Topps Replacements for 2014 Five Star Marshawn Lynch Redemptions

I had two outstanding redemptions for 2014 Topps Five Star Marshawn Lynch which have been outstanding for years -- almost three years now.  At this point, it's quite clear that the cards will never be signed.  Panini has the exclusive license to produce NFL cards.  Topps has given up fulfilling outstanding football redemptions as a result.  This isn't something that they've publicly admitted but it's been reported on the Blowout Cards Forums by a few individuals who have spoken with Topps representatives.

I really wish that these cards would be made, so it sucked to finally give up and ask for a replacement.  If I didn't ask for a replacement now, the pool of possible replacement cards would get worse and worse as time went on as more people asked for replacements.

I honestly was not expecting anything good because I've read so many horror stories about Topps replacements since Panini has taken over the NFL licensing rights.

But to my absolute surprise, I got some decent cards!  I got a Matt Jones 2015 Topps rookie autograph, a 2015 Topps Fire Melvin Gordon autograph patch rookie card #/50, a 2014 Topps Finest Brandin Cooks patch autograph gold parallel #/50, a 2014 Topps Finest Jimmy Garoppolo autograph patch rookie card, and a 2015 Topps Chrome Marcus Murphy rookie autograph!

Obviously, the Brandin Cooks and Jimmy Garoppolo cards are the real jewels of this replacement pack.

I can't say that I'm disappointed.  Of course I would have wanted my Marshawn Lynch autographs, but getting two top notch 2014 rookies out of Finest is solid!

I think Topps did me good on these replacements.

2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions Redemption Replacement

I've had an Antwan Goodley redemption from 2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions pending for the longest time.  I checked the status of the card on Upper Deck's redemption website and it said that the card was never made, and thus I should contact them regarding a replacement.  So I did.

First I called on the phone and was told to send an email to QA@UpperDeck.com with the redemption code and a list of five teams and/or players whom I collect.  I ended up sending Upper Deck a list of nine football players who I collect.  The players ranged from future hall of famers, to retired veterans, starters in the NFL, and a few 2nd string players.  I wasn't expecting to get any of cards of the players I wanted since none of them were in the 2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions set.

About 2 weeks later I got my redemption replacements in the mail.

In all, I don't think I can complain.  I got a red #/75 Jay Ajayi autograph and a red #/75 Ameer Abdullah autograph.  Both are backup runningbacks but they played in their first years, so there is some hope that they might actually become starters and decent players some day.

Overall, my Upper Deck redemption replacement request went very smoothly and quickly.  I'm happy with the results even though I didn't get any of the players I requested in my email.

2015 Topps Platinum Football Redemption List

Here is a list of players who have redemption cards in 2015 Topps Platinum Football.

Redemptions for this product expire on November 30, 2017.

1. Marcus Mariota 

Quite interestingly, Marcus Mariota is the only player who seems to have redemptions in this product.  I cannot find any other redemptions on eBay for any other players.

If you're buying any 2015 Topps Platinum Football after November 30, 2017, and you're hoping to hit a Marcus Mariota, you run the risk of getting an expired redemption that Topps will not fulfill.

2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions Football Redemption List

Here is a list of the players who have redemption cards in 2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions Football.

Redemptions for this product expire on February 23, 2017.

1. Anthony Boone
2. Anthony Harris
3. Antwan Goodley
4. Dorial Green-Beckham
5. Jaelen Strong
6. Javorius Allen
7. Jay Ajayi
8. Josh Shaw
9. Mike Davis
10. Nelson Agholor
11. Nick O'Leary
12. Sammie Coates
13. Steven Nelson
14. Terrance MaGee
15. Titus Davis

As always, if you're buying this product hoping to hit autographs of one of the players listed above then I wouldn't do so after February 23, 2017.

2014 Topps Five Star Football Redemption List

Below are players who have redemptions in 2014 Topps Five Star Football.  I will try to keep this list as up to date as possible.

Redemptions for this product expire on February 28, 2018.

1. Aaron Rodgers
2. Brandon Marshall
3. Clay Mathews
4. Dri Archer
5. Jadaveon Clowney
6. Jeremy Maclin
7. Julio Jones
8. Marquise Lee
9. Marshawn Lynch
10. Matthew Stafford
11. Pierre Garcon
12. Rashad Jennings
13. Ryan Mathews
14. T.Y. Hilton

If you purchase this product after February 28, 2018, you run the risk of hitting an expired redemption.  By knowing who has a redemption in the product, consumers may evaluate whether they can tolerate the risk of hitting an expired redemption for one of those players.  For example, hitting an expired redemption for Pierre Garcon would not suck as much as hitting an expired redemption for Julio Jones, Matthew Stafford, or Marshawn Lynch.

On the other hand, if all the players who have redemptions in the product suck (they don't but let's just pretend they do) and all the good players have autograph cards which are live in the product, then there is little risk for buying products with expired redemptions.

Panini's 2014 National Treasures Football Collation Debacle

If you're a football card collector who likes high end cards, then by now you are aware of Panini's debacle with 2014 National Treasures Football.  And in case you aren't aware of it then I'll summarize the situation right now: a whole week after 2014 National Treasures Football was released there were still no Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPAs, or booklets.

This incident spawned a huge discussion on the Blowout Cards forums.

Everyone agreed that it was extremely unusual that no Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPA or booklet redemptions had been hit even after a whole week since the product's launch.  Between all the cases being broken all across the nation in hobby shops, and in online breaks, by now at last a couple of each should have surfaced.

The conspiracy theorists believed that Panini purposely withheld those cards -- arguably the two biggest cards of the two biggest players in the 2014 rookie class -- to drive up sales not only in successive shipment waves of the National Treasures product, but also in other Panini products like Spectrum Football.

Other people who were less willing to immediately jump to the conclusion that Panini was up to no good believed that this could be an honest collation mistake or error.

I gave my two cents in the thread and noted how the chances of NOT seeing an Odell Beckham Jr. or Teddy Bridgewater RPA or booklet redemption was practically impossible if we assumed that 500 cases of National Treasures had been broken within a week.

Below is my full comment.

There are 150,552 cards in the set. There are supposed to be 8 cards per box but most boxes have 10 or 11. Let's just choose 11. (The higher number actually works in Panini's favor.) Divide 150,552 by 11, and that means there are 13,686 boxes in the entire production.  

There are 312 total OBJ and Teddy RPAs 

Let's assume that none of the OBJs and Teddy RPAs will ever appear in the same box. Divide 312 OBJ/Teddy boxes by 13,686 total boxes, and that means there is a .0228 chance of hitting one of those cards in the very first box of NT opened.  

Alternatively, there is a .9772 chance of NOT hitting one of those cards in the very first box of NT opened. Expressed as a fraction that's (13,686-312)/13,686 or 13,374/13,686.
As each box of NT is opened and a OBJ/Teddy isn't hit, then the probability of hitting one of those cards goes up ever so slightly.  

Similarly, as each box is opened and one isn't hit, the probability of not hitting one in the next box goes down. Number-wise, it looks something like this... 

(13,374/13,686) x (13,373/13,685) x (13,372/13,684) x etc. as each box is opened. 

Now, let's assume that 500 cases have been broken by now which is probably a reasonable assumption. There are 4 boxes per case. So that's 2000 boxes opened. (2000 boxes would also represent around 15% of the production run) We need to do that above equation 2000 times. 

What's the probability of opening 2000 boxes of NT and not hitting a OBJ or Teddy RPA?  

Expressed as an equation it looks something like this: 

(13,374! / 11,374!) / (13,686! / 11,686!) 

None of the scientific calculators I could find could hand this calculation because the numbers are too big, but it should be pretty close to zero and I think we can show that another way. 

When figuring out a probability and a past event influences a future event, it's called conditional probability. Our situation is conditional since once a card is pulled, it is removed from the available pool and not replaced.  

But because our numbers are so big, we can actually treat this as the opposite of conditional probability (unconditional probability?).  

As we found out earlier, the chances of a OBJ/Teddy RPA NOT being pulled from the very first box of NT is (13,686-312)/13,686 or .9772. Even if 2000 boxes were opened and a OBJ/Teddy RPA still hadn't been hit, then the probability of NOT hitting one in the next box opened would be (13,686-2,000-312)/(13,686-2,000) or (11,374/11,686) or .9733. 

.9733 isn't too different from .9772, so we can treat this entire calculation as unconditional probability (probability with replacement).  

So, if the probability of NOT hitting a OBJ/Teddy RPA is .9772, and 2000 boxes have been opened, then the probability of that happening is... 

.9772^2000 which is 9.27^-21 or basically zero.  

Even if we used a lower probability like .9733 and 2000 boxes were opened, then the probability is still 3.11^-24 or basically zero. 

For comparison, even with a probability of .9733 and only 200 boxes being opened (50 cases), the probability of still not hitting a OBJ/Teddy RPA would be .00446 or about 0.446% chance of happening.   

In short, if we assume that 500 cases of National Treasures have been broken (2000 boxes) within a week of the product's release, then the chances of NOT hitting an Odell Beckham Jr. or Teddy Bridewater RPA (just RPAs and not booklet redemptions) is practically zero, or about 0.00000000000000000002116%.

What does this all mean?

It means that without a doubt the Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPAs were NOT randomly distributed throughout the 2014 National Treasures production run.  This is a fact.  The above math, if accurate, and I think it is, proves that it is about as close to statistically impossible for this to happen by random chance.

If Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPAs were randomly distributed throughout the 2014 National Treasures production run, then statistically, collectors should have seen a handful of them pop up already whether it be on eBay or online box breaks.  Clearly, something went wrong when National Treasures was packed out.

Now, whether this was an intentional act by Panini or a mere innocent collation error we don't know.  Panini haters are quick to assume it was an intentional act by Panini, but I could see this being a simple innocent collation error too.  Don't get me wrong, I am not completely dismissing the idea that Panini did something intentional, but I think without any evidence proving their guilt that the most we can say happened is that there was a horrible collation error.

My guess is that Panini was still waiting on those cards to come back signed, but in the mean time they started the packout process believing that they'd get the cards back in time before the packout process was complete.  But while the packout process was still in progress, they realized they wouldn't get those cards back in time before packout was complete so they needed to insert redemptions for those cards.  They began inserting redemptions into the production run at that point in time, but by that time the first wave of cases had already been packed, sealed, and prepared for shipping to distributors -- all without any Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPAs in them.  Panini then completes the packout process.  From their point of view, the RPA redemption cards have all been packed out and they've done nothing wrong.  But in reality, because the RPA redemption cards were inserted into the production run mid-packout, the boxes which had already been packed out and sealed had none of those cards.  Meaning collectors who bought those initial cases had ZERO chance of hitting an Odell Beckham Jr. or Teddy Bridgewater RPA.

Is there a moral to this story?  If any, I suppose it's that pre-ordering a product is a gamble.  Who knows what production issues it might contain.  Topps has had its share of problems too.  Most recently its 2015 Topps Tribute Baseball release was recalled due to a large portion of the autograph cards being smeared.  Also, Topps' 2013 Five Star Football release was plagued by many of the cards suffering from ink stains on their edges from the cardboard boxes that they came in.  (See my blog post on that issue here.)  Had a consumer waited until after the release of the product then they could have avoided these problems.

Topps seems to have a little more trust in the collecting community than Panini.  It may not be a lot, but it's there.  Panini on the other hand has proven themselves very adept at losing consumer confidence by using questionable patches in their products, putting the wrong patches on cards for players, putting questionable player autograph stickers in their products, and now having major collation issues with their products.  Since Panini will now have the exclusive NFL license for football cards starting this year, I want to like them.  I'm trying to like them.  But they sure are making it difficult.  Clearly they have a lot of room for improvement, and it would be nice to see them make some improvements.

2014 Panini National Treasures and Topps Five Star Football Redemption Shelf Life

In case you haven't noticed, I've been keeping a log of all the redemption expiration dates for football products.  I made that page so people buying older product will know whether the redemptions are expired or not.

One thing I've noticed is that 2014 Panini National Treasures Football has a very short redemption shelf life.  National Treasures went live on April 8, 2015.  The National Treasures redemptions expire on October 08, 2016.

That's a shelf life of only 550 days!

The concern about Panini's redemptions expiring so quickly is moot, however, since Panini will honor expired redemptions.  (Although, at some point in the future they may change their policy.)

Since Topps does not honor expired redemptions there is more concern when buying their products.  2014 Topps Football also went live on April 8, 2015.  The Five Star redemptions expire on February 28, 2018.

That's a shelf life of 1058 days!

Topps gives you almost three years to buy their product without having to worry about hitting a redemption that is expired.  After the redemption expiration date passes, buying a product that is known to have redemptions in it now becomes extremely risky -- especially if the redemptions are of top players.  Wouldn't it be horrible if you hit a redemption of the top QB in the league only to find out the redemption is expired and the card company won't honor it?

Bottom line, when buying older products you should always determine beforehand whether it contains redemptions, and when those redemptions expire!

My Topps Customer Service Experience & Redemption Mail Day Results

About two and a half weeks ago I called Topps and requested a replacement for an outstanding 2012 Topps Chrome Mark Barron Autograph. 

They said it would take about two weeks for my request to be fulfilled.  They weren't kidding, as last week my mail day arrived. 

My $25.00 Mark Barron autograph was officially replaced with a 2013 Bowman Football autograph of quarterback Mike Glennon.

I think I did pretty good!  I went from a defensive player with little potential for a value in crease, to a QB with potential for a value increase!  Granted, Mike Glennon's days might be numbered in Tampa Bay with the new coaching staff coming in and cleaning house, but he was one of the better performing rookie QBs from the 2013 class.  If he gets put in the right offense and in the right situation, I could see him being a serviceable QB.

I also got my blue wave pack.  I was really concerned that they might not send it or claim that they ran out but lucky for me I got one.  Unfortunately I didn't get any really top players.  I guess Morris Claiborne is the best card of the four that I got.  These are really beautiful cards in person when the sunlight hits them just right.

I had a pleasant experience dealing with Topps customers service, all the way from phone call to receipt of cards.  I can't complain.  I know that a lot of people have said that Topps has some of the worst customer service of all the card companies, but I experienced nothing of the sort.  I'm happy.

My Topps Customer Service Experience & Replacement Redemption Experience

Since I've been in the hobby, I've always heard from others about Topps' horrible customer service.  For the most part, it seems like there are complaints about long hold times on the telephone, getting the run around from whomever they talk to, and getting poorly valued replacements for redemptions.  I've never experienced Topps' customer service because I've never had occasion to... until now.

I've been waiting on a Mark Barron autograph from 2012 Topps Chrome Football.  It's been almost one year and eight months since the product released and he still hasn't signed his cards.  I doubt he will ever sign.  That being the case, I figured I might as well request a replacement autograph.  I also wanted to get my blue wave pack before Topps' ran out of them.  (All 2012 Topps Chrome redemption cards were to be fulfilled with a special pack of blue wave cards.)  In all honesty, I'm more concerned about getting a blue wave pack than getting a good replacement autograph.

So on Friday during my lunch break, I called Topps' Consumer Relation phone number at 1-800-489-9149 and found myself on hold, and second in line for service.  Within 30 seconds, another pre-recorded messaged played telling me I was first in line.  This was a pleasant surprise.  I had heard horror stories of people being on hold for -- literally -- an hour before speaking to someone.  Perhaps I just caught Topps on a good day when they weren't busy, or maybe they were making a very big effort to improve their customer service.

After another 30 seconds a woman picked up the phone.  She introduces herself as "Remy" and asked me my name.  I told her.  I guess she typed it into a computer and named off all four redemptions that I currently had outstanding.  (Impressive!)  Good thing I have a fairly unusual last name.  I can only imagine if your name is something very common like "Mike Johnson" or something, a dozen people might pop up in their database and then they'd have to figure out which one you are.

Next she asked what I was calling for.  I told her I wanted a replacement on my Mark Barron autograph redemption.  She said that was fine and asked me to hold while she looked up "how much the card is going for."

I thought it was a bit funny how they were trying to ascertain a price or value for this card, which never was produced (because Mark Barron never signed it).  At most, whatever value they came up with would only be theoretical.  I suppose you could rely on the sale history of the redemption card, but eBay didn't have any current sales of Mark Barron 2012 Topps Chrome autograph redemptions.

I was on hold for about four minutes when all of a sudden, I heard a click.  She had hung up on me.  It was likely an accident, but still annoying.

So I called back.  This time, I was immediately connected to a different representative.  She was a woman, and took about three minutes taking down my information and request again.  She then put me on hold.  After another minute on hold a second woman came onto the line and said that she was going to transfer me to another representative "to complete this matter."  Could the last person I talked to not complete this matter herself?  Not having much of a choice, I said okay.  Next, a third woman answers the phone, and immediately puts me on hold.  Why?  I don't know.

So at this point, between the two phone calls, I had spoken to four different ladies.  The first one hung up on me, and the next three just kept putting me on hold and transferring me to other people.

Finally, the fourth person (for this phone call) picks up the line, and asks me what I want.  I tell her again, and give her my name.  She tells me she's Remy, the gal I talked to on the first phone call, and that she accidentally hung up on me.  She apologized and noted that she's sitting at someone else's desk right now and this person's phone (or phone line) is messed up and it sometimes disconnects when it shouldn't.  Okay, no biggie.  She then tells me she's going to put me on hold so she can go look up the card's Beckett Value.  Did she not get around to doing that the first time I called?

After being on hold for another few minutes, Remy came back on the line.  She explained that the Mark Barron autograph had a Becket Value of $25.00 and that I would be getting a card of equal or greater value within one or two weeks.  I said that was fine, but I wanted to make sure that I got a blue wave pack too.  She said she'd put a note in the order, and that the orders are processed by a different department so she personally couldn't do anything about it.  Fair enough.  I thanked her for her help and that was it.

Overall I wouldn't say that my experience with Topps' customer service was bad at all.  Sure there was a dropped call, a little bit too much transferring between representatives, but I wasn't on hold for a long time and the representatives were fairly pleasant.

Now, the only question remaining is whether the card I receive from Topps will have an equal or greater value of $25.00, and whether I get my blue wave pack...