First Look: 2011 TRISTAR Pursuit baseball cards

[blowoutcards]

First Look: 2011 TRISTAR Pursuit baseball cards

By Chris Olds | Editor

TRISTAR unveiled its latest baseball card release, 2011 Pursuit, recently and it appears that the format for last year’s boxed set release is back for another season.

Set to arrive on April 15, Pursuit will include a 75-card base set made up of promising prospects along with 18 additional bonus cards per box. Six of those will be autograph cards limited to 111 or fewer copies. Five of those will be parallel cards limited to 99 or less, five of those will be short-printed cards and two will be 2011 Obak preview cards.

The product is not licensed by any league or governing sports entity, so the photographs will be airbrushed or be high school uniforms, depending on the player’s level. There will be 92 total cards in the set (Nos. 76-92 being SPs) with some of the notable prospects to be found inside including: Mike Trout, Jameson Taillon, Manny Machado, Christian Colon, Dustin Ackley, Wil Myers, Brandon Belt and Jonathan Singleton to name a few.

The Obak preview set is highlighted by Whitey Ford, Taillon, Rich “Goose” Gossage, Cap Anson, Bobby Thomson and Billy “White Shoes” Johnson.The Obak autograph cards will all be signed on-card.


While there will be plenty of autograph cards to be found (again, six per set), the real highlight here are the five-autograph cards that feature exactly what you might think — five autographs on the front of each card. A few of the groupings? How about a “catching stars” card with Johnny Bench, Frank Cervelli, Buster Posey, Carlos Santana and Matt Wieters? Or how about an “outfield futures” card with John Mayberry, Jay Bruce, Jason Heyward, Austin Jackson and Desmond Jennings? In all, there are 10 five-auto cards to be found.

As with past TRISTAR products, the print run will be limited. There are only 75 serial-numbered cases of the product to be found.

See more images from the set after the jump.


First Look: 2011 TRISTAR Pursuit baseball cards | (http://www.beckett.com/news/2011/02/first-look-2011-tristar-pursuit-baseball-cards/)

[Zacky1053]

Who in their right mind would buy this product to chase key rookies when they're already in the Bowman products?

[enjoyale81]

The Obak card looks great. Appears to have sharper photography than last year.

[Newbs]

Not really a fan of no logos on anything. Just keeps me away from buying.

[ljphoto]

I like some of the cards. But this card is just horrible.

http://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo8/beckettbaseball/fordjpg.jpg

[JAMmedia]

It's like Faith Hill standing in a field singing the NFL opening song.

[natbornkiller]

i am getting sooooooooo sick of these unlicensed crap wait i mean products

[cj52racers]

Who in their right mind would buy this product to chase key rookies when they're already in the Bowman products?

People who collect for themselves, not resale. I buy a lot of ITG Hockey because I love the cards and resale isn't terrible on them. Mostly because they look great and I keep them in my PC. Plus, for me, if I am looking to pick up an auto of a PC guy that is just a minor PC and not one of the ones I spend a lot on, then to me an auto is an auto of that player. There are a couple hockey players who I wanted an auto of, but didn't want to pay for their UD auto, so I paid roughly half and got one from an ITG set.

[Zacky1053]

People who collect for themselves, not resale. I buy a lot of ITG Hockey because I love the cards and resale isn't terrible on them. Mostly because they look great and I keep them in my PC. Plus, for me, if I am looking to pick up an auto of a PC guy that is just a minor PC and not one of the ones I spend a lot on, then to me an auto is an auto of that player. There are a couple hockey players who I wanted an auto of, but didn't want to pay for their UD auto, so I paid roughly half and got one from an ITG set.

And these will be more affordable so that makes sense. Even the bad products have their buyers it just doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that's what I should've said.

[iluvfish2]

This may not resell all that well, but it does have a following. I typically love the photos (and do like the ford pictured above), but the history on the back of the cards is extremely interesting if anyones ever read them.

[cj52racers]

And these will be more affordable so that makes sense. Even the bad products have their buyers it just doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that's what I should've said.

Yeah, I mean, the only TriStar product I have purchased is the mini-helmets, so I don't know a whole lot about their cards. Like I said though, affordability is key with off-brands and if they can add certain HOFers to their sets then they can appeal to a wider range. ITG has done that well with hockey. Decent amount of old-time HOF player items to keep people interested. One place where ITG is key though that Tristar will miss the boat on is that because ITG has major junior licenses for hockey, their prospect hockey cards are most likely the first cards available of key players playing junior in Canada. Because Bowman/Topps have prospect cards of the USA set, that puts Tristar behind the 8-ball.