Baseball Cards: The Perpetual Project

For me, one of the greatest things about Baseball Cards is their permanence. Although the game of Baseball is of course a dynamic affair, with games every day all summer long, Baseball Cards are not dynamic at all. Once you own them, they are yours to revisit whenever you wish, still the same as the last time you saw them.

This makes it very easy to just "collect" when the time is available. I don't get particularly concerned that I still need one horizontal card from 2012 Topps to make a sweet looking page of the best horizontal cards from that year. I know I will find the perfect #9 card, eventually.

Maybe, it arrived at my Baseball Card depot already. I can't entirely recall every card that arrived back in April now. That's because I have been away from home a whole bunch, but also because that wonderful "Mail Day" was to a large extent purchased the week of Thanksgiving, 2025, or at some point randomly from the week of Thanksgiving, 2024, until then.

You probably already know I am referring to a shipment of cards from COMC. I didn't even place my post "Black Friday" shipping request until early January, knowing they were far behind on such things, particularly for us cheapskates using the "bulk" rate.

I don't consider that being cheap, at all, but rather just patient. I also knew the cards would arrive while I was away from home anyway, for one, and since I had slowly purchased them all through 2025, the day of their arrival was not all that important either.

When I did finally get to open the long awaited box of cards (> 500), I barely pawed through them, just once. That was delightful, over a month ago already, but the true delight begins now, when I can finally start using the contents of the box to complete checklists and enshrine the treasures in my wonderful flip books of Baseball memories, i.e. my card binders.

An odd thing about COMC shipments is that cards from a given checklist are not grouped together as one might expect when buying cards via eBay or Sportlots. And that's not because you might buy them at different times, but rather because of the workings of their item #s, I presume anyway. It's when the card gets initially processed at COMC that seems to determine the order in the box when it arrives.

This makes a box of cards from COMC a fairly random affair, which makes (for me) a fairly enjoyable way to get re-acquainted with my purchase decisions.

So I thought I would reach into the middle of the box and then scan whatever 9 cards appear from that point. I will also use this as a way to decide what checklist to work on first, after I sort them all out into their actual sets. 

This post will then be my casual project priority list for the next few weeks, when I am not absorbing all those cheap cards from the Dollar Box sale down at my LCS. And, after I finish pulling > 500 little slips of paper from each and every penny sleeve; the unenjoyable part of receiving a COMC shipment. Uggh.

That first card up there at the top of the page might not look familiar to you if you have completed the 2024 Heritage set. Jonah Heim's #22 card has an entirely different image on the Chrome card with that same card #. But this is not an official "Image Variation." For whatever reason, a whole bunch of the cards in the infernal "Short Print" part of the checklist have different photos on the front. So, loving all things 1975 Topps, I knew I would be collecting those, too.

This card has a serious demerit there on the front - the stamped serial number. I positively despise seeing this on the front of any card. But, I love 1975 Topps. So I try to avert my eyes as best I can from that part. Sigh.

2019 Topps insert

What a weird Baseball Card. I'm not seeing any evidence of the game of Baseball on there, aside from the word "Baseball" in the 150 Years logo.

In 2019 Topps there were 3 sets of "Greatest" inserts, for "Players," "Seasons," and "Moments." At the time I declined to collect them, as it seemed Topps had bowed to complaints on the print run of inserts, and these were not common pulls. If you purchased 2019 Topps in packages, you would certainly see them some, but you wouldn't end up with very many. I, unfortunately, as it turned out, sent mine in to COMC to sell.

I call that unfortunate because I later decided to collect just the "Moments" portion of the checklist, knowing that any list of Baseball 50 Greatest Moments would of course be subjective, but possibly less tied to deciding on what 'made the checklist' based on who Topps currently had card production rights with. And I also figured that there would be no way a "Greatest Moment" in 150 Years of Baseball could just randomly include a Rookie Card card, the way the "Greatest Players" checklist did. That proved otherwise, I have learned since, but I'll revisit that right here, with you, some future day when I have this checklist complete.

What a weird Baseball Card though. I figure I should show you the back to further illustrate the weirdness -

Although I did not know this fact about the history of the Topps company, it sure feels weird to highlight as a Greatest Moment of 150 Years of Baseball. But Topps does like to celebrate itself, and maybe it figured it couldn't make any more Baseball Cards about 1952 Topps. I do have I think 2 other checklists under collection construction about the history of Topps. But, this card - weird.

2023 Topps "Orange Cracked Ice"

I think a huge amount of collectors are burned out on the huge amount of parallels any more. That's just a function of the high print runs of sets like the Topps Baseball set. No one wants a boring "base pack" without a feel good "valuable" card it it. All those parallels means times are good, in Baseball Cards. So I am OK with it in Topps Baseball despite despising them in many other sets.

And some parallels, I do like. I pulled one of these /299 parallels from a pack, also an Arizona Diamondback, and decided I quite like these. Just enough to want to assemble a 9 card page of them. I suspect I gravitated to the Diamondbacks parallel because they play indoors, making all of their cards seem like Night Cards, even when they aren't. But somehow, they work extra well for this goofy parallel.

Speaking of goofiness (same as weird? dunno), I realized I had to share the back of this card with you, also:

This card is a serial #'d card. It is #266/299. But you can't see that, because the serial number stamping is in the black ink there to the left of the card #. The only out-of-the-way place anywhere on the back of the card. It is stamped in gold ink, so you can eventually read it if you angle the card some. Why can't Topps do all of the stamping with a little location concern like this?

2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces

This is my first card from this small set. I discovered it while Black Friday shopping to create a small Reggie Jackson collection, as I realized it would go well with my small Bob Gibson collection, which goes well with the book the two of them created ("60 Feet, 6 Inches" - recommended here a few times over the years).

These are actual paintings, not photos. And the cards are on a nice faux-canvas stock. I might investigate this set a little more, next Black Friday.

I also still have to decide if I might just make a 9 card collection all of Baseball Cards commemorating Reggie in the 1977 World Series, like that one.

2024 Topps 1989 Topps 35th Anniversary insert

Hey, an "It" card in my hands for a change, as "PCA" is having another "breakout" season. On Baseball Cards, he broke out big-time last fall as the cover player for 2025 Topps Update. And here this savvy investor picked up his Rookie Card card for 60¢ or so - but could now sell it for $2! Woot woot!

Really, I just wanted it for a few pages of 1989 Topps memories, in crisp 21st century digital production quality. I love the dirt being kicked up by his right shoe in particular, and the cropping of his left shoe in the bottom left corner is also just exactly perfect. Quite looking forward to that day of page-making.

2021 Big League "Art of the Game" insert

I like "art cards" though not always. These 2021 inserts made my good list. I can't recall how big the checklist is, but odds are good I will just collect the 9 I like looking at the most. There are a number of Rookies on the checklist (surprise!), and some of their illustrations I like even though they didn't 'stick' in Major League Baseball for very long. So maybe I will make a page of just the Rooks. They look better that way, sometimes.

Or, maybe I bought this card because I liked that the illustrator included Mr. Redlegs there, and I collect his more memorable appearances on cardboard. We'll see.

2013 Topps Update insert

Despite my love of the 2013 Topps set, I am still not quite complete with finishing a "Master Set" for the 3 series. But I am getting closer with each year's big ole COMC box...

2023 Topps 1988 35th Anniversary insert

I am also looking forward to assembling some pages of 21st century quality 1988 Topps Baseball Cards. But I probably bought this one for a through-the-years effort of Miggy cards.

2021 Opening Day insert

What a pleasant design, and checklist this one is. Clean, bright, well-constructed. And for once, there is -zero- way a Rookie can sneak on to it. These cards are scattered all through this COMC shipment, but I still have about 20% of it to complete. One of those perpetual projects that is probably more fun to work on slowly. I will probably make this the first card in the first pile for the necessary sorting project, but a post of these is a year or three out.

Meanwhile this big ole box of Baseball Cards will be the perfect accompaniment to some Free Time. Happy Summer!!!