$25,000 a Box?!

The idea behind Topps Transcendent was pretty straightforward.  Create a super-premium product with on card autographs of top tier players, craft a unique high end base set, and a sketch parallel.  In practice, the price tag north of $20 grand was just slightly offputting to many.  However, in the age of group breaks, these products sold quite well.  Consider me guilty of participating.  One of the other catches was a golden ticket that allowed you to go to an event and meet a certain popular baseball player, whether it be a current hobby stud or an all-time great like Hank Aaron.  The swag associated with those parties also added a lot of value to the packages, and the public began to catch on.  All in all, the sets seemed to provide decent value between the cut autographs, the base set, the sketch set, the autographs, and the golden ticket + swag.

What I liked about this high end lottery gamble was that several of the autographs had inscriptions.  The designs were also very clean and on-card, which prevails to my dominant collecting philosophy.  I also think that inscriptions are very personal and cool, and add a ton of value.  Also, the photography was pretty neat for a lot of the players.  Especially cool was the Junior Griffey backwards hat picture.  Previously he was not usually featured as "The Kid" (a few notable exceptions, including Leaf cards), but this was a great one.  I picked up a few singles, but regrettably did not attend the golden ticket parties.  Maybe next year.