Stars

The concept of "stars" in Baseball goes way back. Which is also true on Baseball Cards.

In 2024, the "STARS OF MLB" inserts from all 3 Topps Baseball series are one of my favorites on the year.

Although I have latched on to a few inserts this year, I doubt any other contender will knock this one off the top perch this year. These things just shimmer delightfully, seemingly catching every stray ray of light in the room.

Like pretty much every Baseball Card Topps creates now, these have parallels. But unlike oh, maybe around half of all parallels, STARS OF MLB parallels do not improve on the wonderfulness of the plain old regulars. Even the Chrome version surprisingly can't improve on the basic Oooohhh, Shiny here.

These inserts are likely the most highly printed of any insert in the 2024 Topps Baseball set. They arrive one per single straight retail pack, a packaging format which still exists but is not commonly found in stores any more. The only reason I can buy them is my local Big Box, Meijer, sells them in a blister pack with a single purple parallel of the base cards, for a simple $5 lottery ticket that comes with a free pack of Baseball Cards. I'm gonna hit that Paul Skenes Rookie Card card next time, for sure. But these STARS OF MLB inserts are also automatically included in the other retail packaging formats of Topps Baseball as well.

And thus the non-parallel versions are worth almost nothing, unless a current MVP is on them. That makes them all the more likable, if you ask me. If you want one for a side collection, or the whole checklist (be careful what you wish for), it will cost very little to obtain one.

This is not the first year I have collected some star themed Baseball Cards. But it has finally motivated me to look for some more details on the concepts of players as stars, and how that translates to Baseball Cards.

Night Owl has written about this many times over the years; just type the word "stars" into the search box on his blog and you will be well rewarded.

These STARS OF MLB cards I like however, are not of the usual types of cards connected to stars, as documented @ Night Owl; they are not All-Star cards, nor Future Stars.

So tonight I started out looking for an answer to a long-wondered simple question: what was the first Baseball Card with a "star" on it. As in, a graphical depiction of a star, which is a very obvious thing to reach for when creating a Baseball Card.

And since Google has become a question answering machine as much or more than a web page search engine, for a long time now, I simply typed this into it: "first baseball card with a star on it," and this is what it said:

"The first baseball card to feature a star is likely the 1933 Goudey #53 Babe Ruth card, which features a bright yellow background."

That is now considered an "AI" response. Unsurprisingly, it completely missed the nuance of my question, and went straight to the concept of a player described as a star. Adding "printed" in front of the word "star" makes it spit out information on what is considered the first Baseball Card ever made with no reference to stars, of either kind. 

Among Google's suggestions for similar questions, is adding "Topps" to the front of the question. This makes Google answer:

"Topps first included a star on a baseball card in the 1960s when they featured the All-Star Rookie Team."

I had figured the first Topps card with a star on it, as in printed on it, would be in the 1959 set, which has cards for the 1958 All-Stars, covered in little stars. I don't know for sure, but that was definitely before the creation of the All-Star Rookie Cup, which never has anything to do with graphical stars anyway.

And if you simply start looking at 1950s Topps Baseball Cards just for fun, something Artificial Intelligence can't do, just for fun, you will soon see an image of the most famous Topps Baseball Card of All-Time, the Topps GOAT: a 1952 Mantle. That ultra-famous Baseball Card has a whole line of little stars, all the way around the player name box. On just the second Topps Baseball Picture Card product, Woody Gelman (probably more-so than Sy Berger), placed stars in the eyes of the future collectors.

So,

Base Set 1, Google 0

But that was only one half of the puzzle I have become interested in. When was the first use of the _word_ "star" on a Baseball Card? Variations of that question get no official AI response, just web links. There I would guess the 1959 Topps set, which has cards labelled for the 1958 All-Stars, the year before the first All-Star Rookie cards in the 1960 set.

Base Set 2, Google 0

I also have been thinking about a small checklist of cards which appeared in 2023 Archives, which do not print a graphical star on the card, but do use the word -

That is a design from a product called Topps "Hit Stars" from 1957, which does not use any subjects from the world of sports, but rather from movies, TV, and music. It does use a few graphical stars on the back, but may not have been the first Topps set to consider non-athlete "Stars." Bowman had done such sets so perhaps they put a star on a card also, or perhaps Bowman even did so somewhere in their Baseball product line, dunno.

Now that odd little attempt to see what "AI" knows about Baseball Cards did pass along some useful info via the original Google technique of simply creating a list of web links related to the words in the search box.

That led me to perhaps the actual first appearance of the word "star" on a Baseball Card -

That is cribbed from this excellent post on an excellent blog:

https://sabrbaseballcards.blog/2021/08/02/a-closer-look-at-the-1934-diamond-stars-release/

I really should just treat that blog like a book and start reading it from page 1 some fine day.

Those perhaps original (probably an answer in the SABR cards blog somewhere) Bubble Gum Cards were possibly titled that way thanks to the first MLB All-Star game, which was in 1933, the year before their creation. I would imagine the word "star" had been in use in newspapers, regarding Baseball players, for many years before that.

All that leaves me still wondering just when Baseball Cards might have latched onto the simple theme of creating a checklist for the "stars," without concern for recent All-Star games. One of the earliest I can recall is an insert from 1990 Fleer:

I have wanted to hunt around for a few more of these; my own copy of that one is floating around here, somewhere, but had to crib that image from elsewhere for now. That would be one of the earliest inserts, too, though that is a way too deep topic to explore right now. 

Overall I have little doubt that the Stars theme was used routinely in the explosion of inserts and particularly the Ooohh, Shiny inserts that appeared in Baseball Card products in the 90s, though the most likely/routine use would be for the inevitable "Rookie Stars," I expect. How would Pacific be able to resist such an obvious combo? I look forward to the potential discoveries. 

Some 20+ years later, having largely skipped the 1990s deluge except for many half-hearted purchases of Topps Baseball releases, I first began seeing "Stars" cards, sans "All," or "Rookie," in Opening Day sets. Those featured a fairly long running insert called "Opening Day Stars," which were 3-D cards. Like most All-Star cards, they sometimes included a graphical star:

That's probably a cellphone picture (extra challenge in 3D, back then) I took to write about finding my first packages of 2014 Opening Day while staying in a hotel room. Whaddya know, a whole decade ago now. At the time I thought I would surely need to collect all of those cards; but the only year I have actually done that is 2013.

I was surprised to find that image in a quick rummage through my now very old blog posts; my memory was I had featured a Kershaw version. Instead I found images of the Puig card, and,

These well illustrate the perils of a more subjective approach to selecting "Stars" as compared to just sticking to bona-fide, duly elected All-Stars. But then plenty of All-Star teams have puzzling selections, when gazed upon from the future.

In 2017, Topps dropped the 3D production for the set of Opening Day Stars, which looked like this:

I fell in love with these instantly. 

The design concept is stoner cold simple: just splash a starry, space-like layer behind the player, with a "team color" match to it all, but over most of the background in the image. Stars.

There is just one problem with those cards — as Topps so frequently does, they significantly reduced the production level of this new take on a recurring insert. This actually makes a whole lot of purchasers of Topps products quite happy, as they have very little concern for what is actually printed on a Baseball Card, as compared to the quantity of them that are printed.

Progress on that 50 card checklist has been slow. I think I am up to about a dozen of the cards, as I won't pay $10 for one of these, just because they were a "tough pull" back in 2017. A more accurate view of the value of these is that when they are offered on eBay for just $2-3 each, there are no takers, these days. They aren't Rookie Card cards, so nobody cares.

The series continued in 2018 Opening Day, but those cards had a big flaw, in my opinion: they didn't have any stars, as in printed, on them. Wrong. Night Owl had taught me well. As a result I shuffled whatever few copies I had of them right on outta here quite some time ago.

In 2019, STARS OF THE GAME appeared not in Opening Day anymore, but in Topps Baseball as a retail-only 1/pack insert, as described above with the 2024 cards.

These, were quite perplexing -

What tells me Nolan is a star?

Is that C-3PO creepin' down there?

For a long time, this is the only one of these I thought I might keep. Mostly so I could remember to check the Dime Box blog, whenever I saw my copy. I hope Nick has this one.

I haven't launched a collection of Bat Barrel cards and have no idea what I will do with this Arenado card. Maybe I need a page of cards that have no connections to each other, but I like anyways. Singularities.

Trying to make keep-it / don't-keep-it decisions recently, I did find another one of these that will fit a tiny collection I have going:

HICKORY 

 

That was an obscure little find I didn't expect.

One notable thing about the 2019 take on the just, Stars concept occurred on the last card in the now 100 card checklist -

Rookie Card card

Kyle Tucker has certainly proven himself to be a STAR OF THE GAME at this point, to be sure. But in 2019? 

Here is a good point to note that Topps actually refers to these inserts officially as the "Superstars of Baseball" on their checklist, in classic Topps accuracy fashion. Three entries before Tucker on this checklist was Buster Posey, truly a Superstar at that time. And right there with him, a Rookie. At least they waited all the way till the end of the checklist to sneak him in.

2019 seems to me the point where Topps began to throw authenticity right out the window when it came to checklist creation. Moar Rookie Cards, moar better, ya?

Overall, the one other (after Arenado and Goldy) keeper that made the cut from all these poor design, completely worthless (both senses) inserts kinda sums up my reaction to them:

In 2020, the Stars went away again. Seemed fitting. Instead the 1/pack, retail-only insert became yet another run-through of the "Turkey Red" style of Baseball Card. That also seemed fitting for the year of nada. Does anyone ever truly want a grey-bordered Baseball Card? Hey, let's flip through my album of Baseball Picture Cards that look like a Rain Day. Can't wait.

Then in 2021 - an "anniversary" year, 70th to be exact - Topps issued re-dos of old designs, or more specifically "redux" cards using 1952, 1965, and 1992 designs for the 1/pack, retail-only insert.

But in 2022, the Stars came roaring back -

These cards have just a plain foil for a basic Ooohhh, Shiny-ness but the deep blue outer space background seems to negate any possible rainbow effect.

Nevertheless the shooting stars, even an exploding one, clearly reinforces that these are the STARS OF MLB. 

Me like. Particularly this Reid Detmers (who?) card, despite that parenthetical question, to which I kinda forget the answer. It will likely be the perfect "binder card" when the RC/FTC collection inevitably outgrows its first binder. It seems to answer just where Rookie Cards come from - straight from an MLB STAR pitcher to your pack of Baseball Cards. And how many Rookie Card cards are there? More than the stars in the sky, son.

I was also pleased to find examples of these that could be used in my perpetual Nifty Nine side collections:

béisbol en Español

more HICKORY

Ray in outer space

I 💙 the Ray

And no, it hardly escaped my notice that Vidal Brujan is nowhere close to being a STAR OF MLB. That doesn't matter for my collection of great views of Tampa's Ray sailing along on every one of their player's shoulders. 

But such disconnects became inescapable once the checklist reached the portion delivered by Update packs. I often bitch about Topps doing this but I do understand that perhaps they do so after careful consultation with collector focus groups, convened annually at 1 Whitehall a few weeks before Pitchers & Catchers report and we have nothing to do. It is US that want Rookie Cards, Rookie Cards, and MOAR Rookie Cards, and Topps simply gives US what we want. Well, lots of us anyway.

At some point in 2023, or maybe 2024 even, I managed to paw through a stack of inserts left over from never getting around to sorting all my purchases of 2022 Topps Baseball cards. I had bunches of these STARS OF MLB cards, but hardly a one of them was worth sending in to COMC. I hadn't really thought about their future much but realized they were at least Nifty Nine worthy-

The Result

That was assembled by just selecting from the cards I already had, and were originally all from the always star-powered Series One. Just the other day I swapped out a Nolan Arenado card for that happy smiling (Update) Cutch card though. But these, are definitely Stars, and to front-load Series One, the most widely purchased Topps Baseball product with all these can't-miss uber-popular Baseball players is a strong way to go. Topps placed only one Rookie in the 30 Series 1 STARS OF MLB cards (and none in the Series 2 effort). Thus I could perhaps see adding a 2nd page of these cards; 'twould look nice but I would have to purchase the niftys, for the most part, and there are a whole lot of cards already on that list ahead of them, so that seems unlikely.

In 2023 Topps Baseball, the Stars returned — sounds almost like a Topps marketing tagline. The result, though...

...I'm not seeing any stars here.

Oh, wait, up there in the corner.

There is of course a stealth/partial star in that Riley Greene is wearing the uniform of the Negro League's Detroit Stars, which is kinda cool. But this photo also ultimately became the one used for his Rookie Debut card later on, in 2023 Update.

Overall though it feels like the designer of 2023's STARS OF MLB was just desperate to find a way to connect these to all the parallelograms on the base design and then we end up with a bunch of weird overlapping rhombuses instead. The inside of a star, maybe? The return of the Diamond Stars at last? Nope, weird rhombuses is all I can see. I got a little worn out by all the geometry in my 2023 Topps Baseball Cards.

Greene's RC was one of the 3 in the Series One checklist of 30 cards - 10% now. I did try to find a few keepers from the stack of once again worthless extra Baseball Cards I found myself pondering, but this was all I could deem worthy:

a nice in-action portrait

Once Series 2 rolled around the STARS included 1/3 Rookies though the checklist editor had the fortune of having included both Rookies of the Year. Then in Update the Rookie quotient reached almost half the checklist, which might better be called the Rookies & Faded Stars of MLB. This checklist theme might work a little better with a smaller cap on the number of cards, just sayn'

I should note that these inserts, unlike so many Topps creates, do not include "hit" versions with either relics or autographs. Instead, perhaps, Topps has used this basically perfect thematic concept for a famous Baseball player to create a dedicated set of just autographed cards, fittingly called Baseball Stars Autographs which I think began in 2022 when this Stars series theme re-launched. From what I have seen of a few scrolling by, the designs are quite nice (with plentiful stars, printed on the card at least) and there is a solid chance I will pause such a scroll long enough, some years from now, to pick up a $1.29 copy of an actual autographed Baseball Card from some Pitcher who appeared out of the Bullpen a couple times in The Show, and then "got told." Because I might want more stars-on-cards, I expect.

Other sources of star imagery include the now probably permanent "Independence Day" parallel, which has lots of stars in the graphics more often than not. There is also a stars themed parallel factory set produced these days, though I can't recall if it is referred to as the Wal•Mart Factory Set or the Gold Star Factory Set. That one comes with limited edition versions with differently colored stars so you will never run out of "different" versions of Baseball Cards of your favorite 4th Outfielder on your Home Team to chase around, forever.

And it is easy to miss, but 2023 Topps Baseball has a little pair of stars on every single base card. Stars & Baseball Cards are just a perfect match.

Ultimately though what I like is bright shiny (what stars do) star-stuff on cards of big Star Baseball Players, and 2024 Topps came through on that simple desire.

Powder Blue Star

I was particularly pleased by the Riley Greene card at the top of this post, which can fit in several fun collections for me. 

As a whole the 85 card 2024 checklist, down from 90 cards for some reason, has Rookie content creep upward a few more ticks. That includes an up&coming Rook who managed to pitch 25 Innings in 2023 and just 4 Innings in 2024, while another has 205 At Bats in his first 2 seasons and a career OPS+ so far of just 75. Truly, the Stars of Major League Baseball are awaiting you at the bottom of these checklists; it has long felt pointless to attempt such a simple collecting goal as completing a checklist of beautiful inserts. I wonder what Google AI would decide about this.

Although I somewhat want more of these 2024 STARS OF MLB cards, and I have a few too many extras after a little less-than-careful exuberance with them in the Dollar Box down at my LCS, I can't quite gin up a full 18 entries for a second page of these without compromising on fading stars. You would think it would be a simple thing to just pick the 18 starting All-Stars from the year before on an insert like this - surely they are the true Stars of Major League Baseball, at any particular fixed point in time.

Nope. Sorry Ketel Marte, 5 & 6 WAR seasons aren't Star worthy when we need checklist spots for a Rookie with your club who went 4-for-31 in 2023. I quickly lost desire to count how many All-Stars are missing from this checklist. 

I want real Stars, & here they are:

The 2nd Result

67 days till Pitchers & Catchers report.

Which is about the same day 2025 Series One will appear.

I will have some Stars in my eyes.