Baseball has been back in full swing for a while now of course, which is always a wonderful thing. My Baseball Card hobby has not been; after working 6 day weeks from February through April, in May I moved on up - to 7 day weeks. Yay.
Fortunately even working with, around, and in the always dynamic mix of Biology & Weather has periods of slack water eventually, so it's time to blow the dust off the scanner...
1st Card, Best Card
Welcome to 2025! Y'all probably have Series One all bindered up and up on the bookshelf already, but I am still absorbing it. And, enjoying it.
This year I mostly pulled off my annual goal of (somehow) not seeing the new Topps Baseball design until I rip open a pack. A simple plan, which seemingly gets more difficult every year. At this point, "Google News" places all things Baseball Cards into my news feed within minutes of publication, I often think. And one of their little thumbnails with some sort of online/media piece about the new Baseball Cards almost wrecked everything a few days before my target 'opening day' to finally see 2025 Series One at the start of the Tigers' first Spring Training game.
I hit the scroll bar as fast as I could and managed to only know the design would be vertical (again), with a fair amount of graphical action on the left side of the card. Which, once it became "in-hand," I quite like. The foil/metallic ink from 2024's "The Neon" design is back for an encore but on a full white border. Looks like we will have team cap logos this year, which isn't quite the same thing as perhaps "official" team logos. This Phillies card inviting me into the new Topps Baseball set is a perfect contrast candidate for this, as in 2024 their cards used the 'Phillies' + Liberty Bell logo, which does not appear on their uniforms. It will be interesting to see if Topps manages to stay consistent for all 30 teams on this icon choice, something that can vary in some sets. I would like to explore the history of that, but when I can barely find time to read a pack of Baseball Cards, well.
Overall the obvious adjective here is "flowing" and in a way this feels somehow like a reversed ode to 1982's hockey sticks though without being one of those sly 20th or whatever anniversary nods that are more integral to many Topps Baseball designs than is always quickly obvious. An even better adjective which comes to mind is: "elegant." Another wonderful stay-away from those years of aggressive geometry on the card design.
And then there is something altogether NEW: the little graphical diamond indicating the player's position. This, I Like. Bats, balls, and gloves have done duty here but I can't recall anything similar before this, though I can be wrong on such things. It surely can't be easy to introduce a brand new graphical concept to the long history of Baseball Cards. Well done, Topps.
Plus a Powder Blue First Card? Yup, this one's a keeper in that ever growing collection, which won't be of every Powder Blue card, ever, but rather team examples on each design. This card will certainly rep the Powder Blue Phillies for 2025 Topps Baseball.
I particularly liked pulling that Alec Bohm card to open my 2025 season because while I was admiring it, Alec Bohm came up to bat. How handy is that? Let's check the back, because, yeah, I read them:
all in order here
I like the repetition of FIRST LAST name from the front
I kinda figured that could go either way; indeed Bregman's decision seems to have ultimately been between Boston and Detroit at the end. Meanwhile I kept thinking about what the Tigers could offer Dave Dombrowski for Bohm, after it was known he had tried to package Bohm and Castellanos in a deal in late 2024. This surely meant Bohm was available, and as I write some 3 months later, Detroit still doesn't quite have an every day guy at Third Base even now that a previous 3B acquisition from Philadelphia, Matt Vierling, is back from an early spring injury. So my off-season armchair GM plan just never went anywhere beyond bouncing around in my own noggin and no one else's - though I will never forget my idea and most especially not when gazing upon this Baseball Card.
By the time I got done flipping First Card over and back over many times, I had lost my place listening to my first live Baseball game of 2025 and it was time to re-check the line-up and also start pondering the rest of the pack -
We all know 2025 will be the year of Chi-Sox RCs
Feels a little odd when the Official RC Logo® is supplying the only real splash of color, but so it goes with MLB's monochromatic team, on lotsa designs.
Of course Pitchers hardly ever need a positional designator on a card when live game action photography is used, but overall this is a very good image choice very early in Thorpe's motion. As with the Bohm card, the complete player is pictured — perhaps it won't be a year of all-torsos, all-the-time in Topps Baseball.
As for who Drew Thorpe is, couldn't tell ya. Baseball Cards help tremendously, but I had to look this up: Thorpe hasn't pitched in 2025 and is on the 60 day IL. No surprise for a Pitcher RC. I've had some realizations about RCs and the ultra-modern game of Baseball that I will be exploring in some more posts later this year. Or perhaps later in this post, as that surely won't be the last Rookie Card card in the pack; I think that is an Official Unwritten Rule of Baseball Cards these days...
Nice Mr. Redlegs cameo
From the West Coast, where I never know anything about Baseball players, to a Central division team, where I kinda root for all the teams, so I had better know a few things about their players. Thus, for me, Baseball Cards.
The France card, a fair bit more than the Bohm card, illustrates how the image is going to have to carry the load for some color appeal this year. The Reds uni, naturally, emphasizes the color red which is just kinda barely there in the metallic foil printing. And why do the Reds get a colorful "C," the opposite of their caps, when the Phillies get a regulation white "P," exactly like their caps? I knew Topps would have little chance of going 30-for-30 on this.
a "Sunset" card
More West Coast, in a sense, which I knew from my Baseball Cards, even though Marco Gonzales somewhat struggled to appear on them. He has exactly one Rookie Card - how does that even happen these days? That RC is a 2015 Heritage High Numbers card, without the famous logo; his first Topps Baseball card isn't until 2018 Update. How am I ever going to cover this player in my RC/FTC collection?
This card shows that 2025 Topps Baseball kinda just doesn't want to be scanned - the actual in-hand card in no way gives an indication of the color green in the team color design element.
Series One always has lots of odd checklist choices like this. I could consider this card an "Update" card commemorating Marco's brief (7 games) final career stop in the Steel City, but he did have a Pirates card in 2024 Series Two already. Ultimately considering Gonzales did manage to pitch over 900 innings in MLB, which is an increasingly unusual feat, I guess it's a good thing he got a final, good looking sunlit in-action card like this one. There are always more sunset cards in a set of Topps Baseball than most collectors will ever realize. Which is because this other kind of card -
- sucks most of the oxygen out of card collecting any more. We all also know 2025 will also be the year of Rockies Rookie Card cards. Except, Greg Jones is actually a White Sox Rookie in 2025, or, was. After a whole 5 At Bats in Colorado in 2024, he managed 2 At Bats in Chicago in 2025, before continuing on to the Astros minors, as I write. Will he ever exceed "Rookie Limits?" Could go either way, I guess. At least the Topps Baseball Card miner was smart enough to select the colorful Colorado road uniform, which is always a plus...
Colorado Who?
...and at least the Rockies have color coordinated accessories at home. Otherwise they are almost as monochromatic as that no color team in Chicago.
I at first thought, well, this young player must be on a Home Run trot, given his expression here. But, nobody puts on their oven mitt after banging a dinger. I guess Jordan is just happy to be playing Baseball and appearing on a Baseball Card, and that's good enough for me.
One of the best signs of Spring is the appearance of the Topps Rookie Cup logo on a brand new Baseball Card in my hand. Thanks, Topps. I know the bling has to be spread out some in Series Two, but I would actually be quite content to assemble the Cup collection at the start of the season.
As for this actual card though, I'm not sure mustard, sherbet, and dirt make for an appealing overall image combo. Nor can I discern if those batting gloves are a Mother's Day edition, or how a red belt snuck into assuredly the weirdest of the City Connect unis. I have never noticed the Swinging Friar has to suffer in the sherbet, too. I also have no idea what Baseball event is being depicted here; this card ... just doesn't make any sense. Too much going on.
This guy still plays Baseball?
Is Topps sure about this?
I sometimes like, sometimes don't like a card's zoom/crop choice cutting off a noticeable amount of the Baseball Player. This card, I quite like, as it looks like Blanco just came 'from the stretch' right into the card frame, and he is imminently going to release the ball off the other side of the frame, so you'd best pay attention and follow the action.
A perfect Baseball Card, image wise. even the cheesy advertising is smoothly blurred out for us. The 2025 metallic foil whatever striping for the team color kinda basically fails the Astros though as the primary team color stripe comes off as a weak red, in-hand, not orange, at all. And this is the place to note that 2025 Topps Baseball is probably best enjoyed on a nice sunny day, i.e. during actual daylight hours.
We have a Winn-ah
I don't always collect a set of Leaders cards, though I always kind of want to, every year. I basically prefer a vertical card with the actual League Leader reigning supreme at the top of the card, but for the horizontal style, this is quite The Way. I have to think this might not be the first card to actually print the quantity of the statistic right on the front of the card, but if not, then I will be wanting a little set of previous Leaders card that do this neat trick. I would have dropped the "A." part of the name as everyone knows the full names of MLB's Home Run Leaders anyway, but that's just a nitpick. Looking forward to assembling these.
Frame-Break!
OK, this isn't the first card in the pack that allowed the imagery to overrun the frame design. But this one is certainly a more notable example. I was sure hoping to see a regular horizontal card in my first pack, and this one didn't disappoint. It seems clear Butler is going first-to-third while the defender back at 2nd awaits the throw in from the outfield. Baseball, In Action.
I will soon be assembling all of my 2025 Topps Baseball horizontal player cards to decide if I might just collect 'em all, as Topps always instructs, rather than a 9 card best-of from S1+S2 with another 9 from Update, my usual approach to a partial collection effort. Yes, I already know I am not assembling a 2025 Complete Set, after committing to no less than 3 such efforts in 2024, 2 of which are wonderful big ole sets of Baseball Cards. Though I quite like 2025 Topps, I have to pick my shelf space carefully, going forward. Odds are good though, that '25 will get a bunch of space in the horizontal binder, if it holds more cards like this one. Which I figure it does.
another keeper!
let's zoom in some:
I always enjoy these hey-look-the-Baseball-isn't-round-right-now images. Send me more, Topps.
On the card, the Topps Card Back Writer nicely celebrates Sanchez' ability to hit very impressive Home Runs, perfectly accenting the image on the front. Only problem is, Sanchez just can't do this all that often. Miami's outfield feels as cursed as ever.
That wraps up a look at the 2025 Topps Baseball design. But does any set from Topps arrive without more than one design? I doubt that proposition. It's basically a given that all packages of Baseball Cards must include bonuses of some type - inserts:
Did I just use the word "cursed" appropriately? Nobody knows what's going wrong in Baltimore this year, including Topps probably with their selection of Gunnar Henderson for the 2025 Heritage cover. I was certainly looking forward to some dogfighting in the AL East this year, alas. Did someone kick over a lantern under that destroyed bridge or something?
As for 1990 Topps - is it an homage to Mondrian, or Lichtenstein? A long time ago I wrote about that on this blog, with a well-placed comment from the Night Owl helping things along, but I am too down to link back to that post as it shows off a card I should have never ever never traded away, even for a 1975 style Al Hrabosky autograph, as cool as that is. You can wonder the Archives on your own search bar time if you like.
I like 1990 Topps in very small amounts. I like colorful Baseball Cards in very large amounts. Why does that equation not balance? Just the random-ness of the color choices I guess. Match up some team colors to the here-we-go-round-the-border design and I'm all in. This card nicely serves up Oriole orange&black in the secondary card color element, then just pairs that with - light purple fader bars? I'm not sure either Lichtenstein or Mondrian would approve.
That's the now obligatory 35th Anniversary celebration, rolling since 2018. I have been considering putting together the efforts for 1988 and 1989 Topps, which I think will look quite nice with 21st Century printing quality. One thing I truly look forward to however, is next year: 1991 Topps. Mmmm-mmm.
Lately packs of Topps Baseball cards usually have one other obligatory component: the "Stars of MLB," which might or might not show off a star Baseball player -
the 1990s called, said Illustrator has been updated now
The Twins are hot right now, but this card certainly isn't, as Lee has a perfect 0.0 WAR on the season so far. I actually like 0.0 WAR players, a quite small company every year that supply a face to the "replacement" player concept. But when you tell me a card is depicting a Star of MLB, well I like that Lee rhymes with the theme at least. This insert concept is continuing it's on-year, off-year run, after a fantastic 2024 edition we'll see here sometime soon with a fun little project I just completed.
It's sure nice to get the bloggle on again...now I can wander off to see what y'all think of 2025 Topps, at last. C'ya soon.
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