Here's a card released last year that would have the Anachronism Klaxon ringing if such a thing existed. This card was an eBay single that I bought last month. It arrived the day after Tim's PWE, so I had transatlantic mail two days running!
Card Number 615: Topps X Super 70s Sports, 2020; #54
This online exclusive card set is a "curated card set", which basically means Topps have asked someone else to lend their name to it. In this case, the 'curator' is Ricky Cobb, who runs a twitter account called Super70sSports. Ricky was apparently involved in the subject selection, although the base set of 90 cards seems to be the usual selection of subjects Topps has a license to put on baseball cards. The '70s' aspect is seen mainly in the insert series including five cards honouring 'Magnificent Mustaches' - and, yes, Rollie Fingers is in that insert set! (You can see Rollie's card on Cardboard Connection.)
I understand why Topps would want a mix of current stars and famous names to feature on these cards, but given the 70s connection, it seems very odd to me that they didn't limit it to players who were actually active in the 70s.
Topps have used a nice photo of Tony on the front. His 'Mimbandz' wristbands are really prominent. I noticed then as soon as I opened the envelope as I had just been discussing the Project 70 card designed by Mimbandz that was released this week.
The card back looks like a proper cardback from the 70s. That's a deliberate aesthetic choice. Although they missed a trick by not including a 'wax stain' to really capture that retro feel. (Topps will do a wax stain parallel cardback one day; you know they will.)
The cardback also has the Super 70s Sports logo and a cartoon showing a right-handed hitter making an awkward connection with the ball. It seems like the cartoonist has never seen a batter swing.
Looking into the availability of this card is an exercise in trying to make sense of enigmatic reporting. Topps seems to be claiming a print run of 8,971. But Cardboard Connection says 8,971 boxes were shipped. There were 18 base cards per box, and 90 base cards in total. You can therefore effectively divide the print run total by 5 to find out the actual print run of an individual card, which works out at about 1,794. Factoring in parallels and autographs and one or two other bits, I think the actual print run per card is probably only about 1,790. Definitely less than 2,000.
It's a nice looking card and also ticked off a mini-milestone for me as it was the 50th card I have added to my collection in 2021. It's also my 35th card from 2020, which is a crazy number that may well increase further.
Total: 615 cards
