Product Preview - 2012 Tri City Sports PL Diamond Cuts Baseball

Tri City Sports PL entered the cut autograph product market last year with their initial offering of 2011 Diamond Cuts. For the 2012 campaign they seem to have re-vamped their product and have provided some additional offerings. Here is the initial sell sheet:

Each hobby box will consist of at least two cards from the following subsets: Cut Jumbo Game-Used, History Of Our Fathers vintage stamps, Diamond City Cuts and Fan Favorites. Additionally, each box will provide the opportunity to pull exclusive Golden Ticket Redemptions or Mystery Redemptions.

They bring back a couple of familiar subsets from the initial offering: Diamond City Cuts and the Golden Ticket redemption program. The Diamond City Cuts serves as their "base" product, however it seems they have limited the quantities of this subset to /5. This seems to be an improvement over last years offering, however it does seem that the cards have the same basic design. Also an improvement, it seems that all cards in the set will be encased in some manner.

The Golden Ticket Redemption program once again offers up some unique 1-of-1 prizes, including signed balls, memorabilia, Hollywood autos and the grand prize consisting of a pair of tickets to the 2013 World Series. At one per case, these will serve as possible high value case hits, here is a complete list of the 30 redemptions:

Signed Balls (All 1/1's)
Ozzie Smith (St Louis)
Warren Spahn (Milwaukee)
Bob Gibson (St Louis)
Eddie Mathews (Atlanta)
Mickey Mantle (New York)

Gold Cut Players (All Gold Autos are 1/1's)
Mickey Mantle (New York)
Ted Williams (Boston)
Satchel Paige (St Louis)
Hank Greenberg (Detroit)
Duke Snider (Brooklyn)

Gold Cut Celebrities (All Gold Autos are 1/1's)
Bruce Willis (Actor)
Robert De Niro (Actor)
Gerald Ford (Former U.S.A. President)
Fred Durst (Lead Singer Limp Bizkit)
Arron Lewis (Lead Singer Staind)

Game Used Balls (All 1/1's)
Tommy Hanson (Atlanta)
David Wright (New York)
Cole Hamels (Philadephia)
Ichiro Suzuki (Seattle)
Don Mattingly (New York)

Game Used Jerseys (All 1/1's)
Derek Jeter (New York)
Miguel Cabrera (Florida)
Andy Marte (Cleveland)
Jake Westbrook (Cleveland)
James Parr (Atlanta)

The Cut Jumbo Game-Used will be encased full letters from player jerseys, each numbered /4. Again, a final checklist will provide some chase factor in completing a players name or chasing particular letters.

Stamp cards are new this year, with the History of Our Fathers subset. It looks to be a vintage stamp relating to a picture, artwork or player. Each will be numbered to /50 or less.

The mystery redemption, with only 5 available is another intriguing addition to the product. The promo sheets indicate further information will be released a month after product release. It will be interesting to find out what prizes will be part of this redemption program.

Finally, the other new set is the Fan Favorites. With the promo sheet highlighting a Mickey Mantle cut auto, this is another of the high value 1-of-1 subsets.

Currently, the product is anticipated for release in either December 2011 or January 2012 and has a projected retail price of between $50-$60 per 2 card hobby box. This price is about a 40% decrease in cost with a doubling of the number of cards.

It seems that TCSP has listened to some customer feedback over the past year and made some improvements to their overall product offering.

What do you readers think? Does this product interest you more than the initial product offering in 2011?