Pick a direction already

 

Upon first opening 2025 Topps, I realized that this set was going to be a lot like the others from the last five, 10, 15, 20 years. Perhaps even farther back.

 

Topps still plays it numbingly safe with flagship. The pictures look mostly the same year-to-year. The backs look mostly the same. The inserts are a mindless excuse to utilize their legends licenses. The short-prints are "interesting photos we don't put in flagship." The league leader cards are a lineup of three action shots in a row (except 2016-21 when separate individual cards were made and not my idea of improvement).

 

If you get the feeling it's all been seen before, you are justified. I'm not one of those collectors shouting "where's the innovation?!" I don't think cards need bells and whistles, that's not why I collect. I just want to see things changed up a little bit.

 

Here's an example that's been going on in Topps flagship longer than everything I just mentioned. I referenced it in my first 2025 Topps post. Topps flagship has been a mixture of vertical and horizontal cards for individual players for the last 34 YEARS.

 

That's, like, way too long. I grew up during a time when almost all Topps flagship sets were vertical, except for certain subsets -- league leaders, postseason cards, team cards etc. That's just the way cards were. But they really were only like that from 1961-70 and from 1975-90. That's a period of 25 years, which seemed like forever to me then, but it doesn't match 34 YEARS.

 

Let's take a look at it year-by-year, shall we? (We're gonna because I took 34 PHOTOS).

 

Apologies if the photo angles aren't all the same. The foil cards were acting up, and I didn't have time to tinker.

 

 

 

 

 

There you go. The last time there weren't horizontal cards in a Topps flagship set was 1990 Topps. No one had heard of the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies as major league teams and wasn't that a wonderful world?

 

If you want to "yeah, but," you could point to 2006. The player cards that are horizontal are reserved for a subset of award winners (and I can see why Topps didn't use the horizontal design for anything other than that and team cards). But since they're still player cards, I'm counting it.

 

I get why Topps started this pattern and possibly even why it's continuing it. Having the opportunity of presenting a photo vertically or horizontally gives you more photo options and a variety of presentations. I understand that as an editor myself. But the flagship design is created for vertical cards and then sometimes stretched for the sake of horizontals and it doesn't look great.

 

It's also not ideal for a set collector who stores cards in binder pages. Granted, I've gotten over it since it's been going on for 34 years, but opening a binder of nothing but vertical cards -- hell even something like 1989 Topps -- can be a subconscious relief.

 

 

I would enjoy it if Topps would pick a direction again, even if it was just for a couple years. I'd even take a full horizontal set -- even though that would create a social media outcry the likes of which we have never seen -- because a lot of horizontal cards look great and I want to see that.

 

I just want to see something different. The designs are different every year, other things can be different, too.