Cards of legends from a not-so-legendary time

 

Almost 15 years ago, Topps started doing something to its flagship set that was reviled by set-collectors at the time.

In the 2009 flagship set, it inserted short-prints of legendary players throughout the base set. Those short-printed cards shared a card number with a regular non-short-printed card of a current player. For example, at card No. 320, Miguel Cabrera shares a card number with the short-printed Johnny Mize.

Topps had tinkered with SPs in the base set in preceding years and it was all quite controversial. Set collectors at the time -- myself included -- thought adding exclusive cards to the set pursuit was unfair and making the quest to "collect them all" too difficult or plain impossible.

Years later, Topps has continued the practice in almost every flagship set since (although have you noticed there aren't any SPs listed in 2023 flagship so far on TCDB?). They are so common now that even people who fumed over those short-prints, like me, don't even pay attention anymore. It's Topps being Topps and that's worth a simple shrug.

I even pick up an SP here-and-there when I feel like it. It's almost always a Dodger and always in my budget, which means it doesn't happen very often. Topps started including 4 SPs per player in some cases and it hasn't been about the base set in a long time. This is for player collectors, good luck to ya.

 

For example, I consider my 2009 Topps flagship set complete without the short-prints. I haven't even owned hardly any of those cards of legends, except for a couple Dodgers.

 

Until now.

 

I received an unexpected envelope in the mail from Cubs fan and fellow collecting bud, R.C. He's sent me all kinds of cool cards in the past.

 

The package contained 10 legends short-prints, eight of them from the 2009 set!

 

The Jackie Robinson one is the coolest, of course, and it completes the three-card Brooklyn Dodgers 2009 SPs for me as I've held Roy Campanella and Pee Wee Reese for quite awhile.

 

Here are the other 2009s that R.C. sent:

 

1 - Babe Ruth (shares number with Alex Rodriguez)

 

 

 60 - Cy Young (shares number with Mariano Rivera)

66 - Ty Cobb (shares number with Dustin Pedroia)

195 - Christy Mathewson (shares number with Tim Lincecum)

 

205 - Honus Wagner (shares number with Miguel Tejada)

 

 

 

287 - Walter Johnson (shares number with Greg Maddux)

 

290 - Lou Gehrig (shares number with Albert Pujols)

 

Those are all pretty nifty even if they're colorized into submission (and you can't read the foil names). That's not close to all of them, there are plenty others.

 

But this will not make me think of completing all the SPs. I am only hanging onto these because I have some nostalgia for the 2009 set, it is the first flagship set I completed as a card blogger and therefore traded for a lot of these cards with fellow bloggers, back when blog trading was at its peak.

 

R.C. -- who said he's working on an "ultimate 1984 Topps set" using Archives and 35th anniversary tributes -- sent me two other legends short-prints from a different Topps flagship set. I'm saving those to distribute to fellow traders. One is already on its way.

 

I'm also not against trading the above cards (except Robinson) for the right kind of offer. 

 

2009 marked a change in how Topps marketed flagship, as legend players became much more prominent in the set, via SPs and inserts, etc. It's cut back on that in recent years, I imagine licensing is a lot to handle. That's a good thing, for me, I've always been weirded out by retired players sharing space with current players in a current set (the same goes for football, why do I have to keep collecting Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas?)

 

But the days of consternation and angst are over. I'll collect what I want to collect and I alone will decide when a set is complete. Once I came to that realization, Topps' games had no effect on me.