, AP. Just some examples of some guys on there. So it's a it's a solid checklist of the legends. Then we're gonna get into the 1990 football autographs. 1990, 1990 Topps football autographs. This is 34 cards. It's a mix of vets and rookies, not a bad checklist. You know, nothing crazy. I do like the look of these. And one thing as I'm going through this one, I want to make sure I mention now that the cards have released, there is a mix of on-card and sticker autos. So for all of you that really, really hate those sticker autos, just something to be aware of. Just want to give the heads up on that. Let's check out this 1990 football checklist. Yeah, you have Cam Morticore, you have Cam Orticourse, Jackson Dart, you got No Shador here, Josh Jacobs, Jaden Daniels, George Cadle, Dak Prescott, Bo Nicks, Alan Kamara. So yeah, nice nice mix of guys. That's just a sample of the 28 that's on there. Next up, so we have our dual autographs. This is 16 cards. Honestly, not the best checklist for duel. We see this with baseball a lot too. Um, but yeah, I really when you hit a duel, you really want both guys to really stand out quite a bit and for them to make sense together. There are two highlights though. There's a Cam Scadaboo and Jackson Dart for the Giants, of course. They are two top rookies, and they will ultimately, I believe, under form and disappoint Giant fans for the next good bit of time, like it seems to happen lately. But if you're looking for a value standpoint, those can fetch you quite a bit if you hit one of those. And I do believe that is a redemption that I've seen. You also have Josh Allen and Jim Kelly, which I think is a cool one. For the Bills, of course. You got, you know, the thing they have in common, not just the Bills, but they just can't win a Super Bowl. So you have that as well. Our next set of autos on the checklist is our future stars autographs. So this checklist is 25 cards, young guys, non-rookies, you know, just like you thought, future stars. So some fun guys that topps couldn't get their licensed rookie car last year, and we can see them on the and we can see them with some nice autos now. You got CJ Stroud, Caleb Williams, Brock Bauer, Drake May, Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Neighbors, Puka Nakua. So just another small sample of names that are on there. It's it's not bad. Definitely be a fun one to hit. Then we have the Chromographs autos. So I actually haven't seen any of these autos pulled, but the checklist is really nice for this. It is 24 cars. This is Justin Hobby, and we got eight different parallels on this one. But yeah, really solid mix of players. Again, a bunch of young guys mostly. You got Josh Allen, Jackson Dart, Justin Jefferson, JSN, Bo Nicks, Apuka, TJ Watt, Tyler Warren. So, yeah, nice, a nice mix of guys there, but really solid. If you get one of those, you're probably gonna get something you're happy with. Then we have the Hall of Fame autographs. This is 27 cards. There are a ton of solid Hall of Famers here. Um, you got Favre, Andre Johnson, who I love and I don't feel like he gets enough love for what he used to be able to do. Charles Woodson, who of course I'm a fan of, but he is a raider in this. Makes sense. Darling Sharp, Troy Aikman, Troy Palomalu. Who else we got? We got John Elway, Barry Sanders, Antonio Yates. A lot of really fun names. The autos that I did see of this, it was a sticker auto. So again, another heads up on those sticker autos if that's something you're looking for. Then we have the Tecmo autographs. 19 cards. This might be the insert auto chase of the product that you can actually have some sort of a chance of hitting. So I'm talking outside of the premier patch autos. The checklist, honestly, it's it goes anywhere from mid to solid. You know, you got I think the best guy to get out of this, of course, is Bo Jackson, which a lot of people think. I think his uh super has already been pulled. Uh Joe Montana, John Alway, Jalen Hurts, Travis Hunter, Jackson Dart, Dan Marino. Solid group of guys. Again, these are super hard to pull. I've seen people post them. I haven't seen them hit live at all. So yeah, these are these are tough. These are tough autos. They're tough inserts in in general, and let alone an auto, but the autos look beautiful from what I've seen. Uh, they did like a white ink or a silver ink on the cards, and it did not suffer the gold ink issues that we saw in Bowman baseball, Bowman draft. So, yeah, that's really nice to see out of that. There are retail autograph variations. I don't really want to get into those. We have patch autos, rookie patch autos. It's just the higher tier rookies, only 38 cards. Uh, again, that I don't think they I don't know why, but it doesn't really lend itself to chrome, the patch autos to me. And then the chase of the product 98 cards, all one-on-one, rookie premiere autos. This is the football equivalent to the deep to the debut patch that we find in top's chrome update. And yeah, this is probably right there where they're super fracture. I don't know which one is gonna end going for more for each player. Um, yeah, it's it's tough. I I would think the the debut patch is gonna go for more than super, but I don't know. You can really go either way with it. If you hit one, it's a good problem to have about uh how much to charge for it. But yeah, those those are as far as I've seen, only redemption. I know that we've seen debut patches not redemption and things like Breakers to Light. So you might be able to see one out there in the wild. But yeah, those are just sick. So if you don't know, they take from the player's debut game. All the players have a patch that shows it's their premiere with the number one for the letter I. If you are searching for these, remember to search with the number one there for the letter I. Or if you are so lucky as to list one, make sure that you spell it both ways because people are going to do that when they're searching. But yeah, so 98 cards will be hard to get lost in the shuffle. Just something to think about. Anyway, these are on the player's uniform when they make their debut. They take the patch off, they put into a card so it's game-worn from their actual debut, along with their along with their signature. Similarly, we have up the NFL Honors Gold Shield autos. These are five cards for the award winners from the NFL season. This is for the 2024 NFL season, because they had to wear them during 2025. So pretty much they had a gold shield patch instead of just the regular patch. And they take that from their uniform and they put it in a card. We have Josh Allen, the MVP, of course, Saquon Barkley, player of the year, Jaden Daniels, offensive rookie of the year, Jared Verse, defensive rookie of the year, Pat Sartain, Defensive Player of the Year. One of these was already hit as of the recording. I believe it was Josh Allen. Um, you can double check, I'm sure you can find it pretty easily because people will post these like crazy. But yeah, these are these are beautiful cards. That is, again, an exception to my rule of not liking tops chrome patches. Then we have our inserts. Been enough time, a couple days now, where I've been able to see. I think almost all these come out. A lot of them are back. Helix, we've seen before ultraviolet, gets a makeover. It looks great. Helix, I'm not the biggest fan of. Some people love it. It's a horizontal card, which I'm not a fan of. Lightning leaders, they don't sell for what they should. They just don't look like anything too special, but they are ultra rare. There's Let's Go. I have not seen one of those hit. Radiating Rookies. I've seen a couple of those. Those are pretty much what you come to expect from radiating rookies. Nothing crazy new for that. Fanatical, that's more retail. I haven't seen one of those hit. The big one that's out now, Kaiju. And these cards are selling. These cards are selling. These cards are selling for absurd amounts. You hit a kaiju, you just got yourself a five-figure card, most likely, depending on the player. At least four figures. If I hit one, I'm selling it right away. I don't think I'm gonna hit one because they're not ripping anymore. And I don't believe those could be found in retail. So something to think about. But yeah, these cards look beautiful. A lot of people say it's top's answer to downtown. I think that's more a home field advantage, but of course that's not in this football product. But these cards are awesome. They look clean, they look sharp. We've seen some supers get pulled already. They are super rare. But I've I watched, I believe Deep Fried Break did about 15 cases. I saw a few pulled by him. Uh, I saw a couple pulled by other people. So they're not impossible, but they are very, very tough. Game genies. I haven't seen one of these pulled, I'm sure they have been. I stated last time I wish it was more cartoony to see a better image of one. Now that they're out, a lot of people are big fans. I've heard good things about people. I've heard good things from people saying that they really like the look of these. So yeah, I just it's not my favorite, but it's definitely not the worst. And the Tecmo inserts, these are sick too. So we talked about them for the autos. For just a plain insert, they are just amazing as well. I think these look great. A lot of people have been having fun with the fact that on one of the cards, one of the players has six fingers instead of five. So they're accusing tops of AI and you know, just poor quality control, which I think that it's fair to make those claims against tops because it does seem kind of lazy. And I've also noticed something else that was kind of lazy. I pulled a so I got a bunch of hanger boxes. I got 32 hanger boxes off of the tops pre-order. So I was very lucky to be able to do so. And I just opened up a few boxes for myself and I sold a couple to a guy at work, so just about five boxes. These results are not typical, by the way. So don't expect to open your hangers and get this. According to Slab Squash, on the odds, these hangers are not like the NBA hangers. He says they can still be bangers, which which they could, but yeah, it's not like MBA, where this is the clear-cut favorite rip for the product. Anyway, in one of my few boxes, I did hit a Jackson Dart Pulsar, which is nice. I did hit a red Kurt Warner Legends of the Gridiron out of five. Two out of five. So that was really nice to be able to see some red peeking out of that. Really cool. I have it up already for sale. But the reason why I bring it up is when I put it up for sale, I was trying to look at comps and I was looking at the 2024 version, and there was a red that sold. I'm like, oh, okay. And I didn't realize it was 2024 because it's pretty much the same exact card, except for the licensing. As in, it's literally the same exact photo of Kurt Warner. Just this year they put the licensing on. Last year, of course, they couldn't. So coming full circle to Tops being lazy. They literally took this insert. They took the card from last year. They used the same image, but they just added the licensing. I did not do a deep dive into how common that was, but definitely something to think about. Maybe someone wants to look into that and see if this is true for multiple cards. I would not be surprised. But yeah, I just thought that was an interesting tidbit. Uh, definitely something to look out for. Tops, stop being lazy and give us new cards. Please give us a better reason to collect your cards every year. This year you got the licensing. So of course we're gonna buy compared to last year. Next year, I don't know, you're gonna run out of ideas, you're not gonna be able to use the same image again, are you? I wouldn't put it past them. All right, so that is our checklist breakdown. Next up, flip it, flip it, or break it. So at this point, if you're able to get any at retail, I would flip this 100%. There is no way that I'm holding this. There is no way that I am ripping this because the prices that you can get for these right now is absurd. Even if you had to buy it a bit of rubber, a bit above retail, you might still be able to make a good decent amount because it seems like the prices are not going any lower. Just it's one auto per box. It's like $1,200 for a hobby box now. That's insane. And also, football, it's so tough to pull decent guys. It is absurd. I just I don't understand. I I get the hype, but I can't imagine spending that much money on it. I think, and a lot of people think and will tell you this price is really driven up by breakers, which you find the right guys and you get in early, of course, you can do it and get in. But yeah, because people will buy those teams for what seem like a smaller amount, they're pretty much paying what they should pay for a hobby box for just one team in a case, which I get like if that's what you can afford to do, go for it. But yeah, the these prices are just so insane, so inflated. You know, you might be able to get some breaks for a decent price if your team does not have one of those top rookies, but even then, these teams are all going for such a premium. You know, don't even try if you have any sort of a budget to go giants, rounds. Yeah, it's just you're gonna get killed. The other thing I actually wanted to mention is in the hangers, the two that I sold to my buddy at work, I just sold it to him for retail. I'm not trying to make money off of him. He pulled a black pull out card, a black out of ten true black Will Howard. And then today he was able to sell that card in right away for $900, which I recommended that he does. He put it on eBay for $1,200, got some offers, got one right away for $500, $750. Someone ultimately paid $900. And yeah. So out of about five hangers, I hit a red and my friend hit a black. Again, results not typical, but you know, the hits are out there, they are there to be found. All right, let's give, let's hear my final thoughts. So, visual, I'm gonna give this an eight out of ten. I think these are great looking cards. The quality control on them has been a little questionable. The centering, it looks like they when they took over the license from Prinny, they also took over their centering issues on these high quality cards. So, yeah, but eight out of ten still, with definitely a good re-entry for tops after their decade, after their decade-long absence. Base cards look clean, inserts and SSPs. Overall, very solid job. Most of the hits of the autos are on card. There are a couple stickers here and there. So eight out of ten, very solid effort. Short-term value. I'm giving this a nine out of ten. This is something you can make money on right away. I am not holding these cards long term. Of course, if you have a big rookie or you have someone that you think is going to be a big player in the future, they get for cheap. Of course, these rookie QBs, you know, this guy can be the limit with their prices, but short of winning, you know, becoming the next Patrick Mahomes, prices never really reflect what their future is going to be. So it's very tough. I usually recommend for football QBs to wait and see for then test some downtime. But if they never have downtime, you could miss out. It's tough to say. For example, Will Howard, the card my friend sold for $900 today. Rodgers retires. Steelers, you know, don't have a lot of options to have quarterback. He makes a start that could end up doubling in price pretty easily if he becomes the next Steelers card starting quarterback, even if it's just for a couple games or something, or he just comes in and he just lights things up for a game. People are gonna go crazy for that card. I would still recommend, I still think it was a good call to sell it right. Long-term value, I'm gonna give this a six out of ten. This will always depend on the rookie QBs and how they perform. It could easily change to a 10 if one of these guys does become the next Patrick Mahomes like guy, or you know, wins multiple MVPs. They can really just a single QB can elevate this. And then if you have multiple guys, you know, you just have a really strong QB year. You can see that, but I don't foresee that for this year. I'm not a big believer in the QBs and this rookie class. I see a floor, I see a floor of five for this as far as the long-term value goes. I think that the prices could certainly start to go down quite a bit as these QBs show that they are not the next guy. So if you really want in on this and you care more about other vets and not so much the QBs, maybe you can afford to wait a little bit and see if that value does come down. But you're gonna be waiting a long time because you're gonna need this next season to really show what these QBs can and can't do. Breaking, I'll give this a six out of ten if you want to go into a break. One hobby case is only 12 autos, jumbo is 16, so it's just not a ton. It's just not a ton of auto hits to go around. You're still gonna see some decent hits, and I've seen the SSP sitting at a decent price, which is kind of contradictory. But yeah, I think that. The pricing is so tough on every team. So I would, if you're going to do a break, try to get in now or this weekend. Don't wait another week. Don't wait for that wave two pricing. If it's not already here, just try to get in while the price is somewhat affordable before it inflates too much. Lastly, the checklist. I'm going to give this a seven out of ten. It has a cheap, it has a deep checklist, but that is what you can expect from Tops Chrome. It does hit all the things it needs to. It's hitting all your favorite players. It's hitting all the rookies that you need. It's got a nice mix of three to one Vet's to rookies. It's a really good reboot from Topps. And yeah, I think Topps did a really good job of representing all the teams well, spreading out, you know, a lot of stuff. And of course, the print run is another story. If you so I know we've shouted out Slapsquatch a few times here, look at his breakdown for the odds and everything on Twitter. Yeah, this is no MBA as far as hit expectations go. A lot of people are going to get killed on this product, unfortunately. But the hits are out there. There is fun to be had. The cards are great, even the base cards. So if you are a football fan, if football cards is really what drives you in this hobby. This is currently the premiere product. This is the one to get. And that's all for today. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening. This was a Juice Solo with a Tops Chrome football breakdown. This is the Talking Cards podcast. If you do have questions or anything you want us to bring up, we do have that link for the mailbag in our episode detail. So definitely check that out. Thank you so much.