Topps Chrome Basketball always promises some of the nicer plain rookie cards (meaning no autographs, swatches or other frills) of any season, and that's true once again in 2007-08. The Chrome stock is put to good use with a silver design, and the rookies fall one per pack.
Hobby boxes of 2007-08 Topps Chrome Basketball hold 24 packs of four cards each. On average, one rookie autograph variation card should come in every box.
Base Cards
The regular Topps Basketball set for 2007-08 featured a black-bordered design. Chrome retains the same visual elements but goes with silver borders, which is probably the best color possible for the glistening Chrome stock.
There's just one little problem: the player and team name are also in silver, making the cards extremely difficult to read from certain angles. It's a small detail, but one that definitely does detract from the enjoyment of the set.
A mixture of veterans and retired stars make up the first 110 base cards, and along with the usual suspects (Magic Johnson and Larry Bird), Topps also picked some lesser-known names from years past (like Bill Sharman and Cliff Hagan). It's refreshing and a good way to actually learn something about the history of the game.
Staying with the history theme, Topps commemorates 50 years of basketball cards by making variations of 50 base cards on the 1957-58 Topps design. Not all Topps retro layouts translate well to the Chrome stock, but this one comes out looking good. They're also true variations in the sense that they have different pictures from their regular counterparts.
There are also 50 2007-08 rookies to round out the base set. Topps solicited the set promising 12 rookies per box but made a change for the better and seeded the rookie cards one per pack.
All told, a random hobby box opened for this review produced 47 of the 110 veteran/retired cards plus 12 1957-58 variations. I also found the expected 24 rookies, including Kevin Durant, Greg Oden and Julian Wright.
Autographed Variation Cards
Like the Chrome sets in other sports, Chrome Basketball delivers a rookie autograph in every box. For 2007-08, they are unnumbered inserts, though they come in four additional parallel levels ranging from 25 copies down to one. Also note that Topps doesn't have autograph rights to all of this season's rookies, so only 40 of the 50 first-year players are included.
On the non-rookie front, there are also autographed versions of 20 of the 1957-58 variation cards. Dwyane Wade and Shaq are among the current stars on the checklist, and retired names like Bill Russell, Dennis Rodman and Larry Bird are also present.
My review box yielded an Orange Refractor version of Kings rookie Spencer Hawes numbered to 25.
Refractors
A long-running tradition in the Chrome family, Refractors are even shinier parallel cards that have a kind of rainbow prism effect. All of the base cards and the retro cards can be found in five levels, ranging from normal Refractors (numbered to 1499 for rookies; 999 for all others) to hobby-exclusive SuperFractors (one-of-ones).
The Refractors add up to fall about one in every other pack. I pulled a total of 13: six regular and one White (#'d to 99) base, one regular and one Orange (#'d to 199) 1957-58 variation and four regular rookies, including Acie Law IV and Al Horford.
The Last Word
The 2007-08 hoops edition of Topps Chrome looks great in silver and delivers some nice rookie content at a pretty affordable price point. I docked its final score a bit for not bringing anything too new to the table and for the illegible card fronts, which will probably bother some collectors more than others. Consider it the hobby equivalent of a 12-foot jumper instead of a slam dunk, getting the job done without doing anything out of the ordinary.
