Thursday, October 30, 2014

It's Gonna Get Ugly: My Thoughts on 2014 Topps Update

You ever feel that Topps really doesn't give a crap about how you feel about their cards? Who am I kidding? Everyone feels that way because it's true. Never has it been more evident than it is in 2014 Update.

You can tell that they don't care because of simple errors that they didn't take the time to correct. "What kind of errors?" I'm glad you asked. Let me share with you.

First and foremost, let's take a look at card number 117:


Oh, that's right; there are two card number 117's. Bryan Holaday and John Lackey share the card number. How is this possible? How could this happen?


Oh wait - it happened twice! Feast your eyes on cards numbered 164: Josh Tomlin and Joe Kelly! Seriously, what the hell happened? Was Topps too busy giving sh*tty customer service to address this issue? What makes this even better is that there are two card numbers that are skipped in the set! There is no card number 21 or card number 311! This problem could have easily been fixed!!!

That's not all they screwed up, either. Notice the card numbering location and format in the card below:


That's the location and format of the majority of card numbers in the set.


There are many cards with a format like this with the number below the "US" designation.


But in case that wasn't annoying enough, let's just go ahead and move the location of the number altogether.

This is bush league garbage. Had I made mistakes like this in any of my graphic design courses in college, I would have received a failing grade. However, knowing that they have cornered the set building market, Topps decided that we, the consumers, don't matter that much and decided not to fix their problems.

This set sucks.

5 comments:

  1. Pretty soon, Topps will issue all of its mountains of sets with exactly the same photo for each player, just airbrushing faces and team names like some sort of photo booth where you stick your face through it.

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  2. I'm sure they are far too busy with their premium sets and just mail it in with their flagship releases. Unfortunately, since I can't afford the premium sets I'm left with this. That's why most of the time I'm buying the 2013 releases in 2014, etc. Much cheaper.

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  3. Two sentences into this post I thought, "Oh, they're not that bad." Now, having read the meat of the post, yeah. That's crazy. WHY?

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  4. When you take away competition, quality always goes in the sh*tter. It's the nature of business. I've been noticing the messed up numbering for two years. Actually moving the number location is a new level of "we don't give a crap"-ness.

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  5. I hope carelessness like this is brought up when Topps goes back to negotiate to be the sole carrier of the MLB license. Maybe MLB will let someone else into the game the next time around?

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