Five Star Baseball Returns For 2013

Topps released the mother of all football products this week.  Football collectors have been drooling over the release of 2012 Topps Five Star.  Yes the brand is expensive, but the stuff looks good.  It looks as if Topps will be bringing Five Star Baseball back again too.  Five Star Baseball did well last year, but it did have its share of hangups.  Collectors were complaining about two major things.  One was chipping.  If you spend $500.00 on a box of cards there is no excuse for the amount of chipping we saw.  Second were the redemptions.  Last year’s Five Star Baseball had way too many redemption cards in it.  A lot of collectors are still waiting for Topps to come through with their autographs.  Hopefully this next wave will have all those kinks worked out.  Topps really needs to have a blog they can use as a central hub to communicate with collectors.

When you hear the Five Star name, you know your going to see some beautifully designed cards with amazing looking on-card autographs.  I think every manufacturer should look at Five Star and base their card designs (not price) off of it.  I like what we’ve seen so far.  The horizontal bat knobs look very nice and is the way all bat knob relic cards should be made.  Five Star traditionally hasn’t been a multi-sport product, so I’m not sure why Pele is in it.  Topps knows that a simple design can go a long way.  Their simple designs come with an simplistic edge.

Feast you eyes on these!

These bat knob relics look sharp.  The horizontal design allows more room for a larger picture of the player.

Why is Pele here?  Who knows.  The background on this card reminds me of a Fruit Roll-Up.