A disappointing end to the Topps Million Card Giveaway
Like many fellow collectors, my loot from the 2010 Topps Million Card Giveaway arrived recently. And let me say that the reality of actually receiving the cards didn’t exactly live up to the hype of the promotion.
For starters, I ordered 13 cards and only received 12. The one card that was missing? A 1961 Topps Phil Rizzuto High Number MVP card — probably the best card I obtained via trading through the program.
Why did this card not arrive? Because it’s backordered.
WTF?!
Backordered? I was under the impression that Topps had already bought back a crap load of cards for this promotion and that they were already sitting in some warehouse ready to me shipped whenever collectors wanted them. This surely does not support that notion.
In fact, what it appears to me is that Topps created the program and decided to buy the cards on the secondary market after the order was placed. Makes economic sense for them, but for collectors who wait a month or longer to receive their cards after they asked them to be shipped, this surely is disappointing.
The Rizzuto may have been the card I was most looking forward too, but I did order 12 others and not all was lost with them. I’m not going to showcase each one, but I’ll highlight (and lowlight) a few here.
1953 Billy Hunter rookie
Believe it or not, this was one of the first cards I redeemed. Of course it was all down hill from there. A cool addition to my rookie collection.
1956 Ray Narleski
I love this set, might be my favorite of all time.
1966 A's Rookies
No, you’re eyes are not deceiving you. That IS a 3-d Topps card. Ok, maybe not, maybe it’s just horribly out of register.
1971 Gene Tenace
Now this is freakin’ horrible. Look at this card, it looks like it survived (barely) a round of buckshot. Think the front is bad? Check out the back. I guess when they said they were giving back the cards that were thrown out, they weren’t kidding.
cardboardicons.com 
April 18, 2011 at 8:46 am
not to mention that fact that if you didn’t have the cards shipped, they are now gone forever… they have 0 value, in fact I don’t think that you can even get back in the system to see what you did have.
pretty lame considering they are doing the same thing again… why not continue the program so that people can carry their cards over?
April 18, 2011 at 11:04 am
Wow – that is crazy – I literally had the same thing happen – with the exact same card!
Phil Rizzuto 1961 MVP card (I’m not sure if he has more than 1 MVP card in that set – can’t remember if he won multiple MVP’s). One other was backordered, as well.
I call shenanigans here – I don’t even think it’s just disingenuous – it may be borderline illegal. I haven’t read the fine print – but I know they did say they were donating cards that weren’t claimed to charity. This causes me to seriously doubt if they’re doing that. If they were donating to charity – why would they wait and buy the cards on the secondary market?
April 18, 2011 at 6:34 pm
I think like 475 of them were redeemed … seriously.
May 28, 2011 at 5:26 pm
I also had the Rizzuto, and was sent some other crappy card instead…
April 18, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I overheard a couple of vintage dealers talking at a card show and Topps is buying at least some of these cards on the secondary market. Apparently they were desperately looking for a ton of Vintage football the weekend of the show and one of the guys was kicking himself because he had a pile of the stuff back home he would have loved to get rid of.
Pretty weak on the Rizzuto, that is not that hard of a card to find but they probably don’t want to pay full price for it.
April 18, 2011 at 6:33 pm
What else sucks about the Rizzuto is I think there were like 475 of them redeemed …
May 28, 2011 at 7:40 am
Upset!!! Friday, 5/27/11, I received an email from Topps stating that my 2 (backordered) 1961 Phil Rizzuto MVP cards were shipped to me. Today I received my package – but not the Rizzuto cards. Instead I get a letter stating that Topps could not secure the cards I unlocked. Instead I get 2 1954 Leo Kiely cards, with a lower book value than the Rizzuto cards. I tried for countless hours to get the Rizzuto cards. Angry is putting it mildly right now.
May 28, 2011 at 11:34 am
Did anyone else receive replacement cards rather than the cards they “won”?
May 31, 2011 at 5:57 am
I also had the rizzuto, but was sent a 1954 card instead. Not sure what to do at this point…
June 5, 2011 at 4:23 pm
I got 1954 replacements for 3 1961 Phil Rizzutos that I traded for… Ripoff!
We should consider a class action law suit.