General Forum

 A lot of really good suggestions.  How about a way to automatically scan the card into TCDB if the image is missing plus add to your collection?

Cards should be numbered with a number, not with some abbreviation and the player's intials.  "SBH-PM" does not help me put a set together.  "12" is more meaningful.  

The number of cards in a set should be evenly divisible by nine.

Nowadays, unless it is incredibly low numbered (with Topps Flagship, I'd say /99 or less with some exceptions like the traditional Gold, Panini I'd say /25 or even 10/ or less), parallels are drowning out true value in the hobby. They need to be scaled back considerably. I understand some people love them just because and color-matching or rainbows can be fun for some, but perhaps reserve that for a handful of product lines and bring it back to a more reasonable level on some others. I love Topps Opening Day because, for me, it has it all in nice moderation. You have your yearly parallel, your 1/1, basic inserts combined with some really tough ones and some solid SPs to chase. Perfect!

The front of the card should include the year of issue, built into the small brand graphic... like Donruss and Score always did.  Scanning the back for minuscule copyright dates is tough even on younger eyes.

I need more cartoon art on the back of my cards.  Words and numbers are not entertaining.  I can now look those up on the Google machine that resides in my pocket.  But dangit, a little cartoon art sharing a tasty morsel fact about that player is all I need to make me happy.

That, and get rid of short prints.  Worst contrived idea ever.  So annoying to complete set collectors.

I like the variety of inserts and parallels and I hope that they make more of each. 

Another thing is I hope that each set has a different design so topps update and the regular topps don't have the exact same design.

Here's a good wishlist request from an article in The Sporting News: Make packs available, and make one set that's affordable and attractive to kids.

I really like Dan's list, and the other ideas from this group.

Perhaps Fanatics could consider building in some newer technology such as Micro QR Codes on a back bottom corner that could aid collectors in properly identifying cards (and perhaps updating digital collection checklists [like TCDB!] automatically when scanned by their smart phones?).

Great list Dan! I hope the focus groups the Fanatics suits are polling agree with you.

Especially when 20% of a set is those SP's