Stumbling around in the Past

 Well it is once again Old Guy season in Baseball Cards, as 2025 Archives is somewhat fresh on the shelves, as is 2025 Heritage High Numbers, kinda sorta. HHN is not on actual shelves any more, just, virtual ones, as Topps has finally listened to all the complaints from shops about keeping those Old Guys away from the Middle-Aged dudes who just want to shop for their Pokemon cards in peace, without stories about walking both ways up a hill in a snowstorm just to buy some Bubble Gum Cards.

I always look forward to Archives, though some years I immediately wonder - why? Will this be one of -those- years? Let's rip a pack.

International Bonus Baby (see how Old Guy I am?) Jasson Domínguez greeted me this year as First Card, representing 2013 Heritage, errr, uhhh, 1964 Topps. I could mainly only summon memories of 2013 Heritage as I am not quite Old Guy enough to have experienced 1964 Topps, ever.

I immediately noticed that this 100 card take on the '64s would be different than 2013's was. Back in '13, a photograph from a live game of Baseball would mostly only be used as a coveted "Action" parallel printed in tiny quantities, so all the Old Guys buying up Heritage could feel more secure in owning a tangible asset rather than just a bunch of worthless Bubble Gum Cards. Me, I was still pissed about the lack of bubble gum, going on almost 5 years at that point.

Everything else feels solid about that particular Bubble Gum Card, complete with the authentic card stock. My main experience of late with a 64 Topps style card has been a reprint of Bob Gibson's 1964 Topps card, which looks OK enough in a binder page, though it has a too-brilliant white gloss shine to it, and is on craptastic modern Baseball Card printing stock that feels more like a piece of plastic. I vowed to replace that card someday if I could.

That Jasson Dominguez card there certainly looks legit with a nice night-time photograph, but it also has some odd faux analog-ness that kind of jumps at me a little, though not as much as a card from another pack we'll see later. Next!

ahh, now there's the cold unfiltered digital photography I remember so well from Heritage. Perfect for a Twins card? 

...and is that the perfect smug-ness for a Yankee? I am still quite pleased that the Yankees finally let their peeps be photographed while we look towards the outfield, rather than the prison that Steinbrenner Stadium's pressbox always appeared to be on so, so many years of Heritage cards.

So, 1964 Topps, give it a blue check-mark. As usual with an Archives release, and just as I carefully do with each year's Series One big Baseball Card day, I managed to get a box of this in my grocery cart without knowing what styles would be included in it. Just this week I had to enter a partial online-Baseball-Carding bubble of avoiding any and all Baseball Card websites with pictures (including your fine blog), as 2026 Topps Baseball images are likely circulating now. Anticipation, anticipayayshun, is making me wait... (Old Guy enough for ya?)

1996 Topps.

Tatis.

I feel, kinda, kinda, about each concept here. Somewhere I might still have the pack of cards I purchased from Topps in 1996, might not. I just know I didn't purchase a 2nd one, that year. Ditto for Fernando Tatis, Jr. I know I have some of his cards, because, but I do know I don't have any extras, deliberately. "I didn't know what 'the clear' was," uhh-huhh, sure. Between this guy and another Manny character, it is kinda, kinda way too easy to root against the Padres lately, even though they have been spending money like the drunken sailors I always figure supply them with a good amount of tickets sold. I do respect the owners that spend.

As for 1996 Topps I'm not sure I will ever warm up to it fully. Has any other "inset" set ever simply repeated the inset image from the main photo? I expect so, but I would be equally, hmmm, non-plussed as I am about 1996 Topps. I mean I can clearly see Fernando Jr.'s face perfectly clearly in the main photo - why does the card need a smaller version of the same thing? Ifffff I recall correctly, an ever less certain concept, for Old Guys, 1963 Topps set the original standard here, and one that didn't need somebody else to mistake it all up.

I will say the near Stadium Club clean-ness to the 1996 design is an overall strength however.

And, foil. Did 1996 Topps introduce this bad idea? I think 1995 did, but those were dark times. Foil sure won't usually illuminate things, unless the sun is shining.

Pitcher Face inset. Uhhh, ok. This card is a little weird in the way the outfield wall went purple just in time to match the 1996 card designer's thoughts back in the fall of 1995. At least the Giants' alternate black uniform always makes for a nice Baseball Card. I thought their lettering was orange though - that fog in S.F. is powerful stuff, sometimes; Webb's 2023 Topps card is a bit red as orange, too.

2005 TOPPS

IN THE HOUSE

I should have seen this set choice coming from 2 aisles away back at the grocery store, but Old Guys aren't known for having the best memory. I think this is now a basic tradition in Archives, to select that year's 20th anniversary set for use, or is it 30 years? And if that is a tradition, why did Topps just blow up next year's 30th anniversary in the previously seen set? Old Guys are easily confused by this stuff. But, then, so is Topps.

One thing I am no longer confused about, is what to do with my shoebox (yes, really) full of several hundred 2005 Topps cards. For a long time, I have been thinking - should I go for it? Complete it? This ices the decision. The big bold beautiful set you can never forget when you see it, is cleared for collecting launch. If you have a similar box of hundreds-plus-ish 2005 Topps commons, I'm your huckleberry.

That decision was helped by a recent serendipitous find of an incredible 2005 Topps style card hidden away in the "online only" Throwback Thursday Baseball Cards, which are always a pain-in-the-gimp for Old Guys to ever discover. I soooo look forward to the day that card can be bragged about right here on this very Baseball Card blog. i.e., when it actually arrives.

Yes, I like 2005 Topps. Looks like I'll be 'clectin it right here in 2025 Topps Archives, too. Those PLAYER LAST NAMES are just so perfect there centered on top of the Baseball Card. Plus, strong team color use, and for once Topps even defeats the color yellow correctly, too. 

What? Those PLAYER NAMES are printed in foil, too, you say? Don't remind me of the perfection that could have been with some simple black ink, like Old Guys prefer. At least it's gold foil, a big improvement over silver foil, always. Plus I couldn't hear whatever it was you were just sayn', and I already forgot, anyways.

Speaking of Old Guys, they sure do seem to get long contracts, don't they? This guy has been playing for 14 years already, is signed for 6 more to go, and is now routinely busy passively aggressively trying to get another 4-5 years added on, maybe cuz he already knows he is lucked out of becoming Baseball's first Billion Dollar Player, coming soon, and he's now jelly, as those young whippersnappers like to say. 

I do have a way extremely casual Bryce Harper collection going; it's got like, four cards in it so far, out of my 5,000+ options. But when the day comes that I have to pick from 20 (or 25?) Topps designs to memorialize this one-helluva-Baseball-player, how could I skip his HARPER card for such a collection? 'specially a sweet red-white-&-blue one.

So, a calm steady-as-she-goes traditional 3 styles in this year's Archives, just like Old Guys expect. But we also know that every pack of Baseball Cards in the 21st Century will also have a big "Hit" in it, of some kind, cuz even Old Guys don't like those super boring "base packs" any more. Let's see what's under the scratch-off box, in this pack -

tight

It's a Hit!

Topps sank my Battleship! 

Sooo many boxes checked, here:

• black Baseball Card

• weird cap possibly never seen on cardboard before, just, wrappers

• 'home' alternate solid color uni

• 'rainbow' foil, sometimes-a-fun-time, not to be confused with foil "ink"

    (hard impossible to see in this scan)

• (in?) famous Baseball Player

• I've seen this guy on TV already, unlike 96% of Rookie Cards

• I know his name even without the useless foil "ink"

• I'll probably see this guy on TV again, unlike 82% of Rookie Cards

• Rookie Card card - & worth actual money

OK, well that last double point isn't quite accurate. Rookie Card cards don't check my boxes, usually. And this one has a touch of white showing on one corner the scanner hid from ya, so it is not worth $2, it's worth $0.00 now. I should probably blow up this defective Baseball Card rip-off on TwitterX repeatedly until Topps is shamed into sending me another one, plus a couple old packs of Big League or something.

So, yeah, I likes those black bordered Baseball Cards. If I'm gonna keep it, like this one, I might just touch the white spot with the tip of a sharpie. Don't tell nobody.

I am always wistful that the black cards are often only produced in /x limited quantities, or special retail only packages in a store I am a long long ways away from, or in one of so many other ways to make them complex obtainments. Like, here in Archives being the "retail parallel," arriving at 4/blaster, probably the only retail format for this, or kinda-sorta $7.89, each, depending on if you actually want any of the other 52 cards in the box, which most people won't, unless one of the other 4 special needs cards have an RC logo on it, for one of the top 5 rooks of 2025.

That was quite a pack. But there's gotta be more Old Guy stuff bubbling up from the dusty past, right? Inserts? Archives will never let you down there:

2007 Topps All-Stars

I think this card might answer a question I hadn't been wondering, until I saw this card: where did Topps get the idea for so many phoned-it-in inserts featuring slapdash design even a child would laugh _at_ (not, _with_, which is perfectly fine), in the Opening Day and then Big League product?

Turns out, 2007 led those phone calls. With yet more foil, no yay. I guess I missed those in 2007. Stars on Baseball Card, generally good. But, sometimes...whatev. Next?

1995 Topps CyberStats

Flags on Baseball Cards always instantly make me suspicious. They say to me "we ran out of ideas, so here comes a repeat." Which is actually understandable, considering how many Baseball Card sets are created every year, each needing a half-dozen or so actual card designs. It ain't easy bein' cheezy. What flags have to do with "cyber" stats I doubt anyone anywhere could explain.

And what is a "cyber" stat, anyway? Let's flip the card over and find out -

That's actually quite enjoyable to me, Mr. Wordy-word. A nice simple paragraph detailing out an impressive statistical achievement by a Baseball player.

I think, however, I am starting to be suspicious of the word "cyber" which doesn't feel at all Baseball-y, and is somewhat as randomly incongruous as the flag on the front of the card. 

Meanwhile, the correct appellation for these cards is not 1995 Topps Cyberstats, but rather 1995 Topps Cyberstats Season in Review.

Let's review: in 1995 Topps, there appear to be a set of parallels of the base checklist which are known as the Cyberstats version. Those have a different back simply highlighting the 1994 stats while obliterating / not including any stats more than a few years old, to what mysterious purpose I can't at all divine, today. 

Also included was another small insert checklist with the text paragraphs as seen above, the Cyberstats Season in Review cards. 

Why? It sometimes seems to me that Topps often struggled out of the gate with the concept of inserts/parallels in the ever growing 1990s Baseball Card market, despite the early Home Run known as "Finest." Those cards in ... 1994 Topps? ... with the "Gold Winner" version, but also the version with a star on it, are similarly just ... confusing. I didn't Baseball Card much in the mid-1990s, and I don't think I ever will.

Though I am still decidedly dubious about cards with flags on the front, I do expect to be collecting more of 2025 Archives, the dumb way - i.e. buying it still in packs, and this will result in me owning more of these flag cards. But since what I really like about them is the backs, I can always put them on a binder page, backwards, just as I can collect just 9 of them, because looking at a page of 9 paragraphs of stat nerd stuff is probably the solid realistic limit for such a goofy concept. It's time for the magic word ... next

1987 Topps Boardwalk & Baseball

Now here is a now somewhat rare thing in the Archives product: a Topps concept I had never heard of, after so many of them have been rolled out in either Heritage or the now 15 year history of Archives (counting 2011 Lineage as year 1). Apparently this is based on a small boxed set produced for a theme park in New Jersey around 1987, or some such story you will have to research on your own time. I can't get past this:

2021 Gallery

That's a design I quite liked, and will be filling out some pages of, one of these days. These new "Boardwalk" cards are not a complete copy by the Gallery set, but I can't look at one without seeing those Gallery cards. 

Meanwhile, on the back...

...these cards introduce some new (to me) Baseball stats.

That would be the and RP and RPA* columns there on the right, which if you are squinting too hard at this card back (like me), stand for Runs Produced, and Runs Produced Average (RP divided by G).

Completely absent from this wondrous (?) development is just how "Runs Produced" is calculated, as Old Guy stat "RBI" is included here too. We are left to our own devices on that one and I have to wonder if Bill James was called about this. I suspect, not. I mean otherwise, wouldn't we all know about it in the age of endless cyber, err, SABR-metric stats all over all Baseball discussions? So confusing.

Meanwhile, the 25 card checklist includes some Rookie Card cards (surprise!), which one would think might struggle to have much MLB relevance in this way outta left field "new" stat, unless MiLB is all about the leader board for "RP," which I also basically doubt. Also on the checklist are some Pitchers, so they will have to have different stats - I suppose, though we all have a keen interest in quantities of Runs, connected to a single Pitcher. I will certainly be kinda bored-ly looking forward to seeing a Pitcher on this effort, but I definitely have zero desire to assemble these and I expect they will also have zero value to anyone except those hungry for card #2,329 in their PC of of some Baseball SuperStar. Howz about we use the magic word again -

1964 Topps Stand-Up

It's another Hit! Home Run! With me, at least. I collect 1964 Topps Stand-Ups, or at least that style of card, not having the courage to look at prices of actual 1964 Topps Stand-Ups. I got into the habit with Archives, volume 1, aka 2011's Lineage, which has a nice set of these also. Sometimes, repeats are just the ticket I like in my old-new Baseball Cards.

A few other manufacturers have dabbled in this card concept and I have a carefully stashed collection of any such cards I can find. The project that results will be epic, I promise you. The reinforcements to the idea I will be pulling from 2025 Topps Archives will be a big ole help to that long-simmering idea.

That Kyle Tucker Stand-Up there appeared in the last pack of my first blaster of this stuff; I have now opened 2 more of those. I found lots of great cards, but stumbling around my scanner can be tiring work sometimes, and I scanned a whole bunch of fun new Baseball Cards from the growing pile of 25 Archives. But to see those, check back here, soon. Us Old Guys can't always babble on about Baseball Cards quite as late as we used to...