A Letter from Jason Fry of Faith and Fear in Flushing

I received a letter from Jason Fry, one of the writers of the Mets blog Faith and Fear in Flushing sent me a nice email last night:

Hey Jaybee,

Thanks on behalf of myself and everyone who doesn't say it for your annual checklist of Topps team set cards.

Question for you -- it may be impossible to answer, but if anyone knows I bet it will be you: Is there a list of cards from these sets that doesn't appear in that year's regular Topps series? By random example, Joe Smith has a card in the 2011 Indians set, but doesn't seem to have one in the regular set.

Do you know of such a resource?

Jason, you aren't the first person to ask me this, as Rich Mueller, the editor of Sports Collectors Daily (namedrop much???), asked something similar a few years ago.

At the time, I told him I could rattle off a few examples that came to mind, but I never thought to come up with a complete list of cards of players that don't appear in the regular Topps set (are you also including the Updates & Highlights/Update Series sets too)?

When I started doing the Random Team sets of the Week segment on this humble, little blog, I've made sure to note which players don't have a card at all. For example:

• Jason Kendall does not have a card in either the 2006 Topps or U&H sets, but is included in the 2006 Oakland Athletics team set.
• Jenrry Mejia does not have a card in either the 2011 Topps or Update sets, but is included in the 2011 New York Mets team set.
• Both John McDonald, and Scott Richmond had no cards in either the 2010 Topps or Update sets, but both are included in the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays team set.
• Rich Harden does not have a card in either the 2012 Topps or Update sets, but is included in the 2012 Oakland Athletics team set.
• Both Matt Diaz and Daniel McCutchen had no cards in either the 2011 Topps or Update sets, but both are included in the 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates team set.
• Both Tommy Hunter and Brandon Webb had no cards in either the 2011 Topps or Update sets, but both are included in the 2011 Texas Rangers team set.

There are also cases where a player does have a card in the update set, but in a different uniform than what was on the team set (and had no card in the regular set). For example:

• Jon Rauch started the 2008 season with the Nationals and has a card in the retail set. He was traded to the Diamondbacks during the year, and is in the 2008 U&H set as a D-Back, but he does not have a card in the regular set.
• Alex Gonzalez finished the 2009 season with the Red Sox, and signed with the Blue Jays in 2010. He appears in the 2010 Blue Jays set. However, he was traded to the Braves, and is in the 2010 Update Series set in an Atlanta uniform, but he does not have a card in the regular set.
• Mark DeRosa is in the 2009 base set in a Cubs uniform, and the U & H set as a Cardinal. But he's in the 2009 Topps Cleveland Indians set, so he has three cards from the same year, wearing three different uniforms.

Those are just some of the prime examples I could pull from my previous blog posts. It would take some doing to do a full list comparing everything, but it can be done if I had some time (and since I have all the cards). I just haven't had the opportunity to do so, but I'll see what I can do.

Sincerely,

JayBee Anama