This year the theme has been about the decades. With it being a new decade, Topps is focusing on previous decade best players and teams. Last year Topps focused on 150 years of baseball.
There have been "chasing" and "golden" events that Topps has promoted, but my favorite gimmick was in 2011.
2011 is kind of an iconic set now thanks to the great rookie class available in 2011 Update (Trout, Altuve, Goldschmidt, JD Martinez).
The theme that Topps used in 2011 was their Diamond Anniversary, 60 years of collecting.
Within the packs of flagship you could get a Diamond Card Giveaway code that was inserted 1 in every 4 packs. Once unlocked you could "dig for diamonds" and unlock cards from 1952-2009, die cut diamond cards (not numbered), die cut Black diamond cards (numbered to 60 copies), or the ultra rare 1/1 diamond embedded base card. (I will show mine off again in a few days so if you haven't seen it already, I will revisit that awesome card).
More details about the diamond card giveaway can be found here.
I was fortunate that I grabbed one of these black diamond cards a long time ago. They all have a protective layer on top of the card (that's the wrinkles you see on the card below) that can be peeled off to really make the card refract light better.
Wal Mart also has an exclusive blue diamond 30 card set. Pedro Alvarez represents the Pirates in that set.
Do you remember digging for diamonds in 2011 Topps?
whooo-oooo, black diamond! so sayeth paul stanley (and paul westerberg).
ReplyDeleteyes, i remember this promotion. i was able to obtain one of the black diamonds from the website, but it was of kelly johnson and not cutch or some other stud. still, i was able to trade it with some other cards for a davey lopes autographed card that i needed so, win-win.
The website was a lot of fun. You entered a code (c ode cards randomly inserted in Topps packs), and you either got a Topps card from years past, or one of the these diamonds. You could trade and then ship the cards whenever you wanted. I loved it.
ReplyDeleteNope, I never really paid/pay attention to the gimmicks. But that Black diamond as well as the base look pretty darn sweet right now.
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ReplyDeleteOh I remember this promotion well, mainly because I had gotten enough points or whatever it was to get the special diamond stamped factory set, but when I went into redeem it for some reason I it wouldn't give it too me. Long story short I contacted Topps and discovered that Topps had made the contest void in Alaska and Hawaii, something that hadn't even crossed my mind since I had participated in the 2010 cards your mother threw out promotion and gotten quite a few cards from that. Man I guess I'm still a little bitter about that.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think it's time to peel the protective coating off that bad boy.
I may or may not have participated in this giveaway. If I had to guess, I'd say I didn't though. I was fortunate enough to have the Black Diamond card of Gwynn gifted to me a few years ago (from Jason over at Clyde's Stale Cards).
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