Black and Gold, Black and Gold

I am reminded about one of the songs my daughter and her dance troupe performed to at either a competition or a recital a few years ago. It's a song by some guy named Sam Sparro called Black and Gold.

It's one of those songs that as a parent I have to tolerate if only because I had to listen to it again and again every time the girls (and the one guy...there is always one guy in a dance troupe that's full of girls for some reason...nothing wrong with that, of course), went out to perform. As much as I'd love to torture my dwindling subscribership, I'm going to save us all our sanity by NOT linking the music video of the song (but, hey, feel free to do so after you're done reading this).

Why do I bring this up?

It has something to do with Topps' week-long preview of 2015 Topps Series 1 cards.

Yesterday, Topps posted a picture of a sheet of Topps Gold cards:

And here's an example of the finished product...so you know how the cards are going to look like after it goes through the cutter.

Well today, Topps showed off a sheet of the black parallels:

A couple of thoughts.

I don't really focus on parallel cards, but these look nice. Looking at the finished Kazmir card, I can see now where the cards are going to be cut on the sheet (look at the three rows of dots on the bottom left and compare it to the sheet. It looks like there will be a bit of wiggle room when it comes to borders (in the event of the inevitable miscut cards).

One design element that I'm starting to like but did not notice on the regular cards are the diamonds that are on either side of the picture (you can see it on the black, but more pronounced on the gold).

Final word:

Thank you for picking Cubs' players as the subject for both pictures. Jorge Soler looks like the featured player on the gold sheet, while Anthony Rizzo looks great in black.

Thanks Topps. Oh, and could you do me a favor? Could you at least show us what the BACK OF THE CARDS LOOK LIKE??! Is that too much to ask??!

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama