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Trader's Retreat - 2 Box Break!2015 Topps Chrome Football and 2015 Topps Mini Chrome FootballBy Jim Van NestJanuary 25, 2016
  Always a fan of Chrome products, 2015's version doesn't disappoint in terms of quality. The chroming technique looks fantastic on this year's card design. The way the veteran base cards' framing is done, the cards almost have a stained glass feel to them that looks really nice. Rookies are a little more plain. In our box, we pulled 48 of the 100 veterans and 24 of the 100 rookies. Overall, we pulled in 36% of the entire base set, with no duplicates.   As is usually the case with Chrome, refractors are where it's at in this set. In our box, we pulled examples of six of the 12 different types of refractors that are out there. Most abundant, of course, are the base refractors. We pulled eight in our box, four vets and four rookies. As you can see above, Marcus Mariota is one of the rookie refractors we pulled along with Dominque Brown, Benadrick McKinney and Sean Mannion. For the vets, we pulled LeSean McCoy, Nick Foles, Travis Kelce and Matt Forte. Next up we raked in two green refractors of Lamar Miller and Nick Foles. I really like the looks of these. The bright emerald green just really sets off the card, I think. Every box will feature a Pulsar Refractor and a Blue Wave refractor. In our box, our Pulsar is of LeSean McCoy and our Blue Wave is Andy Dalton. The Pulsar looks good as the light shimmies off it's surface. The Blue Wave isn't as impressive. It's a nice looking card, but I'd have preferred a nice bright blue that stood out like the green does. We also pulled two other refractors, both of which are numbered. First up is a Camo bordered Garrett Grayson. This card has a camo-green colored border and is # 207/499. The final refractor and probably the nicest is a Sepia refractor of Jaguars rookie, Michael Bennett. The chrome really sets off the sepia tones of the pic to make for a super good looking card. It's also lower numbered at 96/99 - which also happens to be his jersey number on the card, so there's also that!
    In 2015 Chrome, there are six different Insert sets. We pulled examples of five of them in our box. First up is the 1989 Super Rookie Insert set. We pulled four different cards in this set: Jay Ajayi, Philip Dorsett, Kevin White and Mike Davis. This set consists of a bunch of 2015 rookies featured on the old school 1989 Super Rookie card deisgn - then they chrome it up. I'm not a big fan of the 1989 design really, so these cards - while nice - leave me a little flat. I would have much rather pulled more cards from one of the other insert sets. The next insert set is the 60th Anniversary set, which features some of the greatest players on some of the greatest card designs of the last 60 years. We pulled two such cards in Eli Manning and Terry Bradshaw. I really like the look of these old school designs in the chrome format. The Bradshaw with the black border is just a very sharp looking card. The next insert we pulled in is a Dorial Green-Beckham 1976 throwback. The Titans rookie looks sharp in those old school '70s graphics! Our next insert is the only die-cut offering in this year's set, the Super Bowl 50th anniversary die-cut set. As you can see, we pulled the GOAT in Jerry Rice. The back of the card gives you some of Jerry's accomplishments in the big game that make him worthy of that set. The final insert is one of the All-Time 4,000 Yard Club cards and it features Andrew Luck. There is also a 1,000 Yard Club version of this set for Running Backs and Receivers, but we did not pull any of those. The blue background on this Luck really sets it apart from the rest of the set and makes this one of the Insert sets I'd most like to collect out of this box.  As promised, we pulled one Rookie Autograph in our box - and we got lucky. We pulled an on-card auto of the Arizona Cardinals breakout rookie RB David Johnson. As you can see in the scan, we have a nice dark blue auto that spans the width of the card without cutting off. Also, it is on-card so that makes it all the nicer. Final Thoughts on 2015 Topps Chrome Football With Panini honing in on the exclusive NFL rights for next year, this is likely to be the last Chrome Football product for a while (let's have a moment of silence). At any rate, I enjoyed my break, but that's in large part to a nice assortment of color as well as a very nice highly sought after rookie auto, that was also on-card. I'm seeing breaks featuring sticker autos - which were usually a no-no for Chrome and I've heard a lot of rumblings about the better rookie autos being super short printed, essentially sticking most people with an unknown rookie auto. If that's the case, I'm sure that's quite the bummer, but we had a pretty nice hit in our box. I love the look of the cards and all of the refractor options available in this set. I think the Variations might be a little over the top - like I don't know that we need so many. Priced around $62.95, I think that's a nice price point for this box. Even if this wasn't the last Chrome product for a while, I'd be suggesting a buy. Since it is, it's definitely a buy! So what are you waiting for? Also, to see the live break of this Chrome box, click Here! Ratings Innovation: 4 Fun: 4 Value: 5 Rebuy: 4 Total– 17/20 - So, I give 2015 Chrome Football a B+ final grade! NPN Information NPN 2015 Topps Chrome Football PO BOX 2098 Duryea, PA 18642 Limit – 1 Request Per Household Postmarked by: February 24, 2016 Received by: March 2, 2016 For our Canadian collectors, your entry will need to be accompanied by the answer to this skill question: 4 + 2 x 50 – 12 = ?
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