Topps remembers Tom Seaver and tries to photoshop out the memory of Jose Reyes
With the [trademarked term for a significant football game] just around the corner at the end of January, one thing was on everyone’s mind – baseball cards! Topps Series 1 dropped on January 31 with a huge media event that looked like someone put Keith Olbermann and a camera crew in my living room circa 2001. Anticipation had been building for weeks, filling the 40-day gap since the last Topps product release. So did the product live up to the hype?
The big news in the lead-up to Topps Series 1 was the inclusion of several short-printed variant cards. The big ones were photoshopped cards of fan-favorite Jose Reyes and some guy named Al in their new teams’ uniforms (I guess Prince Fielder waited too long to sign). These were announced as very limited short prints, just to make sure nobody sold them cheap on launch day. Other SPs included humorous cards showing mascots, Gatorade, and Skip Schumaker’s foot (more on this later).
The theme for the bulk of the insert sets this year is gold. Golden Moments, Golden Greats, Gold Standard, Gold Futures, gold-colored coins, Gold Rush wrapper redemption cards, and even 1/1 solid gold cards (via redemption of course) filled out the base product. The Golden Moments insert set filled the annual role of “set spread across all mainline Topps products with relic and autograph variants.” Manufactured material also got a boost, expanding into metal objects like pins, coins, and rings in addition to the usual cloth offerings (this year’s theme: retired numbers).
With the stage set, launch day held a few surprises. First, the first-ever card featuring Jose Reyes in a (fake) Marlins uniform was overshadowed by a squirrel. The Skip Schumaker SP featuring the Cardinals “rally squirrel” was the hot ticket, with one of the first pulled selling for over $600. After a few ending in the $300+ range, prices quickly settled down to the $100-200 level. These should bottom out somewhere in the $20-$50 range, which is still absurd. The Reyes card meanwhile is settling in at about $50-$100, not that it matters. This is supposed to be about the Mets after all.
Card Design
No Photoshop here, no proofreading either...
This year’s mainline Topps design follows the current (2009-present) Topps standard: white border, stylized team/player info at the bottom, big picture. The stylized bit at the bottom is decent enough, but I can’t help thinking of the big red Donruss D logo when I see it. I’m no fan of the white border, but Topps needs that so they can have their gold, black, and platinum parallel sets and store-exclusive red (Target) and blue (Wal-Mart) border sets. Compared to the designs from the past decade, it’s a decent effort, but it rates about a 7/10 over the history of the Topps brand, mainly getting points for not being overly busy and featuring some really good photography (the players really pop on these cards, I guess someone came up with a new formula in Lightroom).
The Mets
Meet the Multi-colored Mets
The base set features 13 Mets, including most of the usual suspects: Davis, Niese, Parnell, Duda, Turner, Thole, Pagan, Pelfrey, Wright, Bay, Dickey, Isringhausen, and Schwinden. Most of these guys were locks for the 2012 squad, though the inclusion of Isringhausen is a bit of a head-scratcher (he signed with the Angels about a month after this product was released). Schwinden, who is the only one of the bunch likely to start in the minors (among those who are still on the team), is the only “rookie,” though he has had cards as far back as 2009. This leaves Santana, Murphy, Tejada, Gee, and the offseason acquisitions / call-ups for Series 2. Reyes makes his final base set appearance in a Mets uniform in the NL batting leaders card. I was hoping for a bit more to recognize the first-ever Met to win a batting title, but it’s something. Well, a third of something.
Golden Moments
First Reyes leaves the Mets, then Carter leaves the living world. Wright better have his meteor insurance paid up.
The annual Topps running insert set is a crap shoot for Mets players, with this year’s set starting off pretty weak. Only Seaver represents the Mets in the base set and four Mets appeared elsewhere, all with bat and/or jersey cards (all gray) in the relic variant set. Gary Carter is a given in these sets, making his final card appearance before passing on February 16. Wright is a mainstay and Reyes is included to twist the knife a little (bat and jersey versions for him). The fourth is Niese, presumably because Topps had a few scraps of cloth leftover from last year. Seriously, if you do the math, Thole had two cards in Triple Threads to Niese’s one, while Gee had two pieces of jersey in each card in Finest. All things being equal, that should result in some leftovers for Niese. That’s really the only reason to include Niese over Dickey (for just being Dickey), Capuano (best pitching performance of the year), or even Batista (100th win) or Isringhausen (300 saves).
Tom Seaver
Everywhere else in this product, the spotlight belonged to Tom Seaver. Seaver was the obligatory Met in the retired player sets, including the Golden Moments base set, Golden Greats (5 cards), all of the manufactured material inserts, and the gold-infused and solid gold cards. Here’s his manufactured material cards:
Tom Seaver: Very metal
This bunch is a mixed bag. The two cloth cards are a bit disappointing; the stitching isn’t particularly interesting and the retired number is a piece of cloth instead of a more traditional patch. The metal cards are more interesting, being the first of their kind. The ring is the most dull of the bunch but makes up for it with its massive thickness. The pin card is, of course, missing the pointy bit that is the defining characteristic of a pin, but the metal bit is on a nice black felt background. The big prize here is the coin, which is enormous, heavy, and very shiny. The card wraps around the coin, leaving both obverse and reverse visible (and touchable). I have concerns about long-term durability (that coin looks like it could be popped right out of the card), but the going price for these coins ($50-60 for the Seaver numbered to 41) should be good incentive to keep them safe. If you only want one card from this product, the Seaver coin is the clear winner; Topps has really outdone itself with this one. (Side note: It looks like Topps has given out one of the medallions from the Golden Greats Coin set, sans card, to each official hobby dealer. I wonder if all coins were produced in the same quantity with a number equal to the player’s uniform number going into cards and the remainder going to hobby dealers…)
Overall, the manufactured material in Topps Series 1 is more impressive than the game-used material, which is limited to Golden Moments Relics (shown above) and Golden Greats Relics (five different ones from 15 different players, all numbered to 10). I’m not sure what to think of this. I love good game-used cards, but there just hasn’t been much good game-used lately (with “lately” meaning “since 2005”). If I had to choose between another bat or gray jersey and a commemorative pin, the pin would probably win. Still, just like commemorative patches have gotten strange and random with overuse, I would expect the metal material to be overdone in time. All manufactured material starts at a disadvantage because it carries no intrinsic connection to the game or its players. If the theme, details, craftsmanship, and card can build that connection, this could open the door for some interesting collectibles.
Best of the Rest
A silk Dickey and a little wood
There’s not much else of interest to Mets fans. Two cards worth noting are the R.A. Dickey Silk Collection card and the 1987 Mini insert of David Wright. Dickey’s card has a proper Dickey face, which looks that much better in fine silk. I don’t really get the point of these silk cards, but Dickey’s is worth picking up. The 1987 minis use the actual 1987 Topps design and not the 1987 Topps Leaders design (shown above for comparison) and that design still holds up after 25 years.
The Rise of Dickey
Dickey Galore
The big sports phenomenon this offseason has been previously overlooked players developing large cult followings. After Tebow mania died down in the run-up to the Brady-Manning championship matchup, the focus shifted to the NBA and Linsanity was born. Almost overnight, prices for Lin’s cards shot up at ludicrous speed. This left sports bloggers wondering who the baseball equivalent would be (I guess hockey doesn’t count).
Many candidates have been presented, but the Mets have a compelling case in R.A. Dickey. In two years as a starting pitcher for the Mets, Dickey has been a consistently excellent knuckleballer (and, with Tim Wakefield’s retirement, he is the last of his kind). With Johan Santana out for the entire 2011 season, Dickey took over Santana’s role as the “excellent pitcher who gets no run support and keeps watching the bullpen throw away the game after another great outing,” aka the Mets ace. This kept Dickey’s awesomeness hidden from the general public.
With the release of Topps Series 1 though, Dickey’s status as an unknown might just be at an end. He still had no autograph or memorabilia cards in this product, but he did manage to get a card in the Silk Collection set, joining David Wright and Ike Davis. Topps seems to be open to giving Dickey the elite player treatment and the fans are clearly up for more Dickey; prices for Dickey’s premium inserts, the black parallel numbered to 61 and the Silk Collection numbered to 50, have been in the $15-30 range, which is well above all other Mets except David Wright. Say what you will about Wright’s performance on the field lately, but he still ranks as an elite player in hobby terms. If Dickey has another good season and the rest of the team gets him some Ws, the world might finally recognize Dickey’s greatness. Stock up now while his cards are cheap.
Bottom Line
The flagship Topps product is always a favorite for pack-ripping and set-building, but I’m just not seeing much of anything special this year. The gold-themed inserts were done back in 2001 for Topps’s 50th anniversary; I’m not sure what brought back this gold fetish 11 years later (it sure wasn’t the 50th anniversary of the Mets, which was mentioned exactly nowhere in this product). Retired player selection is as limited as ever and current/future Mets have almost no presence outside the base set. The rest of the basic selling points read about the same as the 1992 set, which boasted landscape-oriented cards (which hadn’t been seen in a while despite dating back to at least 1956), unique photographic subjects (dugouts and scoreboards instead of 2012’s mascots and Gatorade coolers), and the first Topps Gold parallel set (as opposed to today’s gold, black, platinum, wood, red, and blue parallels). 20 years later, Topps has gotten the formula for its sets down to a dull science, adding only the occasional seasoning and rolling whatever works forward into the next set. Every year, I consider taking up set-building again, and every year I can’t find a reason to do it; 2012 Topps hasn’t changed anything. At least they fired whoever was responsible for the photography in last year’s set, that’s a step in the right direction.
Now to figure out the Golden Giveaways...
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