Topps206 Backs and smudges

Yeah... that obsessive blaster break? Probably pushed till next week. I'm still goofy over Topps206s so I shall inundate you with useless trivialities until I get my act together.

BEHOLD:

The 2009 Topps206 Back

You saw this already. If you'll recall I also said this:

I'm too lazy to go check my 2002 Topps206 cards, but the back design is extremely similar if not exactly the same.

Here is the 2002 Topps206 back:

Virtually identical, no? I never understood the reasoning behind the black circle o' text so I think I just blocked it from memory. It's not all that attractive in my humble opinion. Fortunately, just like with the 2009 set where short prints have a different back design:

The 2002-2003 set had different designs for eash subset. Like this one here.

Here's the back for prospect cards. almost none of these were actually rookie cards thanks to the practices of the day, but they still hadn't quite made it in the majors yet. The real rookie cards were the draft picks:

These are the ones that would have the Rookie Logo fungus growing on the front nowadays. I liked this back the best out of all of them, it's pretty striking. This back means business. You'll recognize the next one:

HA! I knew I'd seen that design before! Compare!

Good choice by Topps to resurrect this back design. It works well with the Piedmont back theme. One more back and we can move on...

This back was the one used for the original T206 reprints. Quite attractive, but I'm somewhat bummed there was no writeup of the player. I'm glad Topps gave the Legends cards the same backs as the other base cards this year.

Here's something else you all might be familiar with...

The infamous Topps206 smudge. If I had a dollar for every comment I've read about people who turned their fresh-from-the-pack Topps206 card around only to regret not washing their hands first, I'd have enough money for a hobby box.

Yes, these smudges are printed on to make the cards look aged.

No, this isn't the first time Topps has done this.

This is the back of a minty fresh Topps Cracker Jack card. Note the staining on the top left corner, right side and bottom. That's not from me abusing my cards, that was printed on. It's supposed to look like that. However, unlike the 2009 set where the exact same two smudges are printed in the same place on every single card:

In 2004-2005, Topps had different smudging on the back of every card as you can see here:

Very nice attention to detail by Topps here. It makes the cards look really neat, although it's hard to notice when the cards are in a toploader or plastic page. Why didn't Topps do it this way in '09? Probably because it was too expensive or just a pain in the rear to do. I'm not entirely sure why Topps did it at all... The original Topps206 set, Topps205 , Turkey Red and Allen & Ginter didn't need faux smudges. So don't worry about those weird smears when you rip open that Topps206 blaster. They're designed that way. Go ahead and eat that rack of ribs beforehand with wild abandon and then rip that box!