I really hate how much Topps reuses their previous designs in their current card products, but at the same time it is fun to relive some of the sets from my childhood. I had a good time collecting baseball cards in 1988. At some point every week, I would walk a few blocks to Ben Franklin to buy a few packs of baseball cards.
Fleer was boring that summer with the striped design, but I loved the Topps and Donruss sets. There are so many cards that I love in those two products. My parents ended up buying me the 1988 Topps factory set for Christmas that year too. I opened the box and sorted the cards out over the better part of a week. I had to read all the card backs. I was not just going to put them in numerical order as quickly as I could.
One of the best parts of the 1988 Topps set was the bright yellow All-Star cards. They're not the 1958 All-Star cards, but they are probably my favorite from the my childhood. Naturally, I was excited to find an Albert Pujols card on this design out of the 2023 Topps set a few weeks back.
Here is the front of the card.
Love that yellow background and Topps did not miss on the font colors either. The National League players had the word "All-Star" in blue with the "National League" heading in red, vice versa on the American League players. They even used the tight cropping on the player photograph.
Well done.
Here is the back of the card.
The orange is a little too bright here, but it might be hard to duplicate the original color without the cardboard stock. I thought it was a little odd that Topps used the slugging leaders from a different year other than 2022, considering Albert's slugging percentage was really high last year.
Then I did a little digging.
Albert's .550 slugging percentage would have placed him second in the National League if he made enough plate appearances. As a part time player, Albert only took 351 plate appearances (307 at-bats) and did not qualify to appear on the official National League leaderboard for slash line statistics like batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. He could still appear on counting number stats.
Albert lead the National League in slugging percentage three different times during his career with 2006 being his career high, so I understand the decision behind using the leaderboard from a different year on the back of this card.
Great looking card and you can find it cheap on Ebay and COMC.
You can really tell who Topps is marketing to with all of these 80's (and now early 90's) inspired cards. The reuse of designs isn't something that I'm too keen on, but obviously other people are liking it, otherwise Topps wouldn't keep doing them.
ReplyDeleteMiddle-aged collectors who cannot wait 10 years for the 1980s sets to appear as the Topps Heritage design.
Delete