lets bring back Topps hockey cards

[TheTGB]

I'd rather ITG have the NHL license back then Topps. ITG knows hockey and knows hockey collectors. I never really got that feeling from Topps when they produced hockey cards.

Upper Deck and Panini do a good job, but I'd like to see what ITG can do with the NHL license again over Topps.

[andrewconnors9]

They ditched their license, but they need to give it another go, i love all the refractors and whatnot they do with baseball, lots of rare parallels that are like 1:10000 packs, and 1:50000 packs, etc. Make for some fun breaks.

[andrewconnors9]

I'd rather ITG have the NHL license back then Topps. ITG knows hockey and knows hockey collectors. I never really got that feeling from Topps when they produced hockey cards.

Upper Deck and Panini do a good job, but I'd like to see what ITG can do with the NHL license again over Topps.

I will agree big time with this statement too. ITG has the best customer service in the hobby, give them their license back now!

[forsbic]

well as much as this topic wasn't about ITG, i couldn't agree more. at this point ITG should be given (that's right!) some kind of honorary licence for what they've done for the hockey fans and collectors so far

but still, three licensed brands = great! four = better

[flopfish]

i think 'the grass is always greener' applies here. though topps does make some nice cards... they are extremely expensive. the tribute card shown above is $50 a pack with most of the cards being a bat piece or jersey piece. their new stuff is just as many, if not more, parallels than panini/ud. i'm not sure guys... i do hear a lot of complaints about topps from the other sports people i talk to. not as much as about panini... ahaha.. but still there.

Panini was not ready at all for the hockey market and us hockey collectors, but are being able to. Honestly, I don't want Topps back. I used to collect their cards, but their designs are just... not for me at all. Way too many parallels, and I don't think they'd survive that long in the market because they tend to be very expensive.

[HammerHawks]

I really loved the Pristine set...

[flopfish]

The other point on this is that you look at sports with more than 2 manufacturers and the value of the cards. If you bring in a 3rd, it drives the market downwards IMO. If it were to be ITG or Topps, however, I'd take ITG, but wouldn't buy their products either way.

[golfermatt91]

I think Topps Pristine was a good product for all sports. Would like to see that back on the market.

[Estovia]

What would be fantastic is if the company could afford to pick up a license and just do a couple sets. I don't know the financials of it all, but I'm guessing the licensing fees and costs associated with game-used cards and autographs probably winds up almost forcing them to put out a certain amount of product.

If Topps could get back into hockey just to provide things like Finest and Refractors and some of the nice looking stuff in the OP pictures, that'd be great. But odds are in order to get those nice cards, we'd wind up suffering through a bunch of cards we don't feel like buying or dealing with.

We all thought that Panini getting licensed would improve the market for everyone. What did UD do? They cut some of the more popular sets (Black, Ice) and the quality of the rest of the sets really didn't change. Too many products still include all white patches, Black Diamond still comes out of a sealed box damaged, redemptions still sit in the queue unfulfilled.

Panini brought back some old favorites with a few twists, and some nice high end stuff. Along with it came poor pack rates in mid end product and parallels, parallels of parallels, and parallels of the parallels' parallels. Seriously, when even the insert sets have 4 or 5 levels of parallel, you may have gone a little overboard.

No thanks. I already get almost everything I could want from our current three providers, I don't need to see another new license bring in more sets just so I can chase a couple nice designs.

[30ranfordfan]

Topps did some okay stuff back in the day (thinking of Finest, and its Refactors specifically) and yes - there were some inserts over the years that Topps did that were pretty cool looking..... but overall, I would have put the Topps company well behind Upper Deck, Fleer / Donruss / Leaf, Pacific, and ITG in terms of overall atractivness on their cards.

I know Bowman has a huge following in baseball, but it was never much more than a junk, or later 'top prospects' set in hockey.

The best sets that Topps ever produced were OPC Premier - and they've sold that name (along with everything OPC) to UD.

I just don't see any point of them coming back..... and selling off OPC tells me that they probably don't either.