2012 Topps Archives – cards #51-100 (1971 design)

The regular cards from 2012 Archives are broken up into 4 different designs in 50 card allotments based on earlier Topps sets.  Moving on nearly two decades from 1954, the second grouping of 50 cards comes from the 1971 Topps design.

To say 1971 Topps is recognizable is quite the understatement.  The border on the front is completely black, with the Team name and the top in all capital letters, the player name just below that (with no Caps), and the position written out to the right of that.  The player’s facsimile signature is placed over the picture on the front.  The card back is horizontally placed with a green background.  There is a box to the right which lists the player’s first year in the majors and first year in pro ball, along with player info and a write-up.  The left side has a black and white photo, and the bottom has the previous season’s and career statistics.  I’m not sure, but my guess is this is the first time Topps put an actual player photo on the back.  One thing I don’t like about the Archives reproduction of this design – they always use a crop of the photo on front, while in 1971 it was a different photo.

Reggie Jackson

There is only one player in the Archives set who played from that era – and it’s a good one in Mr. October, Reggie Jackson.  Topps has him in the right uniform, though I think the picture might be about 2 seasons later than 1971 (it’s at least pretty close).  I don’t even recognize his original card, which is to the left.  Regardless, these are two nice looking cards of the Oakland slugger!

I think Topps kind of missed the boat on who they could have included here.  Reggie was the right call, and I kind of like Mike Schmidt in there (see below).  But Schmidt just misses – he was drafted in 1971 out of OU, and was in the Minors until 1973.  They could have put a number of guys in here:

• Bert Blyleven, has a single player rookie card in 1971, so it would have been cool to see a different photo for him.  He’s included elsewhere in the product, so they could contractually have given him a card.
• Dusty Baker is also a guy they could have used – he’s the Reds manager, so they have a contract with him.  His RC is in the ’71 set, on a multi-player card with Don Baylor, so seeing him in a different photo would have again been pretty cool.
• Steve Garvey has a 1971 RC.  He’s in some other 2012 Topps products, so another look at his RC would have been cool.
• Dave Concepcion.  His RC is 1971, and they have guys like Joe Morgan, Ken Griffey, George Foster and Johnny Bench in the product, so getting him in would have been really cool.
• Thurman Munson.  It would be tough to top his classic 1971 card, but why not try!
• Carlton Fisk – his first card was in 1972, so seeing him on a 1971 design would have been neat.
• Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Joe Morgan and Roberto Clemente are all elsewhere in the set on cards that aren’t from their playing days.  Wouldn’t you much rather see Clemente on the 1971 design instead of a weird-looking 1984 card?

Here’s some of the better cards from this part of the set, including that Schmidt card:

2012 Topps Archives – oddball sets that “didn’t make the cut”, and an insert that should have been cut

My previous post was the last of the inserts from Topps Archives.  Well, almost.  There was one more standard insert – but this is kind of along the lines of “been there, done that”.  Topps included a 50-card insert set of reprints of actual cards from between 1952-1986.  This is a set that, to me, shouldn’t have “made the cut”.  The cards themselves are nice – they’ve got a wide variety of different players, so only a little bit of doubling up.  They reproduce the actual card back instead of a write-up, so that’s good.  The issue for me isn’t the cards or how they are done.  It’s just that they’ve done so many of these reprint inserts already, that it just wasn’t necessary here.  They had the Cards Your Mom Threw Out in 2010, 60 Years of Topps in 2011, and this just seems like almost the same thing.  It also doesn’t really go with the right era – this product seems more geared to 70′s and 80′s, yet two-thirds of the reprints are 50′s and 60′s.  I’d have much rather have had a reboot of one of the sets I cover below instead of this one.  that’s my preference, and it’s actually one of the few things I didn’t like about this product.  Anyways, here’s another photo of 6 of those cards just for reference.

Archives Reprints – 50 cards (1:4)

When I went through Lineage last year, I did a look at what some of the oddball sets Topps didn’t include that I think they could have.  I’m re-showing that list here – because they didn’t actually put any in from my list from last year.  That’s OK – I actually think they did a really good job with the inserts this year.  The 1967 stickers are similar to the “rub-offs” below, and the Deckle Edge weren’t on my list last year – but have turned out to be a very cool addition.

Also, compared to Lineage last year, Topps made an improvement from one perspective – they are easier to collect now.  Whereas Lineage had a bunch of sets that were either 25-50 cards to complete and 2 per box, the inserts in Archives are 2-4 per box and generally are smaller set size.  The one exception is that “Reprints” insert I mention above, which at least comes 6 per box, and frankly, that’s the one I wish they’d have swapped that out for one of the sets below.

That said, here’s a look at some other sets they may have considered:

Honorable Mention – Topps Rub-offs

These sets were inserted into packs in 1961 and 1966.  The images were reversed, as shown, and you could rub the image off onto a flat surface.  Also, as mentioned – they did the 67 Stickers this year, and I think those were similar to these.

#5 - 1951 Topps Connie Mack’s All-Stars and 1951 Topps Current All-Stars

These cards were issued in the 1951 “Topps Baseball Candy” packaging which would usually contain one of the 3 possible larger-sized sets (2-1/16″ x 5-1/4″) surrounded on each side by a 2-card red-back panel.  One of these 3 sets was Topps Teams, which were team photos for 9 of the 16 ML teams.  The other two were Connie Mack and Current All-Stars, which are “fold-out” cards similar to the 1964 Topps Stand-Ups.  These were 11-card sets, though 3 of the current All-Stars were only available by writing in to Topps.  Anyways, there’s a bunch this would again have fit in really well with the current and older player theme that Topps has been doing.  These cards probably wouldn’t make sense because of the larger size – but could have been a box topper.

#4 - 1971 Topps Greatest Moments

This 55-card test set has a black-bordered design that borrows from the design of the 1971 set.  The horizontal cards are as “longer” than the standard card, measuring 2-1/2″ x 4-3/4″.  The back is written in newspaper style format, similar to the Topps Giants from Lineage last year.  These cards would have been very cool – Topps could have done a “season review” type set.  These would have been a great box topper in each hobby box!  I actually swapped #4 and #5 – because doing these as a topper would be more in line with the era Topps was focusing on for Archives, so they’d be better than the Connie Mack cards.  Look for these as your 2020 Heritage box topper!

#3 - 1948 Topps Magic Photos

In 1948, Topps issued a small-sized (7/8″ x 1-7/16″) set containing non-sport and sports cards.  The baseball subjects from this set can really be considered the first “baseball cards” that Topps produced.

The cards are actually developed photos – there are 19 baseball subjects, including a few all-time great Hall-of-Famers. I went with Grover Cleveland here, since I found out in my “300″ post that I hadn’t scanned a card of him yet.  This would have been a very cool thing to add, if you ask me.

#2 - 1986-1990 Mini Leaders

OK – caveat here, I know Topps is did the 1987 minis in the flagship set his year.  If you ask me, they should have gone with the every 25-year theme of wood grain borders, but I still like those minis.  Doesn’t mean they couldn’t have done a league leaders set of 50 minis.  I think people would have loved them!

These cards were issued for 5 years in the late 1980′s  in their own packs.  These cards measure slightly smaller than the standard cards - depending on the year, this is around 2-1/8″ x 3″.  The sets were  66, 77, or 88 cards and are designed similar to the team leaders cards from the base set that year.  The cards show the league leaders in various statistical categories from the previous years.  Remember when card companies used to do that?  They’d pick a standard for a set and stick to it – not just throw together something like “Great Ones” so they could put Mickey Mantle and 2 different Babe Ruth cards in a set?  Anyways, I’ll digress.  You could have 1 mini per pack – and they could have done like 10 or 15 cards from each design, for a total of 50 or 75.  I think this would have put a lot more value in the product – regardless of how many relics or autos you have!

#1 - 1965 Topps Embossed

This is again my #1 – because I can’t find a good reason not to have this in Archives!  If Topps did a throwback of this set and made parallels of gold, silver, bronze, and any other color, I’d probably try to collect them all.  When I was younger, my mom used to take me and my brother out antiquing.  She liked antique copper luster-ware, and we’d go to antique shops every now and then.  Sometimes I would find a few baseball cards here and there, and I remember one time buying a few of these.  These gold cards have a raised relief sculpture-type picture of the player.  American League cards are bordered in blue, National Leaguers in red.  These can actually be found for fairly cheap.  I hope someday Topps does a throwback to this – I’d be disappointed if the 2014 Heritage set doesn’t have these in the product somehow.

Topps Archives #2 – comparing 1977 Cloth Stickers

Archives 1977 Cloth Stickers – 25 cards (1:6)

My next comparison for Topps Archives is from the 1970′s.  Specifically, the Cloth Sticker insert set is designed after the set that was released nationally in 1977.  There were a few different test years of Cloth Stickers – 1970, 1972, and 1976.  But 1977 was its own product.  The 2012 Archives insert set has a 25 cards featuring both retired and current players.  11 of the 25 players are retired – and all played in 1976 and 1977 seasons.  Two of them – Gary Carter and Jim Rice – don’t have 1977 Cloth Stickers, but the other 9 are in both sets.  It’s pretty cool – the guys represented here are not only all Hall of Famers, but they could put together one heck of an trophy case.

Johnny Bench

The first one is the 1968 NL Rookie of the Year and the 1970 and 1972 NL MVP.  Bench was actually on the front of the box that the sticker inserts were released in, though the picture on that box isn’t the actual picture used on the cloth sticker (which, like all others, is the same as his 1977 Topps card).

I’ve got to be honest; I tend to like the “vintage” versions better when I do these comparisons.  Here, that’s not the case – I think the newer version is the better of the two here.  I like the action shot with Bench’s follow through better than the close up that seems like he’s posing.

George Brett

The 1980 AL MVP and the only player with batting titles in 3 different decades is up next.

For Brett, I again like the picture better in the newer version, but there’s a problem I have with the Archives card.  This looks like a cleaner-cut George Brett.  Which I think means it’s a later year picture.  In fact, I think it’s a much later picture.  Not cool!

Steve Carlton

Carlton was a 4-time Cy Young award winner, including the 1972 season when he was the winning pitcher for 27 of his team’s 59 victories.  In fact, Philadelphia won 29 of the games he started – which was incredibly just under 50% of his team’s wins on the year!  That year he completed 30 of his league-leading 41 starts, struck out 310 batters in 346 innings.  All while posting a 1.97 ERA and a 0.993 WHIP.  He also won the Cy Young during the 1977 season this card depicts.

This one I’d also give to the older set.  I’d never seen this Carlton card before, and I like it!  First off, Carlton’s cards that I know of tend to be very similar – a shot of him about to deliver the ball.  But this one has him in some rain gear during warmups in front of the backstop.  Kind of a neat photo.  Whereas this year’s photo isn’t anything to write home about (though it looks like it could be the right era).

Rod Carew

Some more hardware coming from the next guy.  3,000 hit club?  Check.  MVP?  Check – and even the year for this set (he hit .388 in 1977).  ROY?  Check (1967).

I don’t really love either of these photos.  The 1977 sticker is very out of focus, but it is a clear moment in a game – he’s holding a guy on at first.  It’s kind of cool that you can see the center fielder in the background – except he’s also very out of focus.  I like the uniform and idea for the photo in the 2012 card.  But it looks kind of awkward.  As Carew is posing, this reminds me of the annoying group photos that happen at weddings.  Like when my wife and her 10 college friends all get a picture and none of them know which camera to look at.  Hopefully Carew wasn’t forced to listen to the Golden Girls theme song for this pose like am forced to do at every one of those weddings!

Reggie Jackson

Mr. October also had some hardware.  He won the 1973 AL MVP award for the Oakland A’s – the same year he won the first of his World Series MVP’s.  He won a second World Series MVP in 1977 for the Yankees – the year of this card set.  This is a pretty notable card – I don’t know too much about the 1977 Topps set, but I think this would be up there for “card of the year”.  Not because I particularly care for Reggie, but because it is so notable.  He actually played for Baltimore in the 1976 season, and there is a proof card of him in an Orioles uniform.  Instead, Topps airbrushed an A’s photo of him into a Yankee helmet.  Well – what looks like a Yankee logo, anyways.  I don’t really like the photo they took of Reggie in 2012, so I’d again have to give the edge to the “notable” (but not really iconic) Reggie card.

Joe Morgan

This card is taken of Morgan when he was the 2-time defending NL MVP.  Unfortunately, the Big Red Machine was slowly on its way to being broken up at this point, and Reggie would be stirring the drink in the Fall Classic in the place of Morgan and my beloved Reds.

I like both of these pictures, but I must say I always liked the white “pullover” Reds unis better than the gray ones.  And the 1977 Morgan card is a pretty notable one itself.  I like how his eyes are closed – it makes me believe he really is taking a warm up practice swing, not posing for a camera!

Willie Stargell

Stargell was in the 1967 Sticker set (but not the Archives one for that).  Regardless of that, it makes sense to put him in this set – he was about to be part of the only co-MVP situation ever in a couple of years.

In fairness, that was one of the worst MVP wins ever.  The other co-winner, Keith Hernandez deserved consideration, but Dave Winfield probably should have won it.  But “Pops” certainly was a great player in his prime – and he’s a good choice here.  I actually like the new card better this time!

Robin Yount

Another 3,000 hit club member – Yount always seems kind of tied to George Brett in my mind.  Yount also has a couple of MVP’s himself – at different positions, no less (’82 as a short stop and ’89 center fielder)!

Yount was the third player to do this – after Hank Greenberg and Stan Musial, who had both won it at first base and in the outfield.  Alex Rodriguez has accomplished this since then, becoming the first player to win the award at 2 different infield positions (and the first to win at different positions for different teams).  No player has won the award at different positions in both leagues.

I’ve got to go with the older one here – it’s an interesting shot, though it seems very out of focus.  The newer Archives version was much more “in-focus” – but clearly is the wrong era here.

Jim Hunter

“Catfish” was the 1974 AL MVP for Oakland, and he had an amazing 5- year stretch through his first season in New York.  I never noticed it, but after that, he dropped off a cliff production wise.

I’ve got to go with the newer photo here.  I’m not a big fan of the sweaty up close and personal look.  I also like calling him Catfish on the card.  It’s interesting how the ’77 card calls him Jim but only shows the “Catfish” signature, while the Archives version calls him “Catfish” but shows the signature with both his first name and his nickname.

Lastly, to show off some others, here’s some of today’s players from the Archives set.

Archives – A look back at 1977 Topps Cloth Stickers

Here’s another look back to the cards that Topps based its Archives product on – the 1977 Cloth Sticker set.

Last year there were cloth stickers, but they were supposedly based off of the 1972 set.  That was pretty loose, as it really was just the Lineage card design made into a cloth sticker.  Regardless, Topps has had a number of test sets called Topps cloth stickers.  Here’s a list of the sets in chronological order.

1970 Cloth Stickers Test

These are apparently very rare, and appear to have been material tests that Topps intended to send to the scrap heap.  Every sticker that’s been found (less than 44, including some that are only partials) corresponds to the 2nd series of Topps cards from t(#133-263).  Here’s a couple of posts on this issue from the blog “Topps Archives”.

1972 Cloth Stickers Test

There were 33 cards from this issue, which was also a test design.  The sticker set is essentially a sheet of cards from the 1972 Topps set in sticker form, so some of the same subsets are represented that are in the 1972 Topps flagship set.  There are 3 “In Action” cards, a “Boyhood Photo” card of Jim Fregosi, the Red Sox team card, and even a checklist.  If you see a single card – that means it was hand-cut.  Hank Aaron is the biggest name from the cards that made it onto the sheet.

1976 Cloth Stickers Prototype

Another materials test – there were only 2 cards printed for this test issue – Duff Dyer (Pirates) and Bob Apodaca (Mets).  Topps was likely testing for the full-blown set they would release in 1977 – these cloth stickers can be found in a couple of different versions.  I’ve seen a couple of lots for these on eBay from time to time.

1977 Cloth Stickers

1977 Cloth Stickers Test

This set consisted of 55 players and was issued in packs.  Here’s a write-up of this set on sports collector’s daily.

• Subsets: There are 18 checklist cards that form 2 different 9-piece puzzles (one for each league).  When you put the puzzles together, they form a photo of each All-Star squad.  Other than that, the cards are basically cloth parallels of the 1977 set.
• Set Design: The front is the same design from 1977 Topps flagship.  The cards have a white border with a team name is at the top left in block letters and the player name below that.  The position is in a pennant to the top right, and there is a facsimile signature over the player photo.
• Packs: The cards came in 15¢ packs with 2 cards and 1 checklist per pack.  Boxes have 36 packs.
  
• Hall of Fame: There are 19 Hall of Famers in this set.
  • Johnny Bench, Bert Blyleven, George Brett, Lou Brock, Rod Carew, Steve Carlton, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan, Jim Palmer, Tony Perez, Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt, Tom Seaver, Willie Stargell, Don Sutton, Dave Winfield, Carl Yastrzemski, Robin Yount
• Last Active player: Winfield, who played his final game in 1995.

Topps Lineage – oddball sets that “didn’t make the cut”

This wraps up my looks at Topps Lineage – and I must say I’ve been excited to do this post for quite some time now.  I think Topps did a pretty good job picking the inserts they used for Topps Lineage.  As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, my main gripe is that they made the inserts too difficult to come by when that’s what should be driving the product.  Here’s a look at some other sets they may have considered:

Honorable Mention – Topps Rub-offs

These sets were inserted into packs in 1961 and 1966.  The images were reversed, as shown, and you could rub the image off onto a flat surface.

#5 - 1971 Topps Greatest Moments

This 55-card test set has a black-bordered design that borrows from the design of the 1971 set.  The horizontal cards are as “longer” than the standard card, measuring 2-1/2″ x 4-3/4″.  The back is written in newspaper style format, similar to the Topps Giants.  These cards would have been very cool – Topps could have done a “season review” type set.  Since they were a separate test, not an insert, it would have fit very well into the Lineage idea.  But the cards would have been difficult to do in a standard card size, and the Topps Giants were the box topper.  Look for these as your 2020 Heritage box topper!

#4 - 1951 Topps Connie Mack’s All-Stars and 1951 Topps Current All-Stars

These cards were issued in the 1951 “Topps Baseball Candy” packaging which would usually contain one of the 3 possible larger-sized sets (2-1/16″ x 5-1/4″) surrounded on each side by a 2-card red-back panel.  One of these 3 sets was Topps Teams, which were team photos for 9 of the 16 ML teams.  The other two were Connie Mack and Current All-Stars, which are “fold-out” cards similar to the 1964 Topps Stand-Ups.  These were 11-card sets, though 3 of the current All-Stars were only available by writing in to Topps.  Anyways, there’s a bunch this would again have fit in really well with the current and older player theme that Topps has been doing.  Again, though, these cards probably wouldn’t make sense because of the larger size and the fact that Topps did include the Topps Stand-Ups insert cards.

#3 - 1948 Topps Magic Photos

In 1948, Topps issued a small-sized (7/8″ x 1-7/16″) set containing non-sport and sports cards.  This set contained Topps first baseball cards.  The cards are actually developed photos – there are 19 baseball subjects, including a few all-time great Hall-of-Famers.  I’m going with Grover Cleveland here, since I found out in my “300″ post that I hadn’t scanned a card of him yet.  This would have been a very cool thing to add, if you ask me.

#2 - 1986-1990 Mini Leaders

These cards were issued for 5 years in the late 1980′s  in their own packs.  These cards measure slightly smaller than the standard cards - depending on the year, this is around 2-1/8″ x 3″.  The sets were  66, 77, or 88 cards and are designed similar to the team leaders cards from the base set that year.  The cards show the league leaders in various statistical categories from the previous years.  Remember when card companies used to do that?  They’d pick a standard for a set and stick to it – not just throw together something like “Great Ones” so they could put Mickey Mantle and 2 different Babe Ruth cards in a set?  Anyways, I’ll digress.  This starts to get where I really think Topps could have done something creative.  The 75 minis measured 2-1/4″ x 3-1/8″, so that’s pretty similar to these cards.  Why not do away with the other parallels and add these cards in.  You could have 1 mini per pack – and they could have done like 10 or 15 cards from each design, for a total of 50 or 75.  I think this would have put a lot more value in the product – regardless of how many relics or autos you have!

Note – Topps is apparently including a throwback to the 1987 leader cards in next year’s base Topps set.  If you ask me, they should have gone with the every 25-year theme of wood grain borders, but this is at least a good tribute there.

#1 - 1965 Topps Embossed

This is my #1 – because I can’t find a good reason not to have put this in here!  If Topps did a throwback of this set and made parallels of gold, silver, bronze, and any other color, I’d probably try to collect them all.  When I was younger, my mom used to take me and my brother out antiquing.  She liked antique copper luster-ware, and we’d go to antique shops every now and then.  Sometimes I would find a few baseball cards here and there, and I remember one time buying a few of these.  These gold cards have a raised relief sculpture-type picture of the player.  American League cards are bordered in blue, National Leaguers in red.  These can actually be found for fairly cheap.  I hope someday Topps does a throwback to this – maybe the 2014 Heritage set will have these in the product somehow.

Redeeming Topps Lineage Finale – comparing 75 mini sets

75 mini – 200 cards (1:6)

The last comparison I’ll do for Topps Lineage is the 1975 mini parallel set.  The 1975 mini set was a full, 660-card miniature parallel of the base 1975 set, and the Lineage version is a full parallel of the 200-card 2011 Lineage base set.   There are 18 players who have base cards in both sets (note, I didn’t include players who only had the MVP subset – Mantle, Koufax, Musial, J. Robinson, Campanella would be included if I had).

Before I get to players in both sets – this father-son tandem also accomplishes the task:

The Alomar family – Sandy and baseball’s newest Hall-of-Famer, Roberto.

Here’s the list of names.  WordPress isn’t always the most friendly as far as putting up pictures next to words, so the easiest thing to do is put these at the end for your viewing pleasure.  Some useless info:

Of these guys, 6 are with different teams on the Lineage card then they were for their 1975 Topps card (I had to use Seaver’s subset card to get him with the same team).  Of those 6, two of them are with a team they played with later in their career than 1975 (Ryan & Reggie), 3 of them are with a team they played for earlier than 1975 (F. Robinson, Aaron, McCovey), and 1 is with a team he played for before and after 1975 – though the picture is clearly of a 1960′s Fergie Jenkins.

Jim Palmer, Tony Perez, Carlton Fisk, Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan, Willie McCovey, Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan, Brooks Robinson, Al Kaline (HL), Hank Aaron, Thurman Munson, Johnny Bench, Fergie Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Frank Robinson, Bert Blyleven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Redeeming Topps Lineage #5 – comparing Topps Cloth Stickers

Cloth Stickers – 50 cards (1:12)

The next comparison for Topps Lineage is in the 1970′s.  Specifically, the Cloth Stickers insert is supposed to pay tribute to the 1972 set, but since the design on the front is the same as the Lineage base set – it’s really doing so for any of the years of Cloth Stickers – 1970, 1972, 1976, or 1977.  The 1972 test set was a basically a printing sheet of cloth sticker cards that was never released to the public.  The 2011 Lineage is a 50-card monster set with both retired and current players.

From the 1970 set, there are two guys who have a card in the 2011 Lineage set.  The first one is Nolan Ryan - who is on a card depicting his save in the 1969 World Series.  I’ll show the Ryan card here – he was a reliever just getting started in the ’69 season, with a wild arm and a lot of potential.  Note – I couldn’t actually find a picture of the cloth sticker, so I just went with a picture of the 1970 card.  A view of the young and the old Ryan Express.  Boog Powell, Willie McCovey, Phil Niekro and Juan Marichal also have cards in the 1970 test set (according to the Standard Catalog).

From the 1972 set, there is just one player who is in both sets.  Hank Aaron is all over Lineage and the sets it pays homage to – he seems to be in every current year insert set, and the old sets are all right in his career span.  The 72 Cloth set shows him toward the end of his career, this time with the Atlanta Braves, while the photo in the Lineage set is when the Braves were still in Milwaukee.

I’m not doing the comparison for 1976 – there were only two cards created in this test set, in an attempt to set up for the main set the next year.

Finally, my favorite comparison is that of the 1977 cloth sticker set.  I picked Tom Seaver for this one – his Reds picture is the one they put in the cloth sticker insert, but I thought comparing the ’77 Cloth Sticker to Seaver’s other base card from this year’s Lineage set was the more interesting look!

2011 Lineage & Related sets – 1990 Reds WS Champs

I was happy to see that Topps Lineage included a member of the 1990 World Series Champions, and it was someone they hadn’t included yet this year.  In Heritage, you could find a coin card of Eric Davis, and in Gypsy Queen I could find quite a few cards of Barry Larkin.  But Lineage brought out a player who is better known for another team – Paul O’Neill, who won a batting title and was part of 5 other World Series (4 championships) with the New York Yankees.  Naturally, Paul is featured as a Yank in this set as card #122, but that doesn’t matter to me – I’ll still collect his cards!

O’Neill isn’t in any insert sets and doesn’t have any autos/relics, so his cards are limited to parallels – Platinum Diamond, Diamond Anniversary, and 1975 Topps mini’s for the “collectible” parallels, plus a Canary Diamond and four colored printing plates.  That’s 9 cards total, or 4 of those for us common folk.

There are a few guys from the ’90 Reds team included in the oddball sets Lineage pays tribute to:

Topps Venezuelan

1964 Topps Venezuelan – #167 – Brumley/Lou Piniella

1968 Topps Venezuelan – #16 – Piniella/Scheinblum

Sweet Lou’s rookie card made it into the first few series, and thus made it into the 1964 Topps Venezuelan set.  Piniella may have the record for the most time in between his first Topps card and when he got his All-Star Rookie cup put onto his Topps card.  Piniella had 3 different “rookie stars” subsets (’64, ’68, ’69) and his ASR designation came on his 1970 Topps card.

1975 Topps Mini

#217 – Piniella

Sweet Lou also garnered a card in the 1975 set, and thus had a miniature version in his pinstripes.

Topps Rookies

1988 Topps Rookies #12 – Randy Myers

1989 Topps Rookies #17 – Chris Sabo

1991 Topps Rookies #20 – Hal Morris

Randall Kirk got a card right after Casey Candaele and right before Mark McGwire.  Sabo was between two lesser known players, but Spuds walked away with the Rookie of the Year award.  For about a 6-month span when I was 8, there was no one I wanted to be more than Chris Sabo.  But maybe Hal Morris takes the cake – he was on the 1990 WS team, and in fact was selected to the Topps ASR team in the same year!  How many others can say that – that’s right – no one!  But Benzinger caught the last ball in the game while playing Hal’s position, so I guess I’ll give Sabo the nod out of this trio.

2011 Lineage & related sets – Big Red Machine

There are plenty of Reds in the 2011 Topps Lineage product, and 3 of them are Big Red Machine players – Johnny Bench, Tony Perez and Joe Morgan.  In total, they had 5 base cards – as Morgan and Bench both were included in the All-Star Rookie subset.

This means there are 15 regular parallel inserts – 1 each for 1975 Topps mini, Platinum Diamond and Diamond Anniversary.  This also means there are 25 “1 of 1″ parallels – a canary parallel for each and 4 colors of printing plates.

Bench was included in the cloth stickers insert set, and he also has a 1975 mini relic card – which means there’s a canary version of that out there numbered out of ten.  He also has a jumbo relic #’d out of 25, which Chris from Nachos Grande was fortunate enough to pull.  Perez also has a card and a canary version in the ’75 mini relic set.

Morgan was included in the Autograph reprint set.  It’s inserted as a redemption, and like the others, should have a canary version, though I’ve only seen the regular redemption up on eBay.

So, all told – if you wanted to collect every single Big Red Machine card I mentioned above, you’d have 52 cards to find.  If you didn’t want the 1/1′s – that number would be 27, and if you didn’t want any parallel versions of cards, you’d have 9 (I’m not counting the relics of the cloth sticker as parallels, though you could make the argument they are).  Me?  I’m collecting the complete set, the full ’75 mini set, and the cloth stickers set - so I’ll end up with all 11 of those cards.  Specifically, I’ll collect the other 10 non-numbered parallels of the BRM guys, both the Perez and Bench ’75 mini relics, and I’ll try to find the Morgan auto for a decent price.  I hope he’s pictured as a Red!  The Bench jumbo relic is probably a little out of my price range.

There are also some Big Red Machine guys in the sets that Topps Lineage pays tribute to.  There two 1964 sets (Giants, Stand-ups) are too early, and the 1980′s Topps Rookies sets are too late, though a BRM-er’s son – Griffey Jr. – is included.  And the

Topps Venezuelan

1960 Topps Venezuelan – #34 – Sparky Anderson

1964 set - #125 – Pete Rose,

1966 set – #30 – Rose, #72 – Perez, #195 – Morgan

1967 set** – #89 – Dave Concepcion**, #270 – Rose, #308 – Morgan, #327 – Perez

1968 set – #130 – Perez, #144 – Morgan, #230 – Rose, #247 – Bench, #364 – Morgan AS

* – I didn’t discuss the 1967 Topps Venezuelan set in my earlier post on the history of that set, as it wasn’t a parallel of the base set.  The first 138 cards feature players from the Venezuelan Winter League, including Concepcion – whose rookie card wouldn’t come for 4 years after this one.  Cards #’d 139-188 are retired all-stars, while the rest of the 338-card set are cards with the same photo as the regular Topps set.  The card backs just have write-ups in Spanish – no statistics.  I tried to find a picture of the Concepcion card, but I couldn’t dig anything up.  I decided to throw in a picture of the retired players – which includes card #175, Johnny Vander Meer.  In addition to being the only pitcher to throw consecutive no-hitters, Vander Meer also was part of the 1940 World Series Champions.  He’s the card on the far left in the 2nd row below.

Topps 3-D

Tony Perez was included in the 1968 test set.  A gem 98/100 version graded by SGC sold for almost $4,000 last year.

Topps Cloth Stickers

Dave Concepcion had a card printed in the 1972 test set.  The photo below shows his card.  Davey is probably the most recognizable name after the 4 Hall-of-Famers, also shown below.

1975 Topps Mini

#532 – Anderson (MG), #260 – Bench, #560 – Perez, #180 – Morgan, #320 – Rose, #17 – Concepcion, #284 – Ken Griffey, #41 – Cesar Geronimo, #87 – George Foster

#208 – Powell/Bench (’70 MVP), #210 – Allen/Bench (’72 MVP), #211 – R.Jackson/Rose (’73 MVP), #260 – Bench, #308 – Bench/Burroughs (Leaders)

As the ’75 Topps mini set is a full parallel of the regular set, and this set was in the middle of the peak of the Big Red Machine, this set has a boat load of Big Red Machine cards.  Each of the 8 players and manager Sparky Anderson are included in this set.

Up tomorrow – I’ll look at the one player from the Reds most recent World Championship included in this set.

A look back at 1972 Topps Cloth Stickers test

The next set I’ll look at with ties to 2011 Topps Lineage is from the 1970′s – specifically the 1972 Topps cloth sticker set. 

After doing a little research, I’m surprised they singled out the 1972 set – as Topps has had a number of test sets called Topps cloth stickers.  Here’s a list of the sets – I’ll do 1972 last because that’s what Topps says they modeled the Lineage set after:

1970 Cloth Stickers Test

These are apparently very rare, and appear to have been material tests that Topps intended to send to the scrap heap.  Every sticker that’s been found (less than 44, including some that are only partials) corresponds to the 2nd series of Topps cards from t(#133-263).  Here’s a couple of posts on this issue from the blog “Topps Archives”.

1976 Cloth Stickers Prototype

Another materials test – there were only 2 cards printed for this test issue – Duff Dyer (Pirates) and Bob Apodaca (Mets).  Topps was likely testing for the full-blown set they would release in 1977 – these cloth stickers can be found in a couple of different versions.  I’ve seen a couple of lots for these on eBay from time to time.

1977 Cloth Stickers

This set consisted of 55 players and was issued in packs along with 18 other cards that formed 2 9-piece puzzles.  When you put the puzzles together, they form a photo of each All-Star squad.  Here’s a write-up of this set on sports collector’s daily.

1972 Cloth Stickers Test

33 cards in the set – usually coming in 33-card or 132-card sheets.

• Subsets: As the sticker set is essentially a sheet of cards from the ’72 set in sticker form, some of the same subsets are represented that are in the 1972 Topps flagship set.  There are 3 “In Action” cards, a “Boyhood Photo” card of Jim Fregosi, the Red Sox team card, and even a checklist.
• Set Design: Exactly the same as the recognizable arch design from 1972, these was one of the more unique designs in Topps history.  Like all the other sets above, these cards have blank, stickered backs.  If you see a single card – that means it was hand-cut.
• Hall of Fame: There are 4 Hall of Famers in this set.
• Hank Aaron, Luis Aparicio (IA), Roberto Clemente (IA), Willie McCovey
• Last Active player: Dave Concepcion, who played his final game in September of 1988.