This year I was lucky to be able to visit an LCS on the day some brand new Baseball Cards were released, back on the 11th when 2026 Topps Baseball Series one appeared.
However I can hardly visit an LCS without also looking at the old cards. I didn't have a whole lot of time for that, on that visit, but I managed some finds...
This card checked several very current boxes for me. Buying it felt like a great way to celebrate the surprise of the Tigers seeming to "push in the chips" for the 2026 season with a pair of big name starting Pitcher signings, JV being the 2nd of those after also hiring Framber Valdez for the next 3 (will there be 3?) seasons.
I had never seen this card before, not being one to deliberately look for Team USA or Futures Game type cards. As if there aren't enough Rookie Card cards to pick from, there are also of course "pre" Rookie Cards, sometimes also called Prospect cards, and although this next terminology - "pre-Prospect" cards - might not be in common usage, I well know there are cards created for players before they are even prospects, too.
Meanwhile I am in the beginning stages of a new effort at collecting 2005 Topps, a design which is also quite perfect for my simple one page Player Collections, with the dramatic LAST NAME up there at the top. So discovering a 2nd VERLANDER card (a fresh take on the idea is his 2025 Archives card, though in a Giants uniform) will potentially fit into multiple collecting efforts, particularly since his card in 2005 Topps Baseball says DRAFT PICK on top, which is far from ideal. His 2005 Topps Chrome card does say VERLANDER on top, but that card only appears in an autographed version. Justin never warmed up to signing Baseball Cards afterwards; his autos are rare and expensive as a result, and of course so many people only want autographed Rookie Card cards, so his '05 TC Rookie auto will never be a card that I own as it sells in the four digit range I believe.
However I remained perplexed for a bit on just what set this card appeared from. So many collectors are so excited by the prospect of somehow obtaining their very own priceless '52 Mantle card, for pretty much every first round draft pick, every year, that countless pre-Prospect, Prospect, and Rookie Card cards exist for a chance for people to believe they can luckily complete that completely unrealistic quest. One result is "Futures Game" cards might appear almost anywhere in an impossible-to-know-them-all galaxy of Baseball Card product, in a set, or an insert set, or an online-only release, or who knows where; I certainly never ever care about the idea.
Fortunately, this card finally offered up the necessary set origin clue, on the back of the card -
- that being the "UH220" - the card #
which reveals that this is a card from 2005 Topps Updates & Highlights.
That theme - a new-to-me Tigers card from an update set, quickly continued:
2010 Topps Update
2010 did drop the "Highlights" concept from Series Three, and was perhaps considered the Update "Set" internally at Topps as this is card #US-37.
Personally I never warmed up to the 2010 design with the seeming graphical conceit that we are looking through a keyhole or possibly a camera aperture of the kind known as a "fisheye lens." I do however quite like the use of Team Color to create that effect, and overall the design stays out of the way to let the game of Baseball be the focus, not the graphics. The result of all that, for me, is just a very slow-motion effort to build a Tigers team set and probably not much else from 2010 Topps Baseball.
I will probably need another copy of this card however, as I was quite pleased to discover a Tigers card to use on a small collection of "It's a Pop-Up" cards.
Also I can note that 2026 Topps owes a tipped cap salute to 2010 Topps, it appears.
Very small collections informed my next pull from the single's box...
2004 Topps Baseball
® & © 2003 THE TOPPS COMPANY INC.
Yes, you are seeing that correctly; that is how the teeny-tiny legalese on the back of the card reads. This card must have been created not long after the era when the Topps Baseball set for the coming season was fully publicized and graphically disseminated via advertising -BEFORE- Christmas, a trend I completely abhorred, leading to the copyright date not matching the official season of the actual Baseball Card.
None of that has anything to do with why I kept this nice example of a Topps Gold parallel, which was because although I always like Manager cards, I particularly like Manager cards showing one "In Action," as the Baseball Card lexicon describes it. And I figured I would never ever see a copy of this card for sale ever again, regardless of being a parallel or just a boring base version, so this was my one chance to chip away at reaching 9 nifty Managers, In Action cards.
Those three cards were delightful finds from just a single row of 'single digit' cards ($1 ~ $10) in a multi-row box; that particular LCS had 5 more rows of them I could peruse on some anticipated future visit. Alas, sometimes the greater enemy of enjoying Baseball Cards is not cost, but Time, and that is all the cards I can scan for you right now, although that LCS visit did offer up some other surprising treasures -
yes, the Good Ole Grateful Dead on some cards, a new release from Upper Deck
stay away, is my advice, as a GD fan of several decades
will scan some soon
&, finally, this It Also Comes in Packs delight:
Preview: It was a "fun rip"
scans soon-ish
cya then
No comments:
Post a Comment