The $10,000 Question

Here's what I've been thinking about these last few weeks...

A reader sent me an e-mail last week looking for advice. He wanted to spend about $10,000 but only purchase four or five cards. Here were the other parameters: At least one of them should be a T206, all should be from earlier than 1970, and all should have solid PSA grades. Which should he buy? I told him he couldn't go wrong with popular hobby stalwarts like Clemente, Koufax, Aaron, and Rose. As for the tobacco card, I have no experience buying or selling T206's, and couldn't give him a recommendation. But this got me thinking: What cards would I have chosen for myself? Buying cards as investments goes against my outlook and reasons for collecting, but it would be nice to have that kind of dough to play with. Which cards would you choose?...

...I've been searching for a new set to collect. I thought 2015 Allen & Ginter would be that set, but right now the price tag is steep. I might have to wait a year for things to settle. One set I've always enjoyed is the Archives line from 2001 and 2002. I had dipped into it as part of the mega master sets I've put together for 1976, 1978, 1986, 1987, and 1988 Topps, but never for its own sake as a set. A few weeks ago I purchased a group from 2001 series one and I'm digging it. This may be my new set. That said, there are a few players who seem to be missing, or maybe I've just overlooked them? Guys like <b>Jeff Burroughs, Dave Stewart, Charlie Hough</b>, and <b>Manny Trillo</b>. Burroughs was the 1974 AL MVP, Stewart won 20 games in four straight seasons, Hough was a knuckleball workhorse, and Trillo was one of the best second basemen of his generation. Additionally, all four had retired before 2001, and each had a rookie and last card issued by Topps. Granted, none was elected to the Hall of Fame, but neither was <b>Wilbur Wood, Jim Maloney, Johnny Antonelli</b>, or <b>Bucky Dent</b>, and all four of them are in Archives. Maybe I'll do some custom Archives...

...There are two questions I think about when I'm falling asleep: 1) If we projected today's salaries on players from the past, who would've been paid what? For example, someone like Bobby Shantz. Would he have been a max-contract guy? And 2), are there any players today who will make the Hall of Fame? Besides Alex Rodriguez's steroid-fueled sideshow, I can identify 10 players who are legitimate Hall of Famers: <b>Miguel Cabrera, Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, Ichiro, CC Sabathia, David Ortiz, Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina,</b> and <b>Mike Trout</b>. But which of these players will be remembered by Hall of Fame voters in 10 to 20 years when they're up for election?

You may scoff at the insinuation that an otherworldly talent like Albert Pujols would be forgotten in 10 years, but look at the example of <b>Duke Snider</b>. The Duke of Flatbush was elected in his 11th year on the Hall of Fame ballot, which means he had been retired for 17 years before election. Or how about someone like <b>Jim Bunning</b>? Over 200 wins, author of a perfect game (as well as another no-hitter), All-Star in each league. Seems like a shoo-in for the Hall. Instead he was on the ballot for 15 years, always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Twenty-five years after he retired he was elected by the Veterans Committee. A situation like that seems unthinkable today, but could it be possible for someone like Sabathia, or even <b>Roy Halladay</b>? It seems today that if a player's not elected on the first ballot, then they're not true Hall of Famers. I hope someone like <b>Graham Womack</b> will tackle this question...

...I feel like a dolt. A few weeks ago I purchased a large stack of exclusive Target Topps coupons on eBay for a couple bucks. Now my local Target has stopped carrying Topps products. Not sure what to do with these coupons...

Snowbound and Stir Crazy

In case you missed it, Boston has received so much snow in the last few weeks that everything and everyone—including me—is at a breaking point. The MBTA doesn't work, the government is encouraging people to stay indoors and off the roads, and there are no signs that the cold and the snow will let up anytime soon. Which has given me plenty of time to stew in my thoughts...

I would really like to see colleges offer an intercollegiate stock car racing circuit, if only to see cars and fire suits covered in logos and emblems of universities and names of individual departments. Maybe the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chair in Automotive Engineering?

I haven't bought any 2015 Topps Series One yet, but I'm digging the acetate parallel. It reminds me of the Slideshow insert set from 1995 Leaf. An idea's an automatic winner in my book if you need a functioning lightbox in order to enjoy the cards.

And while we're on Series One, the sheer volume of opened cards listed on eBay right now is staggering. Massive lots of hand-collated sets, "unsearched" (yeah right) lots of base cards, parallels, inserts, autographed cards, game-used swatches, and more. Didn't it just release a few weeks ago? It gets me thinking about collecting in Bachelor terms—here for "the right reasons" versus the wrong reasons. While all this stuff on eBay is great for cheapskate collectors like me who just want to see the cards, it's also off-putting. Why would someone buy so many cards in the first place if they're just going to try to flip them for pennies on the dollar? Is it really all about finding the case hits?

I finally put my 1969 Topps set in pages. Got me thinking, did Ultra Pro decrease the quality of its nine-pocket pages? The ones I bought seem flimsy.

Also put my Heritage High Numbers set in pages (with the rest of the Heritage set). Looks good. Wish I had disposable income enough to assemble Heritage every year.

Scott Crawford on Cards has a great idea about collecting over the course of a year: only focus on certain sets and interests during certain months. That way your individual collections each receive attention and your interest doesn't flag. For me, it would be

Jan/July: 1970s Topps basketball
Feb/Aug: Adding new players to my Red Soxlopedia
March/Sept: 2014 Topps Heritage Minis
April/Oct: 1969 Topps variations
May/Nov: Mega master set additions for 1978, 1986, and 1987
June/Dec: 2015 Topps Archives (only cards of players depicted in the 1976 style, and only those players who also had a card in the original 1976 set)

The much-discussed decline of blogging in the sports-card-collecting hobby is sad to me. There are literally scores of YouTube users who post box breaks but don't seem all that interested in the cards they find—unless those cards are serially numbered or autographed—or have anything to say about the cards. Blogging about cards allows for more than just posting images of the cards. It allows you to say what you like about the cards, about why you collect. It's important that this outlet doesn't disappear.

Lastly, with all these stamped buybacks, Topps has finally released the Archives: Commons set I predicted back in 2007.

NBA History, Sans Michael Jordan

What if you had to present the history of the NBA without mentioning Michael Jordan? Fans of basketball know that to even suggest something so ludicrous is, well, ludicrous. And yet, if you're Panini, you have an exclusive license to produce official NBA cards and the sport's number-one-all-time star is under contract with a competitor.

It's unfortunate, to say the least. For the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, Panini produced a very cool throwback set called Past & Present, featuring stars and rookies of today with Hall of Famers and stars from the past. Yes, there were other big—really big, in a few cases—stars missing from the checklists, but none bigger than Michael Jordan. 

Yes, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, all are represented. Even a few nice rookies, including the unibrowed rebound monster Anthony Davis. But it's not like you don't notice. It's obvious Jordan's not on the checklist.

Despite his absence, Past & Present is the kind of set I would create if I worked at a card company. Vintage look and feel to the base set, a nice mix of designs and a diverse checklist (of course I would've found a way to include cards of Dan Issel, Dave Cowens, Earl Monroe, Rudy Tomjanovich, Shawn Kemp, Kevin Johnson, Gus Williams, Kevin McHale, and, oh, I don't know, Charles Barkley). 

Another highlight is that, much like Topps's football and baseball Archives products, both years of Past & Present are relatively inexpensive to collect. Packs and boxes are still available on discount wholesale websites, and hand-collated sets can be found on eBay (if you search long enough). Another similarity to Topps Archives? One of the 2012-13 chase sets is comprised of autographs of obscure, retired players as well as current stars. Guys like Rick Fox, J.R. Rider, and even a recently deceased former player (Ray Williams).

All in all, nice cards—great designs and an excellent mix of old and new stars. And if you can get past the fact that Jordan isn't walking through that door, you've got yourself a winner.

A Card I'd Like to See in 2015 Topps Archives

Now that we know the base card designs Topps has chosen for its 2015 Archives set—1957, 1976, and 1983—here's a card I'd like to see in the set.

Let's Talk About 2015 Topps Archives

With the unveiling of the underwhelming design of 2015 Topps flagship—with its 25-year-anniversary homage to the 1990 Topps design, intended or not—and the prospect of collecting Heritage '66 next summer already uninteresting, Archives may be the set for me in 2015. 

So today I daydreamed about which old designs Topps will pull out of their storage closet for its 2015 Archives set. Here are my guesses.

1988 Topps Baseball
I happen to like the design of 1988 Topps. It's like a combination of the best elements of the 1966 and 1967 designs, with an easy-to-read orange back. Nine-year-old me bought a metric ton of 1988 Topps.

1983 Topps Baseball
Another hallmark 1980s design for a brand that so far has managed to miss it, despite using 1980's design twice.

1994 Topps Baseball
Honestly, not a great design, but the 1990s are sorely lacking from this set so far.

1978 Topps Baseball
What's the Archives brand without a token 1970s design? 1978 is one of the few they haven't cribbed yet.

1981, 1991, or 1970 Topps Baseball
I'm hoping the short-printed cards are in a separate uniform design, unlike in 2014's set, which used the same four designs from the base set. 1981 Topps would be a great choice, or 1970, or 1991.

The designs used for the insert sets have been a hodgepodge taken from all four major sports. I don't see 2015 Topps Archives being any different. Here are a few of the insert designs I'd like to see.

1956 Topps Football
1958 AB&C Footballers (UK)
1967 Topps Who Am I? (with disguises)
1968 Topps Baseball Game
1969 Topps Football
1979 Topps Baseball Comics
1981-82 Topps Basketball Super Action!
1983 Topps/Drake's Baseball Sluggers 
1986 Topps Baseball Tattoos
1990 Topps Baseball All-Stars
1990 Topps The Simpsons

The problem with all of this is that eventually Topps will run out of old designs to use for Archives. I've written about this before, but it really feels like every year Topps has to out-do itself in terms of designs to use in its Archives offering. At this pace, the well will soon dry. We can only hope that the Topps brand managers will have enough sense to stop while they're ahead.

Card Critic: 2014 Topps Archives

Before I get into what I think about the 2014 edition of Topps Archives, a little background on the three shifts in the hobby landscape that were needed to support a weird mishmash of a set like this. 

In the summer of 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published an essay in The National Interest titled "The End of History?" Fukuyama argued that Western liberal democracy marked the end of humanity's social evolution and that, contrary to Marx, democracy would be the prevailing style of government going forward.

If we replace "Western liberal democracy" with "nostalgia," this thesis could also accurately describe the approach and mind-set of Topps in 1989. Nineteen eighty-nine saw Topps's re-introduction of the Bowman brand, complete with oversized cards, a la 1953. While oversized cards were used for only the inaugural set, the design choices put forth in 1989 Bowman catered to those nostalgic adult collectors, and set the company on the path to today's hobby landscape: obsessed with retro designs, with fewer and fewer original designs and new ideas.

I could write an entire essay on the design decisions (or lack thereof) of Bowman, but let's talk about Topps Archives instead. When the brand started in 1991, it was strictly as a reprint of the 1953 set, with a few cards tacked on at the end of the checklist of players not originally included in the set (Ted Williams, Henry Aaron, Lou Boudreau, etc.). The "Ultimate 1953" set was a big hit with collectors. (So much so that Archives would pop up again in 1994 with the "Ultimate 1954" set, with a Brooklyn Dodgers set in 1995, and with mixed-years sets in 2001, and 2002, before disappearing for another 10 years.)

But while Topps was using Archives as a reprint brand for baseball (and football), the company took the innovative route and lent the Archives name to a basketball card set that predicted the direction of the brand today: a smaller set using legacy designs and heavy with contemporary stars.

The set was called "Topps Archives: The Rookies," featuring NBA players shown in their rookie years, using the baseball card designs from those years. This was significant because Topps did not create basketball cards for 10 seasons (1982-83 to 1991-92), thus missing out on a decade's worth of star rookies. I really liked this set; its concept, designs, checklist, and price per pack appealed to me as a collector (and the fact that you can still find boxes of unopened wax for under $15 is pretty cool as well).

The current iteration of Archives could not exist without a third nostalgia-tinted brand: Topps All-Time Fan Favorites. Released from 2003–2005, these sets featured popular regional favorites from the last 50 years—not necessarily each team's biggest stars. Designs included every year of the Topps canon, from 1952 on. And while the checklist got more and more tired with each passing year, the brand concept was fresh (though it did start to border on my parody idea of an Archives set comprised entirely of commons).

This combination—a yen for nostalgia, legacy designs, and a mix of contemporary and retired players on a shorter checklist—is what makes a set like Topps Archives tick.

But yes, it's a hodgepodge. The checklist is a mix of today's stars and rookies and retired Hall of Famers. The set's got a bit of history for younger collectors who don't know the legacy designs, it's got parallels (like every other Topps product), and it's got short-printed hot-stuff rookies (Masahiro Tanaka and Jose Abreu).

It's also devoid of original thought, or new ideas, or really any ideas that go outside the box. And if you don't like the designs included in the set, you're probably not going to want to collect it. The brand has also, in its three years of existence in this form (2012–2014, so far), been plagued with lousy paper stock, odd inserts (Karate Kid villain autographs, anyone?), photography shared with other sets, and eerily similar checklists from year to year.

But did I mention it has on-card autographs? Of current stars and retired fan favorites? I never wanted a Shawon Dunston reprint 1990 Topps card, but I do cherish the auto'd Dunston reprint I got in a pack of 2012 Archives. But with 2014 Topps Archives pushing $100 a box, I hope I would find an autograph of someone better than Shawon.

This year's crop of inserts presents a nice mix of designs; my favorites are the 1969 Topps Deckle (what, no short-printed Jim Wynn or Joe Foy or their more recent equivalents Ron Gant and Alex Gordon?), and 1987 Topps Future Stars. Both of these inserts will fit nicely as I build mega master sets for both of these years (1969 Topps and 1987 Topps, respectively).

And it's here that Topps's dumpster dive into the past connects with me. I'm actively collecting cards that use a particular design to create a "mega master set." I'm doing this for a handful of years: 1965, 1969, 1976, 1978, 1986, and 1987 Topps. It adds a new wrinkle to collecting these sets and makes newer brands like All-Time Fan Favorites, Heritage, and even Archives worth paying attention to.

Have we reached the end of original thought in the hobby? Well, nostalgia is the prevailing selling point for many, if not virtually all, of the new baseball card sets in 2014. Gypsy Queen, Allen and Ginter, Heritage, Archives, Turkey Red—all of these sets are based on old designs. Topps flagship base-card designs have been interchangeable since 2010. Bowman? Ditto. And inserts in these flagship sets hark back to the legacy of each brand.

Don't let your set be a victim of repetitive photography!

So while 2014 Archives lacks the new idea to make it a memorable set, that's not a surprising development. It would be truly surprising if it did present something new.

What Ben's Thinking About

It's no secret: my interest in collecting sports cards waxes and wanes like the cycles of the moon. But there are certain things about the hobby that pique my interest. Here they are for the week of June 15, 2013.

1. I'm still marveling at the profile page our own Travis Peterson got in June's Beckett Sports Cards Monthly. Hey Topps, how long before you wake up and give this guy some sketch cards in a new product? 

2. My excitement for Topps Heritage 2014 is palpable. Not too long ago I finally put the finishing touches on my 1965 set, and since its one of the more popular Topps years, I wonder if the company is also counting down the days till its release. I'm convinced that it will be a surefire hit, especially if they include a full 72-card Embossed all-stars insert set. The Heritage line has seemed like it's been phoning it in the past few years...

3. I bought some Topps Tiffany cards a few weeks ago. No wonder I lusted after these cards as unattainable in my youth—they still look great; glossy and bright as the day they were born. Too bad the last owner was definitely a smoker. I never it would matter much if a previous owner smoked, but you can tell just from one sniff. It's kind of gross.

4. One of the biggest steals of the last few years has to be sealed Topps buybacks on eBay. Head over to our Facebook page and watch my pack break if you don't believe me. I paid $2 for that sealed pack on eBay.

5. I'm debating which vintage set to collect next. The choices are 1953, 1954, or 1955 Topps, or 1988 or 1989 Topps. I know what you're thinking: Why would anyone willingly spend money on junk wax? Well, I must've put together at least three full sets from both years back in 1988 and 1989, but I didn't save any of them. And it turns out that as I put together the mega master sets for 1986 and 1987, I'm reminded how much I like the designs from 1988 and 1989. And it would be super-cheap to accomplish, even without plunking down the $7 for a factory set.

6. I'm not sure how others feel about 2013 Topps Archives, but I don't really like the idea of mixing sports designs. Topps Basketball had some great designs in the 1970s, but that doesn't mean I'll take a shine to seeing Ted Williams on a 1972–73 card. Is it that they feel they've tapped the well of baseball designs too many times?

7. I just re-read Ken Kaiser's autobiography Planet of the Umps. Definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a quick, lively read. Makes me sad that umpires never got into a major baseball card set after 1955 Bowman. Maybe that will be our next great custom set...

8. Can I consider my 1976–79 mega master Topps sets complete without custom cards from Bob Lemke?

9. Since Topps has included mini cards as an insert set the past few years now, what will be the throwback design for 2014? My money's either on 1965, as a tie-in to the Heritage set, or a set from the 1990s, like 1992 Bowman. Or they'll pull an Upper Deck and steal a classic design from a one-time competitor. Who wouldn't love mini 1984 Donruss?

Card Critic: 2012 Topps Archives

Sometimes I wonder about how much influence bloggers have on card companies—if any at all. If card bloggers focused every post for a month on old Sportflics sets, would the manufacturers find a way to include a bevy of lenticular cards in their sets next year? Logic says probably not... but what if the topic was cards of the 1980s? Would manufacturers find a way to include throwbacks in next year's sets? 

I bought a few packs of the new Topps Archives set a few days ago. And while I have to admit that I'm excited by this product, I'm intrigued by the design choices Topps made. They limited the base set to four designs: 1954, 1971, 1980, and 1984. The set also includes 40 SPs of vintage players on various designs, with the caveat that a different photo is used from the original (e.g., Sandy Koufax's 1966 reprint shows him mid-windup, rather than staring into the camera). These cards are on checklist numbers 201–240. And then there's a superfluous secret short print Bryce Harper card (in the 1984 design) on #241, not to mention lots of inserts, which I'll get to in a minute.

But first let's talk about the front end of the checklist. The checklist includes an array of old and new stars mixed indiscriminately. Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Tom Seaver, Stephen Strasburg, Albert Pujols, a Yu Darvish rookie, yadda yadda yadda. I get it. The checklist itself isn't what intrigues me. What makes me sit up and take note is why Topps limited the design choices for the first 200 cards. Topps has scores of great designs scattered across its history, designs that go well together when mixed. But if you put the base set in pages, you'd have five and a half sheets of 1954, five and a half sheets of 1971, five and a half of 1980, and then five and a half of 1984. Not randomly dispersed; all in a row. 


One of my theories is that Topps sees this product as a new-card collector's measured introduction to the back catalogue. When I was a little kid, I remember my oldest card was a 1978 Topps Doug Ault (before I started going to shows at the Watertown Mall). I don't know how I got it, but I cherished it. And it was one of the only cards I had that was made before 1986. Granted, new-card collectors in 2012 are inundated with classic designs: Allen & Ginter, Topps Heritage, Gypsy Queen, Topps Lineage...and dime and quarter boxes are full of "retro" cards made in the last 10 years. Old designs—or new designs with old-design tweaks—are everywhere. But that doesn't mean all collectors see them, especially those whose "local dealer" is a Walmart or Target only stocked with the latest Bowman Chrome or Topps Series 2. By dividing the base set into four equal 50-card quarters, the 1954, 1971, 1980, and 1984 designs are drummed into the collector's brain, elevating them to a higher design-worship plane. 


Another of my theories is that these four designs are at different stations of worship within the Topps' company walls. There seems to be a definite official hierarchy of classic Topps designs. The no-brainer is that Topps values its 1952 design the highest, with 1954 and 1953 as a close second and third. After that it's anybody's guess. I'm basing this theory on a very unscientific method: totaling the number of times the company uses a given design in a retro-themed product, insert set, or individual card within a mixed-design set. This calculation deserves its own post, with a universe measured from 1991 to the present, but for now I'll stick to the instances I can think of off the top of my head. And by "retro" design, I mean those designs made for sets between 1951–1990.


1952: Reprint set (1983); 2001 Topps Heritage; 2006 Topps '52 Rookies; Mickey Mantle Hero Worship (various years)

1953: Topps Archives: The Ultimate 1953 Set (1991); 2002 Topps Heritage; Topps Gallery Heritage

1954: Topps Archives 1954 (1994); 2003 Topps Heritage; 2012 Topps Archives; a thinly veiled interpretation was used by Fleer for its Tradition set in 2000

Other years: Designs from 1955–1963 have been used for Topps Heritage products from 2004–2012; Topps' Big Baseball in 1988–1990, as well as 2001 Fleer Tradition, were homages to the 1956 design; Upper Deck used basic facsimiles of the 1963, 1965, and 1971 designs for its Vintage line from 2001–2003; Topps Archives, Topps All-Time Fan Favorites, and various eTopps and insert sets from across the last 15–20 years

From thinking about this theory over the last few days, my hypothesis is that 1964 is the least-used (and therefore least officially loved) of the classic Topps designs, with a bottom five of 1964, 1970, 1973, 1982, and 1989. Again, this is just a guess; a more formal tally would reveal totals. But if my hypothesis proves true, 2013 Topps Heritage will be very interesting.

But back to the base cards of 2012 Archives. Elevating these four designs begs the question: Do these designs deserve to be worshipped? I've written a lot already about the 1980 and 1984 designs (see here and here), and 1954 is in the Topps Pantheon of Great Design. But 1971? With the smushed sans serif and simple black borders?

1971 is a tough set to put together in any condition. From what I've seen, prices on individual cards are higher than the year before it and the year after it. I mean, how can you explain that Munson's second-year card from 1971 is worth more than his rookie from 1970? You can count examples of a second-year card out-valuing a rookie on one finger: 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle. 1971 was also the first year that action photos made their way onto individual player cards, not just World Series or historical highlight subsets. This was a fairly large improvement after years upon years of faces and posed sideline shots.

But is 1971 worthy? Or is it just that the design is so markedly different from any other vintage design that it warrants an inclusion? I'm not sure of the answer.

Now to the inserts. Stuck on the end of the base set checklist are 40 short-printed cards numbered from #201–240. These are cards of inactive stars, Hall of Famers, and fan favorites. Each player is featured on a vintage design from their respective playing days, with a different photo used from the one on their original, vintage card. (I believe this practice was first used by Topps in their All-Time Fan Favorites set from 2003/2004.)

Then there's a gold rainbow foil parallel of the base set, a reprint set stamped with a tiny gold "Topps Archives" stamp, a Classic Combos set, a 1982 In Action set, a 1977 Topps Cloth Sticker set, a 1969 Deckle Edge set, a 1968 3-D lenticular set, a 1967 giant-head peel-off-sticker set, and relic and auto cards. The relic cards use the 1956 design, and the autos are on mini, framed 1983 cards. There are also high-end autographs on original cards of retired stars like Frank Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, and Bob Gibson, to name a few, an autographed Yu Darvish rookie, and an autographed Bryce Harper card. There are also a couple buy-backs, a six-signature "book" card, a weird hand print of Uncle Fester, er, Cal Ripken Jr., totally bizarre cards autographed by the villains from The Karate Kid as box loaders, and Topps Vault items. Am I leaving anything out? Oh yes, cut signature cards by "entertainment stars of the 1980s," which I hope includes Harvey, the announcer from Double Dare, and Kurt Loder of MTV News. If there's a Kurt Loder autograph floating around out there, I might be tempted to buy a box. In fact, here's my wish list of "entertainment stars of the 1980s":

• Harvey the Double Dare announcer
• Kurt Loder of MTV News
• "Weird" Al Yankovic
• Maxx Headroom (I don't care that he's not real!)
• The Million Dollar Man and Virgil
• Manimal
• Daryl Hall and John Oates
• Robocop
• Scott Baio
• The Bundys from Married... With Children


(Not to be outdone, I pulled a Shawon Dunston autographed card in my pack. Sidebar: When I was a kid—actually, even now—I'm not sure how to pronouce "Shawon." I mean, I think it's pronounced like "Chone," which is to say, like "Sean." But sounding it out it's definitely "Shuh-wahn." Which is not exactly a bad thing. Better than "Chone," which I always mistakenly pronounce "Chone.")

A set's base set checklist has to be strong, and the base set card design has to be strong for me to even consider a set to be worth collecting. This installment of Topps Archives passes both tests, as we all knew it would. How can you argue with classic designs and a checklist that encompasses (many of) the best players of the 20th and 21st centuries? I also like that the checklist is manageable: at 200 cards—240 with all the SPs—you aren't inundated with multiple Nolan Ryan cards, or Mickey Mantles, or Barry Bondses. Hey, speaking of which, where is Barry Bonds? A lot of "fan favorites" aren't here, guys like Garry Templeton, Chet Lemon, Joe Carter, and Fred McGriff are just a few that come to mind. And as long as we're talking about the negatives of this set, the card stock is not great. The stock is closer to that awful Lineage set from last year than it is to the Archives set from 2001. Which is a shame, because while they finally got the fronts and backs right, they didn't go all out and print them on old-school cardboard. Was Topps scared that collectors were going to confuse these new cards with the originals? Hard to explain the rationale on this decision, but it hurts the set.

Grade: B+

Card vs. Card - May 9

The Champ: 1992 Topps Craig Wilson
The Challenger: 1991 Topps Archives "1953: The Ultimate Series" Eleanor Engle

We've got a new champ tonight: Eleanor Engle pulls out the win, 8-7.
We're going to stop doing these for a little while till we figure out a better way to display the polls on the blog.

Cardboard Fenway: 1991 Topps Archives Jimmy Piersall

Cardboard Fenway - #84. 1991 Topps Archives "1953: The Ultimate Series" Jimmy Piersall

This is one of the "Cards That Never Were" from the end of the Archives 1953 set. I wish there was a film of Piersall running backwards around the bases.

Cardboard Fenway: 1991 Topps Archives Dom DiMaggio

Cardboard Fenway - #24. 1991 Topps Archives "1953: The Ultimate Series" Dom DiMaggio

Which is the overlooked DiMaggio brother? For all of Vince's talent, my money is on Dominic. By the way, that is definitely not Fenway behind him.

Cardboard Fenway: 1991 Topps Archives Willard Nixon

Cardboard Fenway - #32. 1991 Topps Archives 1953 "The Ultimate Series" Willard Nixon

OK. I'll be straight with you: The only reason I chose this card is because Willard shows a striking resemblance to Jonathan Papelbon.