[Baseball Nut]

It’s Rainbow time for Football collectors as 2011 Topps Platinum NFL Trading Cards arrive. These are premium cards with an emphasis on the different colored parallels and xfractors. As with Bowman Platinum for baseball, without the understanding that this is intended for parallel chasers, Topps Platinum Football can appear to be a hugely hit or miss kind of product, when, in fact, it delivers on its intent quite well.


Topps Platinum falls under our premium cards category. Each box contains 20 packs with 5 cards per pack. Each box delivers 3 autographs, two of those will be Rookie On-Card Autograph Refractorts and one will be an Autograph Refractor Patch Relic card.


Here are some of the cards we pulled from the box.

Philip Rivers base, front and back



More base cards, Drew Brees, Adrian Peterson, Aaron Rodgers and Andre Johnson



Gold parallels come one to a pack
Maurice Drew-Jones, Matthew Stafford, Larry Fitzgerald and Brian Urlacher



Green Parallels - Odds are 1 in 10 Packs
Peyton Manning and Brandon Pettigrew



Red Parallels - Odds are 1 in 20 Packs (we beat the odds)
Cedric Benson and Brandon Lloyd


Calvin Johnson Die Cut - Odds are 1 in 20 Packs



The best of our rookie cards
Shane Vereen, Von Miller, Jake Locker and Christian Ponder



Rookie XFractors - Odds are 1 in 4 packs (short 1 which could explain the extra Red we pulled)
Nick Fairley, Ryan Kerrigan, Marcell Dareus and DaQuan Bowers


Von Miller Blue Parallel #/299

Here are the hits.

J.J. Watt On-Card Auto #/1550


Stevan Ridley Green Parallel On-Card Auto #/150

Redemption card for a, or should I say the, Jerod Mayo Auto Superfractor Veteran Patch Card 1/1
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Overall Look

These cards look great. The design elements on the front walk the fine line of supporting the isolated photos of the players, keeping the card interesting without being too busy. The backs are complete with everything you would want from bio to stats to personal info. All the color parallels work well too.

Quality and Variety of Players

At 150 base cards, this list of players is a very nice mix of current greats of the game and incoming rookie class. Small detail, but I also appreciate that in numbering the set, Topps mixed the rookies in with the veterans, making it one cohesive unit, rather than two groups of players in one set.

Do the Hits satisfy? Are the cards too base heavy?

On-Card Rookie Autos, Patch Autos, die cut cards and various colored parallels are super hits. Short of the problems with rookie prospecting, you should be very satisfied.

Will you keep coming back for more?

For Rainbow collectors, multiple boxes of Platinum is easy to see. If your needs are just a specific player from this set, aftermarket singles are the way to go.

Rating

4 1/2 out of 5

2011 Topps Platinum Football should keep both prospectors and rainbow collectors very happy.



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[bakemeister52]

Nice looking cards and love the MJD card!