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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 1975 Topps mini

I’ll come back later to do an overview of this year’s Allen & Ginter product – I’m not going to do a comparison to the older tobacco set for A&G for a couple of reasons.  First, this is the 6th year of the product, so I could choose one of the earlier sets to do that comparison some day.  Second, I just don’t have the time – Lineage just came out, and after Heritage, I was really excited to do a look at that set.  In fact, I’d say this may be my most anticipated release of the year.  The Heritage base set was more interesting than Lineage, but every insert in this product is interesting because of its tie to the Topps Archives.

The first set I’ll look at with ties to this year’s Lineage product is from 1975 – the Topps mini set.

660 cards in the set – an exact parallel of the 1975 Topps base set, just in a miniature version.  The set was released in Michigan and California as a test – cards measure 3-1/8″ x 2-1/4″.

• Subsets: ’74 Highlights (#1-7), League Leaders (#306-313), Postseason (#459-466), Rookies (#614-624, by position), Managers (24 cards throughout), Topps All-Star Rookies (9 cards throughout).  Certain players throughout the set are designated as All-Stars on the front of their base card.  After not having done so for the previous year, Topps placed an All-Star Rookie trophy on the front of the players’ who earned that distinction in 1974.  The manager cards feature a team photo with the manager pictured in the lower left-hand corner and a team checklist on the back.
• Set Design: 1975 was one of the more unique designs in Topps history.  The cards feature a bright, two-color border surrounding the player photo.  The team name runs across the top of the border in shadowed, block letters, while the player name runs in smaller letters across the bottom of the border.  The lower right-hand corner has a baseball with the position included, and there is a facsimile signature over the photo.  The back is oriented horizontally with red and green background printed over gray cardstock.  The player’s biographical data is at the top left, a trivia question with a comic is below that and to the right.  Player statistics are in the middle, with a write-up about the player underneath the statistics if there is room.
• Packs: Topps issued the regular and the mini set in 1 series in the same formats.  Cards were available in 10-card wax packs (15¢) that came 24 to a box, 24-card cello packs (25¢) and 42-card rack packs (45¢).
• Rookies: Hall-of-famers George Brett, Robin Yount, Gary Carter and Jim Rice all have RCs in this set.  Future MVPs and perennial All-stars Fred Lynn and Keith Hernandez also have rookie cards in this set.
• Hall of Fame: There are an incredible 48 Hall of Famers in this set.
• Rollie Fingers, Bert Blyleven, Brooks Robinson, Fergie Jenkins, Dave Winfield, Mike Schmidt, Carlton Fisk, Willie Stargell, Earl Weaver (MG), Phil Niekro, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, Robin Yount, George Brett, Catfish Hunter, Dick Williams (MG), Red Schoendienst (MG), Johnny Bench, Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Jackson, Frank Robinson (player & MG cards), Jim Palmer, Walter Alston (MG), Tom Seaver, Yogi Berra (MG), Willie McCovey, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, Sparky Anderson, Lou Brock, Billy Williams, Goose Gossage, Tony Perez, Rod Carew, Jim Rice, Gary Carter, Harmon Killebrew, Hank Aaron, Roy Campanella (MVP subset), Willie Mays (MVP), Mickey Mantle (MVP), Ernie Banks (MVP), Nellie Fox (MVP), Sandy Koufax (MVP), Roberto Clemente (MVP), Orlando Cepeda (MVP)
• Last Active player: Dave Winfield, who played his last game on October 1, 1995 for the eventual AL Champion Cleveland Indians.  Winfield, who had been injured most of the season, was left off the postseason roster.
• Variations: There aren’t any variations in the set, but card #407 is fairly interesting.  Herb Washington is listed as a pinch runner by the Oakland A’s eccentric owner Chuck Finley.

The rectangular box has the word Baseball at the bottom, surrounded by designations for the year, the Topps logo, the 15¢ price tag and the words “trading card bubble gum” surrounding.  Forgettable Mets hurler Hank Webb is pitching a ball right toward you, with an image of an outfield wall and stands behind him.  The mini box looks the same as the standard set except for being smaller.

Promotions

• Packs had advertisements to be able to purchase a sports card locker, a kids magazine, a wall plaque or to join the Topps Sports club.