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Collect call: 2021 Topps Big League Baseball

4/29/2022

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​After a long delay, Topps Big League Baseball has finally arrived.

The product was supposed to be released in May 2021, but obviously there were some delays. Was it worth the wait? Well, at $19.99 for a blaster that contains 10 packs that include five bonus Blue parallels, it’s a nice bargain.

There are an average of 10 cards inside each pack, with one Orange parallel guaranteed. Blue parallels can be found in every other pack, so a collector buying a blaster will receive 105 cards.

There are 300 cards in the base set. That includes 245 veterans and rookies, but there are three subsets that comprise the other 55 cards.
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Big League Best has 20 cards that feature photos of three players who led the majors in a particular category for each league. Think 1960s Topps league leader cards, but with action shots rather than the vintage head shots.

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Award Winners is a 20-card subset that pays tribute to players who won league recognition such as MVP and Cy Young awards. Highlights, which has 15 cards, showcases milestones and memorable moments from the 2020 season.

The card design is simple and relies on vertical action shots. Most of the shots are tightly cropped and relatively predictable, although the card of rookie Jonah Heim (No. 115) is intriguing. The catcher is completing a throw and his hair is flying wildly. A nice touch.

There are some photos that show pure intensity, like that of Cristian Pache (No. 78), who is uncorking a throw from the outfield.

The player’s nameplate is at the bottom of the card in black block letters, with his position in smaller black letters above his name. The team logo anchors the lower right-hand corner and the team name is in white block letters running up the right hand corner from the logo. It’s a little distracting to me, but others might like it.
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The bottom left-hand corner is anchored by five white lines and a gray line, an element that is also used in the upper right-hand corner of the card. Gives the card some balance.

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The card backs have the player’s name in the upper left-hand corner in a box that contains one of the team’s primary colors (or at least alternate jersey colors). There are four lines of type that include facts, figures, highlights and trivia. The player’s year-by-year statistics are displayed beneath the biographical type.

Beneath that is a “Did You Know” fun fact about each player. Matt Olson (card No. 95), for example, took time during quarantine to rewatch “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones.” Cavan Biggio (card No. 78) enjoys karaoke and considers “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” the Marvin Gaye-Tammi Terrell duet, as his go-to song.

Fascinating.

By the way, Terrell, who died in 1970, would have been 77 today (April 29).
From the blaster box I bought, I pulled 64 base cards of veterans and rookies, four Award Winners, four Highlights cards and eight Big League Best cards.

As promised, there were five Blue parallels and 10 Orange parallels. The Orange parallels really pop with the orange-colored border. They might be the most attractive base cards in the set; if I were building the set, the challenge would be to complete them all in Orange parallels.

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The bonus came with a Green Foil parallel of Andres Gimenez, which is numbered to 75.

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As for inserts, Defensive Wizards returns. The 15-card insert set falls once in every four packs, and I pulled two cards — Yadier Molina and Javier Baez.
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The Wanted inserts, another 15-card set, plays off the theme of the Old West posters for wanted criminals who steal extra base hits from opposing players. Ronald Acuna Jr., for example, was last seen in Atlanta and is wanted for Home Run Robbery.

hese cards also fall once every four packs. I pulled three cards — Acuna, Ramon Laureano and George Springer.

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The Souvenirs inserts have 30 subjects and focuses on power hitters and their tape-measure home runs. There is a baseball in the lower left-hand corner of the card that is “tagged” by the distance of the home run that is highlighted.

 A generous synopsis is printed on the back of the card. These inserts also come once in every four packs. I pulled three cards, including Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant and Shohei Ohtani.

The final insert is the caricature-theme Art of the Game, which has 23 subjects — kind of an odd number of cards. I found two cards — Bobby Dalbec and Casey Mize — with artwork done by Darrin Pepe. As the card back notes, the artwork on the card “was inspired by the Big League Stars of Major League Baseball.”
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Topps Big League Baseball is an interesting product, with enough inserts to keep a collector interested. There were no autographs in the blaster that I bought, but then again, I didn’t expect any. The design is clean and the information on the card backs is solid. 

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Recalling the 1952 Coca-Cola Playing Tips cards

4/25/2022

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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1952 Coca-Cola Playing Tips cards, a regional set that was distributed on six-pack bottle cartons of Coke in the New York metropolitan area:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1952-coca-cola-playing-tips-set-featured-players-from-nyc-teams/
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NY collector has autographed baseballs from heads of state, including Zelenskyy

4/20/2022

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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Randy Kaplan, a New York collector who has about 500 autographed baseballs of world heads of state -- including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/collectors-autographed-zelenskyy-baseball-will-raise-money-for-war-torn-ukraine/
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Just desserts: Royal Desserts featured baseball stars in 1950-52 set

4/18/2022

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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 1950 to 1952 Royal Desserts baseball set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/royal-desserts-featured-top-baseball-stars-on-boxes-of-early-1950s-snacks/
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Memorable moments: Here's how some Hall of Famers fared on Opening Day

4/5/2022

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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about Hall of Famers who turned in outstanding or memorable efforts on Opening Day. Play Ball!

​​www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/mlb-opening-day-baseball-card-memories/
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Previewing 2022 Topps Archives

4/5/2022

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Here's a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about this fall's 2022 Topps Archives baseball set:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2022-topps-archives-baseball-preview-information/​
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Collect call: 2021 Topps Finest WWE

4/3/2022

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It’s been a good week for WWE.

WrestleMania 38 was held this weekend at AT&T Stadium in the Dallas and The Undertaker was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. The Phenom was joined by Vader, Queen Sharmell and the Steiner brothers.

Meanwhile, Fanatics announced that it would be adding wrestling to its rapidly expanding umbrella of sports card product, swooping in to grab WWE cards when Panini America’s new multi-year trading card deal expires. Panini just acquired the rights to the WWE brand, but rest assured that cards from Vince McMahon’s group will wind up bearing the Topps logo down the road.
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To celebrate WrestleMania, I bought a blaster box of Topps’ latest product, 2021 Topps Finest. With Bianca Belair gracing the box cover and a promo touting Undertaker Tombstone tribute cards, it’s an enticing product. It was released three weeks ago, but this past week is the first time I’ve seen it in any of my local retail stores.

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​A blaster box has seven packs, with four cards to a pack. Compare that to a hobby box, which has 12 packs and five cards to a pack.

The 100-card base set covers all three of WWE’s rosters — Raw, SmackDown and NXT.

I pulled 21 base cards — seven from Raw, eight from SmackDown and six from NXT. The blaster also had a pair of base refractors — with Asuka and Damian Priest. Refractors fall one in every three packs, so I hit the average.

I also pulled a green refractor of Keith Lee, numbered to 99.

The blaster also contained a pair of X-Fractors — Belair and Rhea Ripley.

The card stock is shiny and very similar to Topps WWE Chrome.

It was unlikely to receive a relic or autograph card in this blaster and Topps did not disappoint. However, there were a few inserts.

I found two inserts in my blaster.

There was one Legacies insert featuring Bobby Lashley in color, with Ron Simmons in the background in a black-and-white photo setting. I really like the idea behind this 17-card subset. It’s always good to look back at the sport’s greats, and Simmons certainly deserves acclaim. He was a fabulous linebacker in college at Florida State (that “interception” he made against Florida in 1979 bounced into his arms — you can’t convince me otherwise. Call me a bitter Gator, right?) and a great pro wrestler.

The other insert was a Sole Survivor insert card of Roman Reigns. The 10-card subset pays tribute to wrestlers who excelled during the WWE Survivor Series promotion.
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With a crop of new stars to showcase, WWE cards should be a popular draw for wrestling fans for quite some time.

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Previewing 2022 Topps Gilded baseball

4/1/2022

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Here is a story I wrote for Sports Collectors Daily about the 2022 Topps Gilded baseball set, a high-end product that will be released in September:

www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/2022-topps-gilded-baseball-information/
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