It's bloody Topps. It's bloody flagship. Get over it!

 

I had been a lazy kid.

I was becoming a lazy teenager. The perennial quitter in organized sports. By Spring of 1987, I’d quit t-ball, little league, and varsity football at my grade school, swimming lessons, as well as Cub Scouts. In a few months I was going to quit Pony League as well. I played ball with the kids in the neighborhood, i.e. Nerf football, basketball up at Duff Park; I know I fancied myself a Wiffle Ball God. I’d even played deck hockey, once, and found it about as “exciting” to play as I found real hockey to watch. And while I did those activities, and still kind of liked sports at thirteen, I preferred spending my time indoors, on the couch, watching TV, daydreaming, or reading a book. I also loved to eat. Junk food, third helpings of dinner, you name it.  The only real exercise that I was getting was on my paper route, delivering the Pittsburgh Press, and collecting so I had a little bit of cash.

I was a fat kid. I was becoming a fat teenager.

My friend Miller was the exact opposite. He liked organized sports (mostly…he just didn’t like being coached) and he had a tireless hunger for playing football, basketball, and baseball in the neighborhood to the point of exhaustion. He read stats like I was reading novels. Sunday football was sacred. ESPN was church. Miller was a year older than me. Muscled where I was a pillow cushion. He had facial hair coming in. I was growing a third chin. Girls liked Miller. If a girl found out that I liked her, my amorous intent was usually met with eye-rolling and laughter. I couldn’t blame the girl. To say that Miller and I were moving in opposite directions would be an understatement. But we still had one thing between us.

Baseball cards.

Why did I mention the above dichotomy between Miller and I? Well, it was in the late winter of 1987, that Miller came to my door and told me that Thrift Drug had the new 1987 baseball cards in stock. As always, Topps. At least three full wax boxes. It was one of those dreary Feb or March days. Rain. We were off for some Catholic school holiday that the public-school kids didn’t get. There was boredom on a day like that. New baseball cards? Why they were just the thing to brighten the day!

And I was flush. It was one of those weeks were the people on my paper route decided to pay me for the whole month, instead of me knocking on their door week by week, like a common nuisance. I had more money than I usually had in my wallet (and not an ounce of intelligence or foresight to the fact that if people paid up front and I spent all of the money; I’d spend the rest of the month a virtual pauper). I had enough on me for an entire box of 1987 Topps, and enough to help Miller get himself a box as well. I sent him off to the Thrift Drug with money to buy us both the biggest and fattest goose that he could buy.

My laziness had become so complete that I didn’t even think to walk myself up to the store to buy my own goddamned box of cards.

At thirteen you sometimes can’t see what you’re doing to yourself, but can only really comprehend how the world reacts. A stern look from my old man to my mom as she served me up another helping of spaghetti. Myself, completely unaware that I was shoving down three helpings of food when I was no longer hungry. Eating that extra and then another extra slice of pizza to fill a void. Attacking a Hostess box, the minute I got home from school. Nights eating huge slices of cake. Can after can of cola. The looks from adults. My mother’s friend trying to reason with her about my weight as I went for a third, albeit small, meatball sandwich on Christmas day. I just saw how people were treating me. At that age I had no clue how I was treating myself.

Couldn’t even walk up the street to buy my own box of baseball cards?

I always say that Topps 1987 were the first cards that I ever bought in wax box form. The first wax box that I opened with my own money. But I didn’t even buy it. I have no memory of going into the Thrift Drug, of selecting which of the three wax boxes available, that I wanted. Of going up to that salty, old cashier, the one who seemed to live forever, and then standing there as she tried to figure out whether or not to ring up the box as one total or scan all thirty-six packs individually. Miller got to have those memories. Not me. I just remember waiting at home for him, beached on the couch, some mid-afternoon soap opera playing on the television, wondering if I’d had enough digestive distance from lunch, before I could start in on the cookies or Cheez-Its.

I’m here to talk about baseball cards, right? It’s crazy what directions a memory can take you in. And I’m not fat shaming. I was who I was, as other people are who they are. My journey is my journey and I have my scars and self-loathing to work through. My weight gain wasn’t glandular, but was probably brought out more from a sense of alienation and aloneness. Why mention weight in an essay about cards? I do so because I feel like everything from 1987-1990, baseball cards, entering high school, etc, is always going to be tainted by my being very overweight and the feelings that went along with it. I did finally lose seventy pounds in 1991. But that’s a tale for another time. Let’s get back to the cards, shall we?

Miller comes back to my house carrying two wax boxes of 1987 Topps. Now, I had seen those magical, 1987 Topps wood bordered cards previously in Dmitri’s bedroom a few weeks before. But it had just been the cards. Part of the appeal of the new card season, is seeing the design on the packs and wax boxes as well. 1987 had a green and gold motif with a big banner across the front that said BASEBALL. And THE REAL ONE! They had three cards splayed front and center like someone was going through a stack. Usually, a prominent player on top.

1987’s cover boy was Yankees relief pitcher, Dave Righetti, coming off a 1986 season in which he led the league with 46 saves. 

This wax box design had been the general design of wax boxes for Topps since 1984, and in keeping with a theme they’d had since 1982.

Me and Miller found a spot on the living room floor, between the living room and dining room, to be more specific. I don’t know why but if I was going though cards in the living room, I always picked that spot. We began tearing the wax. Green packs this year. 

In my memory I pulled all the great star and rookie cards in the initial packs, but most likely I pulled at least three Mike Laga cards with that horrific airbrushing, before I got a Robin Yount card or someone else of statistical esteem.

In 1987 we wanted the rookie cards. And there were so many to choose from: Jose Canseco, Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Bo Jackson, Barry Larkin, NL ROY Todd Worrell, Will Clark, Danny Tartabull, Wally Joyner, and, yes, Mark McGwire, to name just a few. There were players like Pete Incaviglia, Robby Thompson and Corey Snyder. Players that I didn’t know well, but they had that Topps rookie gold cup on their cards, so they had to be something special. 

Some of my favorites from 1987:

Same with the Future Star cards, something Topps, to my knowledge, had never done before with the cards. A big, bright rainbow of promise across the bottom of the card. Bo had one. Some guy name Palmeiro had one. Dave Magadan, Pat Dobson and B.J. Surhoff all had one. Cardboard prophesies for sure, right, Tim Pyznarski?

I’d never seen so much promise in a wax box of baseball cards before. Promise that could be accused of not lasting. It’s thirty-four years later, and all of those tales have been told. The careers have come in gone. Some had respectable careers. Some faded after a season. Some never really made it at all. Quite a few of them had Hall of Fame careers tainted by steroids and other PEDs. Only one of the players that I mentioned above is actually in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Congrats Mr. Barry Larkin. Your career was a pleasure to watch.

Here in 2021, I find myself waiting on boxes of baseball cards again. Hobby Boxes though they are now called. I’m waiting not because of laziness or issues with my weight, although time instead of overindulgence is beginning to take care of that. I’m waiting because the landscape has changed over the years. Drug stores don’t really sell cards anymore, and a LCS is hard to find, or the product is overpriced. Cards aren’t nearly as ubiquitous a presence in 2021 as they were in 1987.

I live in Brooklyn now, not the Pittsburgh suburbs, so my access to the big chain stores that carry retail product (if you can find it) is next to nothing. I have to rely on buying most of my card product from the internet. I get excited now by a tracking number and an expected delivery date. The buzz of a doorbell, and the hard knock of the mailman. A box being dropped on the lobby floor. Opening said box to find these packs inside.

I like the design of 2021 Topps flagship. 

I’m glad there are borders again, and I don’t mind the stripes jutting into the picture, or whatever 1987 Donruss thing the Topps Company is doing on the side of the cards. The type of photos being used almost dictate that there be borders. Most of the shots are up-close shots. That has more to do with the circumstances of 2020 rather than anything else. I’d rather a close-up of Tim Anderson than see him framed by an empty stadium or fake cardboard fans in the stands. A lot of the inserts (looking at you 1986 and 70 Years of Topps) are pretty neat. 

The backs are crisp too.

             Some highlights from the hobby boxes that I opened:

....And in Series 2 I get to look forward to THIS:

I know a lot of collectors don’t like the 2021 flagship design. I’ve heard a good amount of “worst Topps design ever” grumbling online. And that’s fine, I guess. The autocrat in me isn’t a big fan of opinions, but I’ve learned to accept them in order to get along with other people during the course of my day. But complaining about where the RC logo or Rookie Cup logo is on the card, at times, reeks of nitpicking to me. And if you’re complaining about the size of the print on the front of the card, there are bigger fish in the sea that that. Codes anyone?

I think about complaints about flagship as such: it’s like Paul McCartney once said when people were gripping about the Beatles’ White Album, what cuts shouldn’t have been on it, which ones were left off, etc. He said, and I paraphrase, it’s the bloody Beatles. It’s the bloody White Album. Get over it.

It’s bloody Topps. It’s bloody flagship. Get over it.

One thing I do think is worth complaining about, or at least acknowledging, is the price disparity with this year’s flagship. Aside from flagship being more expensive than it reasonably should be (yes, I’m still a newbie BACK into collecting but the price jump I’ve witnessed in just two years is worth any collector commenting on), the price you pay for a hobby box seems to be determined upon where you purchase it…which isn’t cool.

Using myself as example, I bought three hobby boxes, which was probably overkill for me, but I’ll pay it forward by sending some folks some stuff. Never one to discuss money I will say this: I bought two hobby boxes in pre-sale from a major card store at $114 per Hobby box. On release day I took a trip to the Major League Baseball Flagship store in Midtown Manhattan (my only retail refuge but a seemingly day’s journey from my part of Brooklyn) and paid, with tax, $108 for a hobby box. Yesterday, I was in my local LCS buying supplies for all of these damned cards, and I noticed that they were selling 2021 Topps flagship hobby boxes for $165 dollars. Not only that, but they didn’t even have the packs of 2021 Topps out with the other cards, but instead behind the counter with the premium packs. I didn’t even bother to ask the owner what they were selling packs for.

I understand online purchasing vs retail overhead for mom and pops vs retail chains. But that doesn’t seem to explain, in total, the price disparity. In some instances, I think folks are over-profiting from hobby box sales. Maybe I’m naïve but it seems to me that deals should be worked out with distributors that a collector, any collector, should be paying the same amount per pack/hobby box no matter where you go and purchase it. And if a touch more, not a difference of $60. I know it was that way when I was a kid. The American coin and Thrift Drug sold wax packs for the same amount.

Overall, it’s exciting that flagship is out. Is it 1987 exciting? No…but it’s not supposed to be. One thing lingers for me. No matter who I was or what I was or what I looked like back then…I was still a kid. And cards, while collected by adults, were still marketed and cherished by KIDS back in 1987.

I wish that were the case now. I wish that kids who want to collect, the kids who do collect, could go and purchase a pack of Topps cards with money they found hanging around the house, or from an allowance. I wish those collectors didn’t have to settle for Opening Day or Big League, even though I like those products. Kids want The Real One, Topps. And love 2021 flagship as I do, how many more years is it going to take before it’s not just the kids who have been priced out of the hobby, but the average collector as well. I overindulged this year because I’m home with nowhere to go. That might not be the case in 2022.

With that, I say, let's at least try and have some fun.

            Anyway…Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

            If you need a 2021 Topps Flagship checklist you can find one HERE and HERE 

            NEXT FRIDAY:  Hey, let's go back to 1988. I'm going to take a look at buying a wax box of 1988 Topps cards in a druggy, record shop in downtown Pittsburgh while on a Catholic school field trip, hiding said purchase from girls, and when baseball cards came out before the year ended.  Also, going to touch on the sudden ubiquitousness of Fleer and Donruss too. And maybe we'll take a look at a few of the cards that I really love from 1988, cards and a year, that I'm still on the fence with in terms of how I personally feel.