2010 Topps Prime Retail Rack Packs (x10)

Just a note--I bought these on Saturday, the day before my group break.  As funny as it might sound to be buying stuff in the middle of a big (and somewhat expensive) thing as that, a) it was the last day Meijer had cards at 20% off and 2) I wanted to get in on these packs at a decent price after I saw some breaks on BlowoutCards.  That being said, read on to see what's what with these packs:


Purchased from/price:  Meijer, $3.99 (x10)
Packs/cards:  10 packs of 14
Set size:  150 base cards
Key features/cards: Pretty much the rookies, as usual, though there's some sweet-looking hits too

Sample front

Sample back

Set completion:  94/150 (63%)
Extras:  40/134 (30%)

Inserts:  6

Base Veteran Copper Parallel:  2, Thomas Jones (0582/1379) and LT (1264/1379) (1:3, 3 expected)

Prime Rookie/2nd/3rd/4th Quarter Combo Insert:  4, Ben Tate Prime, Benn/Williams 2nd, AP/CJ/MJD 3rd, Bradford/Tebow/Bryant/D. Thomas 4th (1:4, 2 expected)

Best card:  The quad-player 4th Quarter insert gets my vote.  Pretty cool!
Best pack:  #5 included base cards of Calvin Johnson, Percy Harvin, Randy Moss, Anquan Boldin and LT plus rookies of Suh and Tebow.  It also included the 4th Quarter insert, so it wins hands down.

Quality control and collation:  15/20  Quality control presented no issues.  Collation was a slightly different story.  The positive:  I did a bit better on my inserts than expected, replacing a Copper Parallel with two of the 1:4 inserts, which was cool.  The negative:  yeesh, 30% is a lot of doubles!  To be fair, a lot of them are of rookies, and I'm making my usual allowance that these are rack packs, but that's still more than two packs' worth!  Hence the lower overall score here.
Base set: 20/20  Yes I'm giving it a perfect score because 1) I really like the way it looks and 2) I can't find anything about it to knock.  If this is essentially our replacement for Stadium Club I'm cool with that because I really like the full-bleed, action-packed photos, which SHOULD be the focus on any card really.  The rest of the front design is fairly simple, which I like.  I don't have much to say about the backs, which are less important to me anyway, so I'll just go with calling them solid.  For a somewhat smaller set I was fairly happy with player selection--a good mix of 2010 rookies and veterans.
Inserts:  12/15  Not a perfect score because I'm not in love with these, but I'll consider myself satisfied.  I got one more than I expected, for one thing.  Regarding the Coppers:  the slightly different foil on the front doesn't make a difference to me, but I do generally like serial numbered stuff; I DON'T like frivolous foil parallels (ie ones that aren't any different otherwise, such as serial numbering), so these qualify as "ok".  The Prime Rookie insert was fairly boring, but the 2nd/3rd/4th Quarter combos are pretty cool-looking.  Not much else to see here, really, but a solid score for a decent haul.
Hits and extras:  8/15  I didn't pull any hits, so this score is more for the potential for hits than anything.  The ones I've seen look great, but it's generally going to be tough pulling them from these packs.
Value:  25/30  Rack packs (I'll be in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah "value packs") often present a pretty good value, especially compared to blasters.  I haven't tried any blasters or hobby packs of these so I can't say for certain how much better or worse they'd be.  Minus the doubles I got I'd give this a much higher score, but as it stands they did pretty well.  Keep in mind I paid $4/pack, of course--getting "only" 14 cards for the $5 regular price is good, but not great.


Overall:  80/100
Recommendation: Buy, but I'm thinking you'd be better off with a hobby box if you're serious about the set and/or want a better chance at some hits.  If you're just doing some impulse card-buying, though, grab a few of these and pick up some rookies and an insert or two, if only for trade bait.

Yep, just a Tom Brady this time, but it's not an enormous set so that's not shocking; Henne's the only other Wolverine I noticed on the checklist