Because you can keep cards on your bookshelf.
Headnote: I don’t know why I keep doing it. Force of habit I guess. As I pointed out in an entry about Mets cards,
The way it worked back then, Topps would release seven series of about 132 cards each beginning in March or April. Once the calendar page turned, you couldn’t easily get the previous series. Towards the end of the month, this young collector would visit the candy store every day to see if the new ones were out. Remember, this was in an era when you collected for fun, not as an investment. There weren’t all these outfits that sold cards to any great degree.
Even though I’m now a grown-ass man, I would still buy a couple of packs every year, just to see what they looked like. But for the past few years, I’ve been buying the whole “base” set, which are split two series.
I thought (and I may very well be the only one) it might be interesting to focus on one card a day (maybe a couple, since I’m going in order and there may be exceptions to my hazy rules) from the 2023 set with some random thoughts, since I believe this is the last one Topps is producing before it turns over to Fanatics. I hope I won’t get to repetitive if I run out of things to say.
#1 Juan Soto
Back in the day when I was an avid collector — and we’re going back almost 50 years (yikes!!) — the first card in the set was reserved for someone or something really special. People will have differing opinions on who is deserving of the top spot.
There’s no question that Soto is one of the top young stars today. I might have led off with Miguel Cabrera, since this is his last year, but I can understand that Topps wants to cater to the younger crowd.
Along those lines, the best of the best were noted with numbers ending in “00,” so that means just six or seven cards could accommodate who Topps deemed to be the true elites. A number ending in a single zero (50, 60, etc.) meant you were All-Star caliber. You can see from the example below from the 1967 set that “Bob” Clemente earned the honor of #400 while better-than-average players like Dean Chance and Jim Wynn got a big fat “0.”
A look ahead shows that some top tier players are bunched together in the 2023 sets, something that would not have happened prior to 2000.
A word on the design: The 2023 cards continue the recent trend of having an action photo with a head shot. Maybe it’s my age, but the type seems to be getting smaller. I don’t see any reason the player and team names couldn’t be larger (nor why the trademark symbol needs to be added). The player’s position seems pretty lonely, off in the corner by itself. Also, since WAR hadn’t been invented yet, that was obviously not something you would see on a card when I was a kid. Similarly, OBP and SLG were not included in a batter’s stats. We’ll soon see what the pitchers’ cards include, stat-wise.
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