Looks like I stayed with that fiddy cent box for quite a while, one fine day early last summer. Treasures galore...
Why I selected it: Topps has only issued "Active Leader" cards a handful of times, appearing in the 1984, 2012, and 2020 Update sets. I'm not 100% positive on that being a complete list and would prefer to be wrong and discover some more of these.
I find them to be a fascinating snapshot not of a single year of Baseball activity, but more of a look at, say, 5-10 years of which players are really producing, every season, to climb to the top of a stat category. It is also interesting to see if a leading player can then make the major milestones such as 500 Home Runs or 3,000 Strikeouts.
I have a long way to go on the 1984 cards, so I was happy to find this one.
Art by Mayumi Seto
Art by Mayumi Seto
Why I selected these: The captions explain it all. More progress on these; whenever I see a 2017 or 2018 Gallery card I generally already know which artist created which card, but that can always be confirmed on the back.
Why I selected it: I'm a Tigers fan, silly. It must have been Bring-Your-Own-Can-Of-Blue-Spray-Paint Day at some unknown stadium some fine afternoon in 1978.
Why I selected it: Previously in this box of delights I had picked up the 81 Trammel, so for once I was able to keep this famous pair together. Progress.
Why I selected it: Why not? For a year+ now, I have regretted not buying an Aaron Judge KABOOM! card at my LCS, for basically cheap. Those are "case hits" and can go up into the mid 3 digits in price. I could have had Mr. #ALLRISE for just a pair of digits, and enjoyed reading KABOOM! on it whenever I wished.
This card is not a case hit and is thus not worth any money. But, it still goes Boom! Or Roar, or something.
Now I just gotta figure out what kind of cage to keep this thing in.
Why I selected these: I always notice when Topps can't get their Rookie ducks in a row on time to print a player's Rookie Card card before they go out on to the field of play and earn themselves membership on the Topps All-Star Rookie team.
Thus I had solid memories of the regular versions of these cards from 2016 Topps. So - what were these cards? Photo Variation$ ?
Nope. Just "Factory Set" variations. I would say the Conforto is a definite improvement on his regular 2016 Topps card but the same can't be said about the Sano card.
Why I selected it: Seems to me that a collection of Baseball Cards that sometimes seeks to use them to know Baseball History could use some Tommy John cards.
Why I selected it: What a great menacing look out at the Pitcher. This recent Diamond Kings effort will be a great contrast to the other 8 regular photo-based Baseball Cards on my nifty O'Neil Cruz page. I also like that the artist & card composer managed to well obfuscate the RC logo, which is just not attractive on Panini cards.
Bonus Round
Why I selected it: I sometimes wonder if I know less about Bowman cards, or Panini cards. A moot point if I never buy actual packages of them.
I bought this one because there aren't a lot of cards with Miggy wearing sunglasses, I guess. Also another Miggy-on-the-basepaths card, which are not common.
But I also thought this is one of Bowman's Worst; using a team logo as some sort of under-image backdrop has never made for an attractive card, particularly when the ginormous ® then has to be included. Is Miggy R-rated? Probably.
This card scans up like a gumball machine; the (used to be "atomic") pattern is nowhere near that fascinating, in-hand. Ima stick with Topps, me thinks.
I've got a ton of Conforto rookies but I don't think I have that one.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about the active leader cards. If they're not going to do it in flagship, it should at least pop up in Archives every 10 years or so. Well, I guess we'll see it in 2033 Heritage....
Can't go wrong with Tram and Lou
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