Alas, I was wrong.
2012 Topps Archives will contain a 200 card set of retired (yay) AND current MLB players (ugh). Nothing against today's ball players, but I was hoping for a full-fledged retired set that would either be reprints of players cards (like 2001 or 2002 Topps Archives) or previously unused photos (ala 2003-2005 Topps ATFF). And while the autographs had given me hope, I don't really collect autos. I was hoping for a base set that would have been similar to the autographs.
And again, I became disappointed.
It turns out that what is being called Archives will consist of just four designs: 1954, 1971, 1980, and 1984.
That's it. I'm going to go on a hunch that there will be 50 cards per design. I can only hope that for the 1954 design that Topps uses players that did not appear in 2003 Topps Heritage, otherwise, it becomes repetitive.
And looking at the Pujols preview card on Facebook (do you know how to download videos to Facebook???), it looks like a mockup of what 2020 Topps Heritage is going to look like, and that is exactly what I wrote in the comments for that photo.
In what appears to be the replacement for Topps Lineage, the inserts that will be included in this set feature tributes to past insert concepts, like 1967 Topps Stickers, 1968 Topps 3D, 1969 Topps Deckle Edge and the 1977 Topps Cloth sets.
The article on Beckett goes on to say that while the base set is 200 cards in number, "There will be 40 short-printed (unsigned) Fan Favorites cards capping the set found one in every four packs." This may be what I had in mind. And if this is what I'm hoping it is, then I might consider just buying a full set of just these 40 cards on the Bay. But then what if the Autographed FF cards feature more than just the 40 cards from the base set? Should I dare go for it like I did in 2003 (I have 19 autographed cards, of just the players who had auto cards that did not appear in the base set...Tug McGraw would have been 20, but I doubt he signed his cards...something about failing health at the time...)?
So it turns out that I might not necessarily be on the hunt for this set after all. What I had hoped for when the first images showed up as a dream set turned out to be just that...a dream.
Sincerely,
JayBee Anama
4 comments:
So why didn't they just stick with the Lineage name? It seems to be basically the same concept. The name Lineage was about the best thing with that set.
As far as 2003 Heritage goes, I don't know the exact figures but for the Rockies only Todd Helton (and he looks much different now) remains with the team so i don't see repetitiveness being a huge problem. The league is a lot different now than in 2003.
Agreed. This sounded a lot cooler at first.
moe.
I still think it sounds pretty cool, but I do wish they could somehow get MLBP over it and do one or two sets a year of retired players only. Topps could offer to scrap doing so many mixed sets - seems like that is a good compromise and would make everything more collectible. I guess that would maek too much sense...
Also, this seems better than Lineage on some level - if they are doing an old design, I'll assume they have statsistics on the back, and that means the base cards are much better!
Boy, and I thought Lineage was a convoluted product. I really appears they didn't think this one through. It's vulturing Heritage sets of the past and the future. Since they can't do a full set with retired players only, they should've just made it an insert into Series 1 & 2 or something. This is really going to dilute Heritage, in my eyes. Hopefully Topps is nimble enough to listen to fan reaction and change the gameplan before product release.
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