Topps Chrome Blaster Box history?

[Thor34]

Does anyone know when (what year) the first retail Topps Chrome Blaster Boxes became available?
I can't seem to track retail back much further than 2010.
Thoughts?

[fungi2510]

Does anyone know when (what year) the first retail Topps Chrome Blaster Boxes became available?
I can't seem to track retail back much further than 2010.
Thoughts?

They have been around a LONG time. I know I was getting chrome football back in 2005 if not earlier. Baseball had to be similar. Probably late 90s?

[Chiefnocahoma]

I don’t think blaster boxes existed until after 2001. Your Walmart’s and Bradley’s might have had 19.99 retail boxes of like collectors choice, ud and paper topps but they were packaged as slimmer boxes.

[Thor34]

I don’t think blaster boxes existed until after 2001. Your Walmart’s and Bradley’s might have had 19.99 retail boxes of like collectors choice, ud and paper topps but they were packaged as slimmer boxes.

I've been thinking more along these lines. looking forward to others thoughts.

[mjwoop]

I can't confidently say that I know the answer to this question, but here are some things I do know based on my personal experience:

1) If we're talking about Topps Chrome retail in general (regardless of the sport, and regardless of the type of packaging), the first time I ever saw it was for 1996 basketball at a bookstore in our local mall that I believe was named Bookland. As a high school kid with very limited disposable income, the price tag ($50-60 maybe?) on it created a lot of sticker shock, and I quickly moved on without purchasing it. I still think about that missed opportunity from time to time.

2) I purchased an embarrassing amount of retail cards in the 1997-2000 range from places like Walmart and Kmart (a couple of Kmart locations in Birmingham, AL had huge retail sections back then). I'm almost positive that I bought one box of 1999-00 Topps Chrome basketball around that time, but I don't remember the details around the packaging. I still have some of the boxes that various types of retail cards came in back then (I put the cards back in the packs and stored them in the boxes they came in), and as someone mentioned earlier, they weren't like the blaster boxes we're accustomed to today. They opened from the front like a hobby box would as opposed to opening from the top like more recent blaster boxes.

3) The first time I purchased Topps Chrome retail in a box that opened from the top was 2007 football. I just did a little digging, and I was able to find one of those boxes. It has the shape of a blaster box, but blaster isn't written on it anywhere (but then again, I'm also looking at a 2017 Topps Chrome baseball blaster from Walmart that I found while I was looking for the 2007 football one, and I don't see blaster written anywhere on it either).

4) I was much more into basketball and football between 1997 and 2012, so I can't speak for Topps Chrome baseball. I would assume that baseball was available and in the same form as any basketball and football offerings though. Also, I took a hiatus from buying cards that spanned from 2000-2007, so that time period represents a blind spot for me.

Hopefully some of those details are helpful though.

[Thor34]

Thanks for all the insight.
It appears as if in the early to mid 00's, these were simply called retail boxes.
Can't really confirm when "Blaster" first became officially used.
Anybody else with a long history of buying these?

[chester0711]

It was mid-90's when the term was first coined. Upper Deck and Fleer were the first to really come out with blasters around 96 - 98.

There were multiple configurations though and they were made to sell outside hobby shops. They actually had stickers on the box that would say "Box Blaster!!" compared to hobby they were very disappointing.

I can remember finding them mainly at sporting good stores.

It wasnt until 2002 that the mainstream blaster as you know it hit the market. again, mostly Upper Deck. I feel like they pioneered the concept. Most retail was stray packs prior to then.