I just finished up a few posts for completing the 1990 Topps Batting Leaders set. That was a challenging set to finish up – but not as much as this set. Normally, I wouldn’t consider collecting a parallel set – but I’m a sucker for anything “retro”. Now, the 2011 Topps Lineage set was a great idea – but the execution was a bit off. The card backs, which are the same as the base Lineage set, are atrocious.
For reference – I did a post on the guys in both the original 1975 set and this set. See that here.
Since this is a parallel – I’m going to do the post in the same manner as I do a base set (i.e. – there’s more information below!
Info about my set:
How I put the set together:
- 153 cards from my first hobby box
- 41 cards from my second hobby box
- 1 card from a Group Break
- 5 cards from trades
Card that completed my set: #197 – Andre Dawson
This was his card from the All-Star rookie subset – though for the Lineage mini cards, Topps didn’t include the ASR trophy on the card.
General set info:
Set composition: 200 cards – 1:6 odds
48 retired players, 142 current players, 10 All-Star Rookies (6 were retired players)
Player with the most cards in the set: 10 players – 2 cards
Each of the players in the All-Star Rookie Team subset have 2 cards.
Johnny Bench, Willie McCovey, Joe Morgan, Cal Ripken, Chipper Jones, Ichiro, Andre Dawson, Andruw Jones, CC Sabathia, Tom Seaver
First Card and the Hundreds: #1 – Sandy Koufax, #100 – Babe Ruth, #200 – Tom Seaver ASR
Highest book value: #13, #194 – Cal Ripken
Most notable card: #1 – Koufax (see above)
This isn’t a set that has anything notable – so for this I picked the #1 card. Sandy Koufax was re-signed as a Topps sponsor in 2011; that was a pretty big deal at the time. I also picked this card for the base set because it had a photo-shop goof – but I noticed that the parallel has a different picture, which really surprised me. More on that in my next post.
Best card (my opinion): #110 – Thurman Munson
I picked Monte Irvin for the base set – but for the parallel there’s a different criteria. Out of all the 1975 cards, there are 18 players who have base cards in both sets. Only 2 of those cards feature pictures that I think are of the appropriate era – around 1975 – for this set. Joe Morgan is the other, and I like Munson’s card better.
Second best card (also my opinion): #158 – Monte Irvin
I love this card – so it beats out that Joe Morgan card I mentioned above, which isn’t my favorite photo.
Favorite action photo: #190 – Bert Blyleven, #76 – Roberto Alomar
These guys were new HOF-ers when this set came out.
Favorite non-action photo: #158 – Monte Irvin (see above)
My Favorite Reds card: #33 – Tony Perez
I just like this shot of a younger “Big Dawg”.
Lifetime Topps project 
Only parallel set in the 100s that I’ll ever complete. That’s how much I liked it.
Probably the case for me as well – the only other thing would potentially be that I try to do a tobacco mini set someday.
I wonder how many people have actually completed this set. It was such a difficult thing to do – it can’t be that many!
I did see an eBay auction where someone had the entire relic set of these. That’s a bit crazy.
[…] biggest insert I finished up, though, was the 2011 Lineage ’75 mini parallel set. This one was a long time coming, and I was pretty excited about finishing it […]