For the second straight season, Topps is finishing its football card release calendar with a single-pack, high end brand. Performance Football is the brand in question this time, selling at a significantly lower price than last season's Topps Paradigm but still packing some nice content.
Each hobby-only box of 2007 Topps Performance Football holds a single 16-card pack. On average, each pack should contain two autographed cards and one autographed relic card.
Base Cards and Parallels
Topps Performance base cards certainly have a distinctive look. Topps places black borders with rectangle patters at the top and bottom of the cards and uses foil for the team and player names. The design also incorporates some lines and a blurring effect in the photo backgrounds to create a sense of motion. One small critique: the foil on top of the black borders makes the cards difficult to read.
Parallels, like the Gold Thomas Jones in my review box, numbered 10/10, are identifiable by different foil colors. Rookie cards are even easier to spot because they use white borders instead of black, making for a cleaner design. Rookies are numbered to 359.
All told, I found 10 veteran base cards, the aforementioned Jones parallel and two rookies (Craig Davis and Johnnie Lee Higgins) in the box I opened for this review.
Autographed Cards
Autographs are a big part of Performance Football, with subjects ranging from rookies to Hall of Famers. A total of 35 2007 rookies signed Rookie Autograph Variations, which look identical to the base rookie cards but add an autographed sticker. All of the big names are on the checklist, including Adrian Peterson, Marshawn Lynch and Calvin Johnson.
Breakout Autographs take some of those same rookies and mix in a few young veterans, like Maurice Jones-Drew and Tony Romo. As the name suggests, Triple Signature Autographs combine three signatures on one card, either from teammates or athletes who play the same position.
Hall of Fame Autograph Cards feature one of 15 NFL legends. There are also dual signature versions, with pairings like John Elway/Dan Marino and Jim Brown/Gale Sayers.
Both of the autographed cards in my sample box came from the Rookie Autograph Variation insert set: unnumbered signatures from Steve Smith and Dwayne Jarrett.
Relics and Autographed Relic Cards
Though no relic (or memorabilia) cards are guaranteed, Performance Football still has quite a few to find. Rookie Relic Variations uses the same checklist as the Rookie Autograph Variations (except for the absent Calvin Johnson) but replaces the signature with a player-worn swatch. Breakout Relics do the same thing to the Breakout Autographs checklist. Skill Sets Triple Relics serve up three relic swatches from one player and are broken down into QB, RB and WR subsets.
Last but certainly not least are the numerous autographed relic cards which combine to fall one per box, many of which are variations on the various autograph and relic sets. The ones that aren't are likely to end up as some of the rarest and most desirable cards in the product: Hall of Fame Quad Auto Relic Cards - with swatches and signatures from four different players - and single and dual Rookie Autographed NFL Equipment Logo Patch Cards.
The expected one autographed relic was found in the About.com review box: a Yamon Figurs Rookie Auto Relic Variation card.
The Last Word
One of the main things Paradigm had going against it last season was a lack of its own identity (except for its clear acrylic box), something either visual or content-related to help it stand out from the crowd. Performance Football does better in this regard by crafting a unique look, but except for autograph collectors there isn't much that makes this a must-have.
That being said, it's a nice effort by Topps to finish off a solid 2007 season of football cards. With just a little tinkering, it's not hard to imagine Performance going toe to toe with other, more well-known high end brands in 2008.