Firsts, lasts, and everything in between
It’s hard to believe that it’s March already. And this piece is two months late… Between Topps and Panini releasing products right down to the wire, chasing down cards, and chasing down answers, it took me longer than expected to get this the way I wanted it. 2014 brought us the first cards, first autographs, and first memorabilia from the first Mets player to win the Rookie of the Year award in 30 years. It also brought us the last autograph card from the first person ever to wear a Mets uniform.
Best Manufactured Material
2014 Topps Series 1 Tom Seaver Topps All Rookie Cup Team Relic
There wasn’t much manufactured material of interest in 2014. Metal was once more dominated by Tom Seaver, with three of the six Mets cards, including this one with a big metal Rookie Cup trophy. A parallel numbered to 25 featured a vintage Rookie Cup trophy. Elsewhere, it was the usual mix of logo patches, card reprint patches, and other oddities not worth mentioning.
Best Parallel
2014 Topps Gypsy Queen Blue Framed Parallels
This should probably go to the base Topps clear parallels, but being numbered to just 10 made them just a bit tough to get a hold of. This year’s blue framed Gypsy Queen parallels looked sharp and were numbered to a more attainable 499. Topps and Panini added lots of new parallels in 2014, but nothing really stood out. You can’t go wrong with frames.
Best Base Insert
2014 Topps Series 2 Tom Seaver Gold Label
Speaking of frames… With all of the parallels and junk inserts these days, a good base insert is hard to find. The best of the year by far was from the one 2000-era Topps revival that didn’t get its own product: Gold Label. When Topps brought it back in Topps Series 2, they used the 2000 Gold Label design and put every card in a metal frame like the Museum Collection Framed Autographs. With no autograph and a print run of 99 copies, this Tom Seaver card is easily attainable for $10-20 and is an impressive piece.
Best Rookie Card
2014 Jacob deGrom
Picking the player is the easy part here. After winning Rookie of the Year, a Jacob deGrom card must be the best Mets Rookie Card of the year. But which one? There are four to choose from but no real standout among them. The Topps Update is the only one that saw wide release, but it doesn’t look that great. The Chrome Update has the same photo, but it’s chrome. The Heritage High Numbers has a nice photo but was only released in factory set form. Lastly, there’s the Bowman Sterling, which is probably the most limited of the deGrom RCs. Which one is the best? Take your pick.
On the lowercase rookie card side, there were a few notable first cards in 2014 beyond deGrom. At the top of the list is Marcos Molina’s insert in 2014 Bowman Draft. Molina took the top prospect lists by storm in early 2014 and has finally hit the mainstream. 2014 first-round pick Michael Conforto also had his first MLB-licensed card in 2014 Bowman Draft, closing out a run of more than a dozen first MLB-licensed Mets cards in 2014 base Bowman products.
Best Autograph
2014 Topps Archives Don Zimmer Fan Favorites Autograph
True, this isn’t a Mets card. It is however the final autograph card from Don Zimmer, original 1962 Met and the first person ever to wear a Mets uniform. I can’t do much, but I can give him this award to honor his memory.
2014 saw a big increase in the number of Mike Piazza autographs, but I still don’t have one. Instead, here’s Daisuke Matsuzaka. I’m a sucker for clear cards, so the 2014 Topps High Tek David Wright auto and 2014 Leaf Trinity Michael Conforto Pure auto round out my top picks.
Best Sticker Autograph
2014 Topps Update Jacob deGrom Trajectory Autograph
While deGrom did have a few on-card autographs in 2014, his first auto was a sticker autograph in 2014 Topps Update. Meanwhile, 2014 Topps Supreme was filled with sticker autograph cards, some of which look like they should be Christmas ornaments. I particularly like this Rafael Montero. On the prospect side, it doesn’t get much better than this Brandon Nimmo / Rob Whalen dual autograph from 2014 Topps Heritage Minor League.
Worst Autograph
2014 Topps Supreme Mike Piazza
Big hit @toppscards @Mets @mikepiazza31 for @AmazinHOF courtesy of @LiveCaseBreak pic.twitter.com/CozY1Mb0HM
— Danny O’Brien (@The_Dugongs) October 30, 2014
The downside of sticker autographs became apparent when these Mike Piazza autographed relics from 2014 Topps Supreme surfaced. So what’s the problem? Well, that’s not Mike Piazza’s signature, it’s the other Mike Piazza’s signature. The one who isn’t pictured on the card and is not overdue for enshrinement in Cooperstown. Luckily, Topps corrected the problem, so I guess there is no worst autograph in 2014.
THANK YOU @toppscards for correcting the problem and getting the REAL @Mets @mikepiazza31 to sign it ON CARD!!! pic.twitter.com/lpAiQSXukQ
— Joe E (@AmazinHOF) January 22, 2015
Best Patch Card
2014 Panini National Treasures Jacob deGrom Rookie Material Signatures
Well, that’s the card I would like to show you. But since I’m still working on getting deGrom’s first patch card (which, despite being labeled “event-worn,” is most likely game-worn), I needed something else to show here. Unfortunately, most of the other notable Mets patches from 2014 were either green or camo, which simply will not do for a best Mets patch card. That leaves us with this Zack Wheeler quad memorabilia card from 2014 Topps Museum Collection. I’ve criticized Topps in the past for being lazy with their quad memorabilia cards by using one premium swatch and three identical boring swatches on all but the rarest parallels. The variety of Wheeler memorabilia in circulation in early 2014 helped to make his quad memorabilia cards a bit more interesting; this one has a nice patch plus a swatch of orange jersey, gray jersey, and bat. The four-player quads on the other hand were still pretty awful.
Best Base Uniform Memorabilia Card
2014 Topps Series 2 David Wright Trajectory Jumbo
Since I don’t consider piping to be a patch, this beauty doesn’t count for the above category. Topps added jumbo Trajectory relics in 2014 Topps Series 2 with a reasonable print run of 99. Pinstripes were back in a big way in 2014, with some great pieces from David Wright, Pedro Martinez, Juan Lagares, and countless more. My top picks are both jumbo swatches from Panini, Matt Harvey throwback stripes from 2014 Panini Immaculate Collection and the modern equivalent from Jacob deGrom in 2014 Panini National Treasures.
Best Bat Card
2014 Topps Museum Collection Jumbo Lumber
A trio of Mets players got their first bat cards in 2014 Topps Museum Collection in grand style. The Jumbo Lumber cards of Matt Harvey, Travis d’Arnaud, and Zack Wheeler are hard to top. Well, unless you have a dual Zack Wheeler / Matt Harvey Jumbo Lumber booklet. Either way, these are great to see.
Worst Memorabilia Card
Panini “Event-Worn” Memorabilia
The big scandal of the year was the revelation that Panini had released event-worn memorabilia marked as game-worn in 2014 Panini Flawless Football. While Panini played this off as a simple labeling error, it seems odd that they would mix event-worn and game-worn material in the print run of a single card. At least baseball collectors don’t have to worry about this sort of fiasco…
That was until Panini brought unmistakably event-worn material in the form of black jersey swatches (as well as less suspicious blue jersey swatches) from Wilmer Flores, Juan Centeno, and Travis d’Arnaud in 2014 Panini Immaculate Collection and 2014 Panini Classics. Why would they do this? Panini says that they prefer to use game-worn and only use event-worn when game-worn isn’t available, but Topps had already released game-worn material from d’Arnaud and Flores by the time these came out and Juan Centeno really didn’t need any memorabilia cards (a base Rookie Card would have been nice, but he never got one of those). These cards serve no purpose except to call into question the authenticity of Panini’s memorabilia, especially when you take a closer look at some of their other 2014 memorabilia cards.
These are from two of Scott Rice’s memorabilia cards in 2013 Panini America’s Pastime, released in January of 2014. Same player, same product, same memorabilia, different label? As it turns out, the term “game-worn” was used on all Future Fabrics cards while the term “player-worn” was used on all Rookies Memorabilia cards. Communication from Panini seems to indicate that this memorabilia from Scott Rice and Juan Lagares (and possibly every other player in these sets) is game-worn.
That’s the same story for the memorabilia from Rafael Montero and Jacob deGrom in 2014 Panini National Treasures, released in December of 2014. While that is reassuring, this shouldn’t be an issue. No player with major league service time should ever have event-worn material released in cards. If game-worn isn’t available, just don’t make memorabilia cards for those players. Memorabilia cards are hardly essential these days, the last thing we need is a flood of fabric with no real connection to the game.
Worst Photography
I don’t usually get into the best/worst photography debate because, at a time without competition, Topps just doesn’t put much effort into the photographic side of things. Outside of base Topps and sometimes Bowman, Topps just recycles the same photographs over and over, making them less photographs and more player avatars. As for Panini, well, that’s just a disaster as long as the color orange is a no-go on jerseys (and for no good reason). So photographs on picture cards these days are largely an afterthought and rarely add any value, which is a shame. One product though was based around quality photographs and it made a return in 2014 with the equivalent of photographic abominations.
I would say that this release sullies the Stadium Club name, but there’s not much value left in that name at this point. The 2014 incarnation features boring action shots, identical pitcher poses, and bizarre cropping choices that mutilate what might have been serviceable photos before some Topps Photoshop jockey hacked them to bits. Tom Seaver, the lone retired Met in the product, was stuck with a bad photo from 1983 (that had just been used on a Topps Series 2 insert) and had both of his feet chopped off. Matt Harvey, currently recovering from surgery on his right arm, had his left forearm sliced off. David Wright looks confused in the best of his four photos. The best Mets photo turns out to be the one posed photo, which shows Travis d’Arnaud holding a bat in the dugout, looking sad with a nameplate across his crotch and the very end of the bat cropped out.
The photography in 2014 Stadium Club simply isn’t acceptable for any professional use. This is a cut-rate hack job slapped onto a product that was rushed out the door without any effort made to produce a quality product. I would consider it a contender for Most Disappointing except I didn’t really have high expectations for it in the first place. That it failed to meet even the lowest of expectations makes it deserving of some sort of award, so here it is.
Most Improved Product
2014 Topps Finest
Last year, I worte about how dull and boring Topps Finest had become. Well, Topps seems to have gotten the message. 2014 Finest brought a radical change to the design that looks good but makes colored parallels almost indistinguishable from each other. Good thing the serial numbers are on the front. Topps needs to get away from the boring color parallels anyway.
Most Surprising
After just a three year run from 1998 to 2000, was anyone really expecting to ever see Tek again? Tek had one of the most bizarre yet compelling gimmicks in an era of failed gimmicks – endless variations of acetate cards. No parallels, no autographs, no memorabilia, just lots of background pattern variants, some inserts, and, in 2000, some short prints. There was nothing else like it. 14 years later, Topps revived Tek with the requisite autographs and parallels and a $70 pack price. Yeah, that part was the bad sort of surprise. With only six pattern variants per card and an insane price due to the guaranteed one autograph per pack, there’s still some room for improvement here. And, true to the Tek experience, I’m still missing one Piazza pattern…
Most Disappointing
I was excited to hear that Panini was bringing back Donruss for a base set in 2014. Despite the obvious effort made to incorporate elements from the history of the Donruss brand, the end result was just lacking. Panini’s attempts to obliterate all trace of the color orange from Mets jerseys has never been more obvious than on these base cards, but that’s just the start of the problems. A 200-card set with 45 short prints just isn’t acceptable for a base product, especially when the SPs fall as few as one per case with terrible collation. Insert collation was just as bad, with lots of duplicates of just about everything in every case and no chance of making any but the most common sets. Add in some pointless parallels and autographs on the checklists that don’t actually exist and you have a disaster on your hands.
But there were some bright spots. The relic card design has an interesting history and some of the ’80s and ’90s elements came together nicely, especially the Elite inserts (though they really didn’t need to make two different ones). Someone tried really hard to make this work. Unfortunately, even a second series couldn’t fix this one. Panini seemed pleased with it though and we should see plenty more of Donruss in 2015. I just hope they do it right this time.
Best Autograph Product
2014 Topps Archives
I did not have high hopes for this year’s Archives. At first glance, it looked like the product was headed downhill fast in its third year in the current format. Boasting one of the smallest autograph checklists of any Archives/Fan Favorites product and featuring some of the same names as the 2012 and 2013 checklists, 2014 Archives didn’t have much going for it. On top of that, Topps added several unnecessary and sometimes indistinguishable parallels to the autographs, which now featured fewer different designs than ever before (but still managed to work in the terrible 1990 design).
But 2014 Archives made the most of the smaller checklist with several players who haven’t signed since the 1990s and other players shown in uniforms that they aren’t commonly shown in. All of this combined for a top-notch autograph product with several absolute must-haves: the first autographs from Lenny Harris, the first John Olerud Mets autographs since 1999, Don Zimmer in a Senators uniform (in the 1986 card design), Mel Stottlemyre (not a Mets player but close enough), etc. After a terrible Mets showing in 2014 Heritage’s autographs, Archives came through. Strangely, Topps stopped lightening the autograph area after doing it for the first time in 2013. This results in some unfortunate contrast issues like we see in the Olerud autograph. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.
Best Memorabilia Product
2014 Panini Immaculate Collection
I have to say, I haven’t been this interested in a memorabilia product since 2011 Topps Marquee, the inaugural winner of what would become this award. Immaculate Collection had a little bit of everything, covering the full history of the Mets from Casey Stengel (what might be some of the last swatches of a jersey we first saw used in 2001) to Matt den Dekker (with his first MLB game-used material). While it does bear the unfortunate distinction of bringing event-worn memorabilia to baseball, the total amount of material here certainly outweighs that one black mark. National Treasures might get more of the spotlight, but Immaculate Collection was far more loaded.
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