Tuesday Trio - Topps reprints

I could have called this blogpost "Why I've grown to hate Topps." For all that I moan about parallels, reprints are even more frustrating.

Card Number 216: Topps, 1997; #410
This is Tony's base card from 1997.

It's quite green. It's not very remarkable. Topps often crop their action photos too close and regularly seem to pick photos of players looking away from the camera.

The back has a big stats box and another photo of Tony running. It also mentions that if he managed another batting title that season it would tie the record for titles won in the National League. (He won it, of course!)

All in all this is a mundane baseball card. There's nothing particularly exciting about the 1997 series from Topps, and if you were going to pick cards of Tony's to reprint this would not be near the top of anyone's list.

Unless you're Topps.

Because only 5 years later they reprinted this card.

Card Number 217: Topps Archives, 2002; #19

Crucially they give it a big foil stamp on the front, saying what set it was from. Tony's name is in yellow print instead of gold foil. The back is a weird grey card stock and there is a strip up the edge. So it's clearly a different card.

I will say Topps got one thing right. This is card #19 in their set!

Then, as I was going through the large volume of cards I'd purchased from Gawain, I found another version of this card.

Card Number 218: Topps 60 Years of Topps (Original Back); #410
What alerted me to this being a different card was the silver foil on the front instead of gold.

It was a real troublesome card to track down on Trading Card Database. I looked all around the 1997 cards to see if it was a known error, or an opening day version. Unlike the 2002 card this cardback was the same glossy stock as the base card.

Then eventually I spotted the word "reprint" under the Topps logo.

If I had been more switched on I should have seen the Cooperstown Collection logo as well, alerting me to the Hall of Fame connection. Buried in the blurb at the bottom was the year, 2011, and then it was a case of going through all of Tony's cards from 2011, which wasn't too bad. He only had 182 cards released that year, and it was easy to skip through the short numbered relics and autograph cards to find the one I was looking for. (It was a slow year for Tony Gwynn cards; this is the only card from 2011 that I have in my collection so far. I have 7 from 2020 already!)

I can't figure why Topps liked this card so much they thought it was worth reprinting not once, but twice! There are so many other iconic Tony cards they could have chosen instead of one from the end of the Nineties, from a set that nobody raves about or is particularly interested in (as far as I know).

But that's Topps for you. They make odd choices sometimes. And it's up to collectors to look at the card in their hand and try to work out what the hell is going on!

Total: 218/394