Barring an unforeseeable catastrophe, Topps will be celebrating 60 Years in the baseball card business. Now as we all know, 2001 saw the return of Topps Archives, creating a 450 card set featuring the reprinted first and last cards of 200 players, along with 10 managers, and forty all-star, league leaders, and postseason highlights cards.
Let's imagine that MLB Properties decided to allow Topps to make a set or two featuring retired players again. And let's also pretend that we all work for the product development department for the Topps Company (akin to the gentleman who runs the Sports Card File). It has now been agreed to bring back Topps Archives to coincide with Topps' 60th anniversary. So now it's time to pick players to go into the set. We're not going to consider autographs, relics, patch cards, or whatever right now. We have to decide who in the last 60 years should be included in this base set.
There is just one requirement though...we need to find 200 NEW players to be a part of this set. Meaning that any player who was included in the 2001 Topps Archives set can not be included in this set. Meaning, HOF's like Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Nolan Ryan, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Dave Winfield, Ozzie Smith, Ryne Sandberg, etc, as well as Fan Favorites like Bill Freehan, Mark Fydrich, Joe Garagiola, Andy Pafko, Andre Dawson, and so on, can't be in this set.
So now who can we include??? That's what this new blog segment is all about.
During the 2009 baseball season, I'm going to scan the first and last cards of players I think should be a part of this set. But I can't be doing all the thinking, nor should I be. Remember, I said "Let's (let US) pretend..." This is where you come in. Start putting in the comments during any future "Archives" posts who YOU think should be included in this new set. The requirements are that the player MUST be retired (or have stopped playing going into the 2009 season...2010 cards have not come out yet!!!), and that the player did not appear in the 2001 Topps Archives set (the Future Archives, as talked about here and here and pictured below as well, do not count).
I'll even add this handy 2011 Topps Archives logo onto the cards:
How about it. I don't think we're going to have a hard time picking names from the last 60 years. I mean, yeah, we can't use the obvious names mentioned earlier, but there have to be 200 guys in the last 60 years that we could use. Should we give this segment a chance??? If so, let me know who you'd like to see going into this set.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
