What's your favorite Topps Mets card?

[seawolf17]

I will likely have extra Mets team sets very soon, if anyone wants one. I bought into a case break, so I should have a bunch of doubles. The Series 1 team set, for what it's worth, is:

15 David Wright
56 Johan Santana
66 R.A. Dickey
119 Jason Bay
129 Lucas Duda
147 Jon Niese
156 Josh Thole
157 Mets team card (features Reyes/Pagan in flight)
203 Dillon Gee
207 Angel Pagan
290 Ike Davis

I'll trade for anything you have no need for, especially sparklies.

[batmagadanleadoff]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Where does one buy baseball cards these days?

I have a collection of Mets cards and here's how I maintain my collection:

Once or twice a year, I'll go an an ebay binge where I search out all the new sets for Mets cards. Sellers commonly break up their cards into team sets. I can figure out what cards are in the sets by comparing listings -- many sets for offer aren't complete even though they're listed as such. I see the cards for sale in many stores, especially Duane Reade and Rite Aid. Last week, I noticed cards for sale in that chain store that sells DVD's and CD's and electronic supplies -- but I forget the store's name

metsguyinmichigan wrote: Anyway, I bought a couple packs. I'm underwhelmed. The foil makes the cards nearly impossible to read. I did pull RA Dickey, and one of those sparkly cards.

I don't know why the card companies continue to make foil cards. Nobody, I mean nobody likes 'em. Upper Deck used to make the largest sets, and had some of the coolest photographs. You could count on UD to include, for example, Pedro Feliciano in its set. But that foil they used year in and year outi was impossible to read. You have to manipulate the cards to catch the light at just the right angle to read the face of those cards. I know that you know what I'm talking about.

I thought that the '72 Seaver In Action was your #1. You'd once written that it was your favorite card.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

An awesome card to be sure, but I've always had the 1972 base card as a favorite.

[seawolf17]

Dear God! He's enormous!

They make the foil layer on the cards more or less because they've done it for so long (since 1992) that they have to keep doing it. Maybe I'm just used to it, because it doesn't bother me at all; I like the look.

[batmagadanleadoff]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Last week, I noticed cards for sale in that chain store that sells DVD's and CD's and electronic supplies -- but I forget the store's name.

Best Buy.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

awesome!



Dooh! Flicker won't let me post.

[Guest themetfairy]

michigan - I always upload to Image Shack when I want to post here.

[batmagadanleadoff]

You can't post images from your links. Click on "Actions" .. "View all Sizes".. Pick a size and link that image.

[seawolf17]

The problem is that you know that ball bounced off the heel of his fucking glove, allowing the runner on second to come all the way around third and score. Fuckin' hell.

[ashie62]

2011 R.A

[G-Fafif]

Outstanding choice for No. 1 (and No. 2 and No. 4 -- those are my personal Top Three). Outstanding series. Thank you, MGIM for showing us the tops of Topps.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Indeed.

Also... very, very good and Metly, this year's batch.

[G-Fafif]

Dickey appears ready to hurl himself out of his card and into our dreams.

[Benjamin Grimm]

These modern cards, to me, have better production values, but no magic.

[ashie62]

seawolf17 wrote: I will likely have extra Mets team sets very soon, if anyone wants one. I bought into a case break, so I should have a bunch of doubles. The Series 1 team set, for what it's worth, is: 15 David Wright 56 Johan Santana 66 R.A. Dickey 119 Jason Bay 129 Lucas Duda 147 Jon Niese 156 Josh Thole 157 Mets team card (features Reyes/Pagan in flight) 203 Dillon Gee 207 Angel Pagan 290 Ike Davis I'll trade for anything you have no need for, especially sparklies.

We all want sparklies lol..10 bucks a pop now

[ashie62]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: These modern cards, to me, have better production values, but no magic.

Some would say the magic ended in 1970 with 1964-68 as the golden years.

[G-Fafif]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: These modern cards, to me, have better production values, but no magic.

Same could be said of these dadgum modern ballparks. One of them anyway.

[metirish]

I happened upon a few dozen cards recently , mostly from the late 80's.

Topps Dream Team

and some 90/Score cards






No idea if these are considered good or crap but some are pretty cool looking.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

My philosophy is that if you like them, they are good!

Very, very few of the cards from that era have monetary value, just way over-produced. But that doesn't mean they aren't fun to have.

And, for the record, I think the Topps golden age was 1970-1974, with a second semi-golden age from 1983-1989..

[seawolf17]

Got those team sets in; I think I probably have about four or five more if anyone's interested.

Michigan's right on the value, but he's also right on the fun. None of the four guys I collect most heavily have any "value" on the secondary market (except maybe Keith Hernandez), but I do it for myself.

[metirish]

Something about the Mike Greenwell card that I like, never heard of the guy yet when I go to his BR I see not only had he a good career but it was all with the red Sox.

[G-Fafif]

metirish wrote: Something about the Mike Greenwell card that I like, never heard of the guy yet when I go to his BR I see not only had he a good career but it was all with the red Sox.

Went to the same high school as Deion Sanders and Mrs. Fafif, though not at the same time.

[batmagadanleadoff]

How many of your personal golden ages of baseball cards coincide, for sentimental reasons mainly, with the same years when you first discovered baseball and baseball cards? A strong case can be made for the end of the golden age occurring in the early '60s, when Topps' dirty tactics ran its last competitor, Fleer, out of business.

"But no child could believe that having just one set of baseball cards to choose from was a good thing. As the Topps monopoly became impenetrable, kids saw a decline in the quality of the cards. This institutional complacency first appeared in the mid-1960s, when designs started to lose their pop and Topps became comfortable with cutting corners. When a player was traded to another team during the production process, rather than pay for a photo of him in his new uniform, the company simply had its artists superimpose new logos on the old hat and shirt. (This tweak may have curried favor with tobacco-card collectors in the 1880s, but by the 1960s and '70s it was considered a cheap cost-cutting move.) Most of these airbrush jobs were hopelessly cheesy-looking.... Topps also had no reservations about running the same photo on certain players' cards year after year, which its adolescent customers discovered with annoyance. Such shortcuts were indicative of a sameness that would settle into Topps baseball cards for years to come, and the outcome of the FTC case didn't help ... finding that there was nothing "inherently unfair" about the company's lock on exclusive contracts with players."

From Mint Condition



I read this book last December, when I had the flu and I was practically bed-ridden for about two days. I sought some light reading to pass the time and settled on Mint.

From Fleer's last set for almost 20 years:

[seawolf17]

I have that card, and one other from that set. (Kanehl, I think.)

[Guest Edgy DC]

Dumb question: how did these other card producers survive through the decades-long Topps exclusive period to put out cards on the other end? Were they scrapping by, producing NHL cards or Wacky Packages or ALF cards? Or were their names just adpoted by different entities later?

[seawolf17]

Pretty much, yes. Fleer brought a lawsuit in the late 70s against Topps, which broke the monopoly and created two new sets (Fleer and Donruss) for 1981. Then in the late 80s-early 90s, all sorts of other brands popped up (Score and Upper Deck, most notably), eventually killing the market. "Only" Topps and Upper Deck remain, although Panini -- known for their stickers back in the day -- are back. Donruss- and Fleer-branded cards are out there again, but they're produced by Panini and UD, respectively.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Wacky Packages was Topps. By the '50s, every Topps competitor was scraping by. In 1956, Bowman succumbed and sold its assets to Topps. The intense competition cut into Bowman's profit margins so deeply, that it could no longer operate. It was Bowman that first produced cards with color photographs, and first included the players' stats on the back of the card. Its' 1955 TV cards are classic.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Sweet paneling!

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

How many of your personal golden ages of baseball cards coincide, for sentimental reasons mainly, with the same years when you first discovered baseball and baseball cards? A strong case can be made for the end of the golden age occurring in the early '60s, when Topps' dirty tactics ran its last competitor, Fleer, out of business. From Fleer's last set for almost 20 years:

There are only about three Mets in this set. I think Fleer was shut down after one series. The cards came with a cookie, with the theory that Topps had rights to produce "bubble gum cards" but not cookie cards.

I have three or four of them, and can post them later if interested.

I had one of every Met card from 1962 through when the companies went nuts with inserts and short prints. I have a company from Iowa that builds team sets without the inserts and short-prints and sends them to me.

So, instead of saying I have every Met card, I now can only say I have every Met base set card.

As far as a complete series, I have a run from 1973 to present, and I'm very close to finishing the 1971 set and about 50 short of the glorious 1972 set. I'm within spitting distance of finishing the 1970 set -- which is as far as I'll ever get.

[G-Fafif]

Gotta love those backdrops -- Craig and Jackson at the Polo Grounds, Kanehl at Citi Field, apparently.