Monday, December 7, 2020

Modern Monday - talking turkey

Topps Turkey Red cards issued in 2020 are insert cards rather than their own set. There were 100 different cards in both Series 1 and Series 2 of the Topps flagship product, and in their wisdom, Topps decided to number them 1-100 in both series! Tony was given a card in Series 2.

Card Number 523: Topps Turkey Red insert (Series 2), 2020; #TR-70

TR-70 in Topps Series 1 depicted Aaron Nola.

Turkey Red cards are modelled on old time tobacco cards and feature a full length portrait of a player against a crudely rendered background. Their generic look is exactly like Tony's card in the set.

Topps haset several faux-vintage ranges, and this card has the best cardback of all of them. This is a contender for the best summary of Tony's career ever on a baseball card.

There is some artistic license taken with the opening sentence. Baseball was never the "fallback plan", although it's true that it wasn't the original plan. Tony wasn't allowed to start playing until his second year in college. When it became apparent that he would be in the draft for both baseball and basketball he decided to play baseball because he felt he would have a longer career.

However, overall, the cardback elevates this card above other retro cards released this year. Thanks to Andrew T in the UK Baseball Cards Collectors group on Facebook for sending me this.

Total: 523 cards

2 comments:

  1. That's a great looking card. I do enjoy this year's Turkey Red inserts... but not sure why they'd number both sets 1-100. Seems like that would cause issues with people building that set... like accidentally have some Series 2 cards with your Series 1 set.

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    Replies
    1. I have a theory as to why but this is a family blog and I try not to use rude words ;-)

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