Stuff inna mail - part 1 Toppswap

Quickie mailday from this weekend. I recently got an offer from JD's dad to help with some 2009 Topps series 1 cards. We hashed out a trade and my side came in the mail this weekend. Included were:

10 2001 Topps cards

With my Target retro box ripped and soprted, (but not posted or YouTubed because I'm lazy) I finally had a wantlist together. Ten were knocked out incliding this nice catcher above.

A whole mess of Turkey Reds

INCLUDING CHIPPAH

There was at least a dozen in the package but I was too dazzled by Mr. Jones fielding under a purple sky. I have packed up a few Turkey Reds and some assorted pitchers (including a messload of King Felix) to send off. One card I couldn't find is this Lou Gehrig Career Best insert that he's looking for. Can anyone help him out?

Topps Retro Card Gallery

A lot of times I forget that that I am the weird one as a person who started collecting baseball cards as a kid and then unlike the other 99.9% of humanity just never stopped. I just assume that everyone else knows exactly what all these cards I blithely talk about look like. "Why what do you mean what does a ToppsT206 card look like? It looks like a T206 card of course!" Not everyone has the advanced doctorate degree in Cardology that I've been working on for 27 years. Heck, a bunch of my readers opened their first pack in years just in the past few months. So when I got a request to post examples of Topps206 and Topps205 cards in the comments of my other blog, I figured I may as well go ahead and take the time to do it right.

With the assistance of Chipper Jones, here's a gallery and brief history of all the Topps "Retro" sets such as Allen & Ginter that Topps has put out since 2002.

2002 Topps206

In 2001 Topps began their Heritage brand with a tribute set to 1952 Topps. That set, along with the rebirth of the Archives brand were insanely popular. Since sets based on old Topps designs sold so well, the next year they mined the depths of baseball history and released a set designed on the classic T206 tobacco card set. The design is very simple, just like the originals - a very large photo manipulated to sort of make it look like an old lithograph. There is a brown border around the picture with the Player's last name and team underneath. The reverse of the original cards had an advertisement for a tobacco brand covering the entire back. For the base cards, Topps instead put an ornate frame around a short biography of the player. The one below is for a base player card, the design is different for rookies, prospects, retired players and original T206 reprints.

Each pack had one miniature card and either a thick insert card or a framed Autograph, relic or original buyback card. There were three series in all, the inserts for series one had the blue border, while series two and three were red. The miniature card was exactly the same as the base card, but was the size of the original T206 tobacco cards. The minis also had one of several original T206 back designs on the reverse. Discussing the minis and the many backs is worthy of a post in and of itself, so I'll save that for later.

2003 ToppsT205

After three very successful series of Topps206, the next year brought Topps205. This was the exact same concept as Topps206, hijack the design of a classic set for a new product. Until Allen & Ginter came out this was my absolute favorite set to come out probably in the past 20 years. The T205 set design is much more interesting than T206 for one thing. The original set that three separate front designs for the National, American and minor leagues. Here is the National League design, a very elegant one that has a portrait of the player, a colored background, the player's signature and a team logo. Chipper is also seen in one of the many variation cards for this set in this scan.

The American League design is much busier, a portait of the player is framed by several different baseball themed designs such as bats, gloves, catcher's masks, basepaths, etc. They also have a team logo in the top corner and the player's name and team underneath the portrait. Chipper's teammate Mark Teixeira lends a hand representing the AL. The card back is patterned on the original T205 back, which also have a full bio and even stats! The Topps205 logo is where the original tobacco advertisement would be located. Like Topps206, this set also featured one mini card per pack that had the different tobacco advertisements along with a "Brooklyn" advertisement on the back in different levels of rarity. Each Hobby box came with a small "cigarette pack" box topper with 20 extra mini cards.

The third design is for the rookie cards in the set. This design is the same as the T205 card featuring Southern Le aguers and other minor league players. They are distinctive by the ornate frame around a full picture of the player. Chipper's NL East rival Hanley Ramirez represents the rookies for this post. Hey you, come here. Closer. Keep it under your hat, but Hanley's T205 rookie can be found pretty easily for a buck or two. Can you believe it? A Hanley freakin' Ramirez rookie card for a buck! While everyone else is paying out the nose for his Bowman Chrome and Bowman's Best auto cards, you can get a pile of these for less than twenty bucks. Can you believe it?

This set also has an insert set that disguised the autos and relics in packs. They based the set on the T202 Triple Fold set. The original set featured two card designs from the T205 set bookending a larger middle card of a black and white photo of a baseball theme and Topps did the same. Topps inserted 50 each in series one and two. This set can be found with a red "Polar Bear" back and a short printed blue "Brooklyn" version.

2004 Cracker Jack

Topps205 ran its course after two series (a decision I vehemently disagreed with) and Topps moved on to the 1915 Cracker Jack set. The original set is distinctive for the bright red backgrounds and Topps spared no expense in buying up red ink for this set. The set has the large "Cracker Jack" logo at top and the player name and team under the picture on the bottom. The backs mimic the original set with a short bio and an advertisement on the bottom. Topps replaces much of the advertisement with copyright legalese. Topps also copied the Cracker Jack originals in one other way - many of the cards have backs that were printed upside down like the the originals were. This is a great authentic touch, but is a real pain in the tuchas when sorting your set.

The Cracker Jack set also had mini cards inserted in the set as well as mini stickers that were wrapped in a Cracker Jack "prize" pack. Like the other sets they were parallels of the base cards and were in the size of the original Cracker Jack cards. The stickers can be distinguished as their backs are glossy and have blue printing on them. The mini cards can also be found with a blue (very scarce) and white (completely impossible) background variation. Topps inserted a thick checklist card instead of an insert card to deter pack searchers. The box topper for the 2004 set is unique - a bag of actual Cracker Jacks with a prize! Mmmmm... four year old Cracker Jacks.

2005 Cracker Jack

2005 Cracker Jack is a first for these retro sets in that Topps created a new design out of whole cloth for the new series. Cracker Jack didn't have a 1916 series for them to copy so they imagined what one might look like. The design is quite attractive, featuring a gold border around an oval with the player's portrait. The backs once again feature a biography and no stats. There is again no separate insert set, only the mini cards and the stickers.

2005 Turkey Red

Topps produced two retro sets in 2005, releasing the Turkey Red set later in the year after retiring Cracker Jack. The cards are based on the T3 cabinet cards from Turkey Red tobacco. The cards have a gray frame surrounding a heavily computerized photo that is made to resemble the original paintings from 1911. The cards are distinctive for the texture on the fronts of the cards, with an odd pockmarked feel to them. I've never actually seen an original Turkey Red card but I suppose they are once again mimicking the originals. Since the original cards are oversized cabinet cards, there are no minis in the set. Instead there is a one per pack parallel with either a red, black, white or gold frame. Cabinet sized cards were inserted as box toppers in Hobby boxes.

2006 Turkey Red

Topps continued the series in 2006, and caused some confusion by continuing the numbering from the 2005 set. The cards are identical to the 2005 version and all cards numbered 316 and over are from the 2006 set. They continued with the parallel cards, here's a white bordered version of Chipper's card.

2007 Turkey Red

Rather than continue the numbering into the 1000s, Topps rebooted Turkey Red in 2007 and created a new design like they did with 2005 Cracker Jack. The same style photos from the original sets (Chipper's picture here sure looks familiar...) and portraits painted by Dick Perez were now bordered by a wood grain picture frame. The colored border parallels were also abandoned in favor of Chrome inserts, the first time Chrome was used in a retro set.

The backs of all three series of Turkey red are identical as you can see here. They mimic the original set with a bio that takes up most of the card, with the card number player and team name on the top and a Topps advertisement on bottom. Can you tell which of these is the 2005 back and which is from 2007?

2006 Allen & Ginter

Topps overshadowed their Turkey Red set in 2006 with a set based on the 1887 Allen & Ginter World's Champions set. The cards copied the first series or "N28" set of Champions design. They feature an artistic portrait of the player meant to look like the lithographs from the original cards, and have the player name, an Allen & Ginter's Topps logo in blue and Brooklyn New York underneath the portrait. The backs are very similar to the originals. They have the same "The World's Champions" title, but the player name, card number and team name replace an advertisement for cigarettes. The original card backs feature a checklist of the series, while Topps has the player's career stats written out word by word instead of numbers presumably to give the card the same checklist 'feel'.


Topps went back to inserting art cards as pack deterrents as they did in the Topps206 set. These thick cards feature a sketch by Dick Perez of one player from each team and are framed by bats and baseballs. Andruw Jones once again provides an outfield assist with this insert.

2007 Allen & Ginter

Topps followed up their wildly popular Allen & Ginter with an insanely popular rerun of the set. The design is identical (why mess with a good thing?) to the 2006 version with one difference: the Allen & Ginter logo is now in red and states 2007 instead of Topps. The backs are completely identical other than the copyright date.


Once again Topps inserted Dick Perez sketch cards in hobby packs without a relic or autograph. They can be distinguished from the 2006 version by the border which has a scroll framing the sketch instead of bats and balls.


That's where we are so far as far as Topps Retro sets go. I hope this was a good reference to anyone not familiar with these sets. You can still pick up boxes of a lot this stuff, just promise me you won't eat the Cracker Jacks. It's a pretty good assumption that the Product of the Year for 2006 and 2007 will return in 2008. Will it take the design of the second series of Allen and Ginter Champions, or will they change the logo color again? (My money is on a green logo this year) Will Turkey Red be retired? If so, will they find a new set to plunder, maybe Gypsy Queen or T207 perhaps? I'm looking forward to finding out!

Review - 2007 Turkey Red

The fact that it took me over a month to finally write a review for '07 Turkey Red should immediately give you an idea of what I think about the set. This relic card of Daryle Ward kind of sums up my feelings toward the set. The design is well done, and it's a little refreshing after two years of the original gray borders. The computer enhanced photos are done reasonably well and look good. This card is a bat relic, which is nice to get. The question is, do we really need this card? Just like the rationale for a relic card from a journeyman pinch hitting specialist is somewhat dubious at best, I just don't see why we needed another series of Turkey Red.

Anyone who has paid attention to this blog for any period of time knows I am a slobbering irrational fanboy when it comes to retro style cards. I pretty much love 'em all, from Heritage to Archives to Vintage to all the sets ripping off designs from 80 to 120 years ago. I like the old reprint sets, Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball, Ted Williams company cards, and the black & white Conlon collection. Anything vintage looking, or including old timers (like the ol' perfesser up there) in the checklist is usually something I like. Hell, I even love 2006 Bowman Heritage which is probably the ugliest, most screwed up set of the century. I'm not saying I don't like these cards, it's just I don't see a purpose to them. There are also a lot of details I don't like that will probably prevent me from seriously attempting collect a set.

I'll start off with what I do like about the set before I get into the criticisms. The very first thing I noticed when I opened my first pack was how much better the card stock quality was. I thought they had given up on that weird reverse pebbled texture on the cards until I took a really close look at them. I don't know what they did, but this set does not have the strange plastic pock marked feel as the '06 variety. it's a big improvement and the cards look and feel much better now. The next ting I noticed was the Dick Perez paintings. Dick has caught a lot of flack this year from collectors who don't like his artwork and just don't like paintings on cards at all. I personally think they are brilliant, I love art cards. Perez is best known for his work on Diamond Kings, but these are less stylized than the Diamond Kings and his sketches for Allen & Ginter, and are more reminiscent of his work on the old Donruss Hall of Fame sets from the early 80's. Perez definitely studied the original T3s for inspiration, but adds his own personal style to them. Like the sketches for A&G (which are pretty dang impressive considering the canvas) there are great looking ones and a few clunkers. Yes, the Jeter card looks more like Jim Thome. The Dice-K rookie card looks awful, as Matsuzaka's face looks a bit like a constipated rodent. When you paint a few dozen portraits not all of them will be perfect. Overall they are exremely well done however. The colors are bright and bold and the detail is fantastic. I've posted three of my favorites up above. Big Papi's card looks great with all the details in the grandstands. Griffey Junior is apparently playing in a Roman Coluseum. Verlander's portrait is a little odd looking, but check out the detail in the advertisements! Chew Beeman's Pepsin gum!

The regular base cards look just as good as last year's set. Whatever algorythm the Topps code monkeys put the original photos through give them a good old timey feel although they can be a little dark. Topps also manipulated the backgrounds as they did with the football and basketball sets. Tim Hudson is apparently pitching at Elysian Fields. So the cards look great, so what's the beef? The first complaint I have is about the 'chrome' parallels. They are admittedly an improvement on the red/white/black/gold parallels from the earlier sets. That color scheme wouldn't have worked anyway, Topps would have had to swipe an idea from an old Gallery set and change the picture frames instead. Still, the Chrome just looks really awful to me on these cards. The regular chrome dull the vibrant colors on the Perez paintings and the refractors obscure them altogether. They don't look like chrome cards to me at all, there is no outline on any of the players and they end up looking like a generic foil card. Sure, most normal people love Chrome to death and numbered parallels are popular. I just don't like them.

I'm more interested in the base cards and I'd rather pull an SP than a Chrome. Problem is, when the set first came out I bought 8 packs at the local hobby shop. I had some ridiculous luck and pulled 4 Chrome and 2 refractors out of those 8 packs. Six Chrome in 8 packs! Great for chrome collectors, but I don't collect it. I've bought about a dozen more packs here and there and I've still not pulled a single SP card. I have pulled three variations, so I'm not completely striking out, but this is a pretty tough pill to swallow for a set collector. One in four packs. That ratio right there is the hit rate for short prints, and it's the reason why I won't be trying to complete this set. I can understand a 1:4 ratio for short prints. it does give a little challenge to the collector. I do not understand a 200 card set having one quarter of the cards short printed however. To complete a set you'd have to open about 8 or 9 boxes with great collation, or more likely a case. Meanwhile you'd have about 10 base sets to every 1 short print set. That's a whole lot of doubles folks.

So with this set, Topps has made it completely impractical to open packs and make a set. So why open packs at all? There's some seriously bad timing for Topps here as well. A lot of people like mee who would normally drool over this set are suffering from Allen & Ginter and Goudey burnout. I have a couple of dozen cards to chase for the A&G set (everyone who e-mailed me, I'll get back to you this week, I swear) And I have less than 10 base cards to find for Goudey and then I can start chasing the short prints in earnest. Why should I deal with yet another set full of impossible short prints right now? Maybe in January when there's nothing else to do, but by then who cares. The insert sets are pretty lame as well. Every time I pull an A-Rod bullshit waste of space in a retro set, I get a migraine. The cabinet cards are nice, but I'm not buying hobby boxes of this stuff so I can't find them easily. Why not insert them as a bonus in blaster boxes? Upper Deck does it with their Beehive hockey set. Finally, is anyone else as completely sick of goddamn Presidents as I am? I'm sick of old Presidents, I'm sick of the current President and I'm completely sick of all the potential Presidents. Give us a set of Vice Presidents or Speakers of the House or Chief Justices or American Idol runners up, I don't care. Jut no more freaking presidents. And try to make the set not so butt-ugly. Who wants to see a fat Cleveland or constipated McKinley when they open a pack of cards. Time to retire this set, I hope now that the sale has gone through they can work on something better for next year.

2007 Turkey Red Short Prints, Maybe

Some guy posted a possible SP and variation list for '07 Turkey Red on the Beckett message boards. This is all extremely unconfirmed, but I'm posting it anyway for reference. Take this list with a grain of salt. Like I did with the A&G SP list, I'll add and edit if there are any changes. I don't have a reliable checklist at this time, so only the card numbers for now.

Short Prints:
7 Mickey Mantle
22 Adam Lind
33 Kurt Suzuki
43 Jarrod Saltalamacchia
47 Rich Harden
62 Carlos Lee
63 Carlos Zambrano
66 Chase Utley
71 Mike Piazza
73 Mark Buehrle
74 Torii Hunter
82 Dallas Braden
83 Dan Haren
89 Johnny Damon
94 Josh Fields
101 Orlando Hudson
103 Eric Byrnes
106 Felix Hernandez
121 Hunter Pence
123 Josh Willingham
124 Tom Gordon
128 James Shields
134 Scott Kazmir
135 Jason Isringhausen
136 Jason Marquis
139 Jeff Francoeur
143 Todd Helton
146 Tom Glavine
152 Sammy Sosa
165 Kei Igawa
171 Kelly Johnson
174 Khalil Greene
179 Marcus Giles
182 Mark Teixeira
183 Matt Chico

Variations (have Turkey Red advertising back)
1 Ryan Howard
15 Ichiro
20 Alex Rodriguez
25 Albert Pujols
40 Chipper Jones
56 Chase Utley
95 Derek Jeter
105 Phil Hughes
106 Felix Hernandez
110 Daisuke Matsuzaka
130 David Ortiz
150 Ken Griffey Jr
159 Johan Santana
180 Miguel Cabrera
185 Vladimir Guerrero

Update: Confirmed.

Yummy Retro Goodness

Dammit, Upper Deck may actually get a good chunk of my money this year.

Via Stale Gum, it looks like Allen & Ginter gets a sequel, Turkey Red will keep on going and Upper Deck will jump into the fray with a Goudey themed set.

Allen & Ginter looks like it will be a winner again, hopefully prices will stay sane long enough for me to have a real shot at a set this time. It killed me last year when my local Target got 5 more Box Blasters in after it had been long gone for a few weeks and I had the proverbial moth flying out of my wallet. Alas, with Official Ken Jennings Costco Shirt Relics, I'm certain we'll be looking at 15 dollar packs within days of release. Turkey Red will probably be the product they ship in late November during the "season's over, but we can't put out a 2008 set till February" dead period. I wonder if it will be the set Topps dumps late season rookies in since it looks like they thoroughly murdered Bowman Heritage last year. I'm rooting for a '53 Rookie set myself.

The Goudey set intrigues me, it looks like UD is going to attempt to make it somewhat affordable for us bottom feeders so it can compete with Topps. Hopefully it will be released in retail boxes as well so it will still be available when the hobby prices go through the roof. I've already seen it online preorder for $150 a box. Ugh! I need to scrounge around for a sell sheet, this could be a truly awesome set if done correctly. Considering butt-ugly Origins in a $90 tin is a big reason why I gave up collecting Upper Deck products, this is a step in the right direction.

Ya see, this is why we need at least two companies fighting it out in the industry. We don't need one giant ToppsUpperFleerDeck crapping out a handful of lame base sets and a dozen $100+ gambler products with a guaranteed snippet of a utility infielder's jersey and the auto of a prospect who will never make it past AA per tin. Hopefully if (when) UD gobbles up Topps into its vortex of suck, Donruss will have time to lobby to get its license back.