Shiny New Card In The Mail

The Strata brand has been around for awhile.  It was a football card product, maybe basketball too, and then a baseball card insert.  I pulled a redemption for one last year, but I never got the card.  I even had Topps substitute the redemption, but apparently they do not really follow through with that either.  Here's a look at my glorious Strata autograph of Julio Tehran in all it's glory.

This year Topps put out an actual stand alone Strata product.  It's a one pack per box, one autograph, one relic card kind of a deal.  I don't those types of products for the most until after someone else has done the ripping.  Sure, there are quite a few players I am interested in the set, but I am not sure that any of them are really worth the $80ish layout for a box.  I am not going for that jumbo Matt Adams patch, more like Steven Souza.

I like the looks of the cards, so I went ahead and picked up my first Strata card last week.  It arrived in my mailbox yesterday.  I spent some time with the card in front of me today on my desk just looking at it.  Very nice card.  Here is the front......

Topps used a thicker card stock for these and they have a really nice finish.  The picture of Rodon on the front of the card is translucent when held up to the light, but the signature space is transparent.  If you flip the card over onto the back the signature on the front.

While this is probably nit picking, I would have loved to see the autograph space on the front of the card have a little better defined space to allow it to show through in the transparent panel.  The top of the signature on the back is slightly covered up.  Not a biggie.  Really nice card, another couple of these are on the way soon.