Yes, there are positives here, but I think there are limitations because of its format.
Same general idea as far as the checklist goes, but rather than recycling a bunch of their former card designs, Topps used the same border for all the cards. Looks like something that was likely a rejected design for one of their base sets at some point.
Here is the basic design.
I like the photograph of Koufax, but there is just nothing really special or interesting about the design of this card. It's just not very good.
Back of the card.
No stats on the back. I actually like this idea for this type of set, especially given the way that Topps wrote these snippets. If you had to summarize the career of Sandy Koufax in two sentences, it would be difficult to do a better job than what is on the back of this card. The modern players are just as well done.
The card backs are a positive for this set.
Similar to the Koufax card, there are plenty of other older players throughout the set.
Whoever made the set actually did a good job of picking out former players. Nice mix from all different areas. The older players, such as Tris Speaker, are generally colorized, but the card photos still look decent. The photography on the older players is another positive in Topps Lineage.
I like that Lenny Harris makes an appearance on the Ryne Sandberg card. He's a first ballot guy if someone ever makes a Hall of Fame for utility and bench players. Also shout out to Topps for not using the cringeworthy Milwaukee Braves logo from the 1950s and 1960s, even if they used the cringeworthy Cleveland Indians logo on the modern players.
Any set that has a subset of cards with Topps All-Star Rookie Trophies can't be all that bad, right?
Favorite Cardinals card.
Bob Gibson.
Favorite former Durham Bulls card.
Evan Longoria.
Best non-Cardinal/non-Durham Bulls card.
An aquward looking, 21 year-old Freddie Freeman.
How many Braves players have baseball cards with this same pose at the Braves Spring Training Stadium?
It's a lot.
Topps Lineage is still not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.
There is still the ever-present horrible airbrushing. I picked out two different examples. The Adrian Beltre card is just incredibly bad. The Damon card is not quite as bad, but they airbrushed him out of a Tigers uniform, but left Jim Leyland in the background.
If Jim Leyland were smoking in the background, I would forgive the bad airbrushing.
Topps used the parallels from their flagship sets on the Lineage cards. A bunch of sparkles and colors that do not look very good with this card design.
Sparkly Lou Gehrig?
No.
However, I do like the cloth cards based on the old Cloth Stickers. Topps had some cloth/silk parallels around in different products around this time. Good looking cards that they should consider bringing back.
I have thought about finding all of the Cardinals and former Durham Bulls cloth sticker cards from this set, but that is somewhere way down on the list of things to do.
Let's talk about another positive.
The inserts are great, but similar to the Archives sets, the designs are all borrowed from older Topps products.
There are the 2011 Rookies insert that is a copy of the 1980s Rack Pack All-Star cards.
Hank Conger with a Hooters ad over his shoulder.
There are 1975 Topps Minis. Miniature in real life, but not here because of the scan.
There are also relic cards with the 1975 Topps Mini design. I am sure that there are a few floating around in one of my boxes of relics, but I am not going to go surfing for one at the moment.
We also have the 1964 Topps Stand-Ups.
Love the green and yellow backgrounds on these cards.
There are also autographs. There were some decent current player autographs in this set. Early autographs of Stanton, Posey, and Freeman. I bought a box of Lineage while I was on vacation in St. Louis back in the day and ended up with a Charlie Morton autograph.
Charlie is pretty old now, but he's had some good seasons along the way. Solid autograph.
The autographs of the older players are really nice. I have a few of the players who appeared for the Cardinals. I will go with Duke point guard, Dick Groat for this post.
The 1952 Topps design has been completely overused at this point, but what are you going to do?
HOW DOES IT COMPARE?
Lineage is essentially a Topps Archives set. I like that they do not recycle former flagship set designs on the base cards. I think that is the biggest positive here, along with some of the autographs. There is nothing here that really stands out to me, so I am going to go with the bottom half of my rankings.
In my opinion, it is not as good as the first four sets in the bottom half of my Set Appreciation posts. So, that's below the Heritage Minors, Emotion XL, Donruss, and Bowman. I thought long and hard about how this set compares to the Ionix and Bowman Platinum set. I was tempted to put it behind both of those sets, but I think the autographs are the saving grace here.
Yes, copying the design of the 1952 Topps set is slightly annoying, but they are good looking cards. I am ranking the Topps Lineage set 11th.
