Just posting a little nonsense

 

It was kind of busy this weekend. I went down for a card show today and it takes quite a bit of driving -- this is the bigger one, instead of the one right in town.

 

I'll have a full report on that in the next day or two, but I wanted to make a quick observation about some very modern cards for a moment.

 

The above three cards sit consecutively in the 2025 Topps portion of my Dodgers binder. They are all parallels. But they are not the same parallel.

 

Perhaps you can tell from the image. I realized after taking pictures that the differences are a little more obvious in the photos than if you're just looking at them with the naked eye. But let's go through the "differences" shall we?

 

 River Ryan is the "Holo Foil" parallel.

 

 

 Teoscar Hernandez is the "Confetti" parallel.

 

 

 

Shohei Ohtani is the "Sandglitter" parallel.

 

None of these parallels are numbered, which would have helped narrow things down. As you can imagine, it took me awhile -- especially on the last two -- to figure out what they were. I actually walked away from my computer -- twice -- when determining the Hernandez parallel.

 

This is the kind of thing that I used to holler about with Panini's parallels. There seemed to be about a bazillion and much of the time the names given the parallels didn't seem to match up with what was in front of you. But that was Panini -- ha, ha -- they're so incompetent and easy to ignore, Topps would never do that many parallels!

 

Well, uh, now they are. Here is what TCDB has listed for 2025 Topps, and this is just the base set and doesn't include insert parallels (remember how ridiculous those were when they first started about 10 years ago?)

 

Aqua Rainbow Foil
Black Diamante

Black Holo Foil
Black Rainbow Foil

Blue Holo Foil

Blue Rainbow Foil

Canvas

Clear

Confetti

Diamante Foil

First Card (1/1)

Foil Fractor

Gold

Gold Diamante

Gold Holo Foil

Gold Rainbow Foil

Green Holo Foil

Green Rainbow Foil

Holiday

Holiday Birds

Holiday Eggs

Holiday Flowers

Holiday Rabbits

Holiday Tin

Holiday Umbrella

Holiday Watering Can

Holo Foil

Independence Day

Memorial Day Camo

Orange Diamante

Orange Holo Foil

Orange Rainbow Foil

Pink Diamante

Pink Holo Foil

Platinum Holo Foil (1/1)

Purple Holo Foil

Purple Rainbow Foil

Rainbow Foil

Red Diamante

Red Holo Foil

Red Rainbow Foil

Sandglitter

Silver Crackle Foilboard

Team Color Border

Tinsel

Topps Foil Pattern
True Photo (called a "variation" but seems like a parallel to me)

Vintage Stock
Wood

 

By my count that is 49 different parallels for each card. I think Panini Donruss during its peak had maybe half that (not that I paid close attention).

 

As a Topps collector from way back before there was any competition, I'm pretty loyal to the brand, while still collecting other stuff. I've enjoyed poking fun at Panini because Topps has logos and backs you can read and better designs.

 

But now Topps is copying Panini and going even farther into nonsense. I stopped paying attention when 2014 Topps unveiled six or seven parallels. There's no way I'm going to try to collect even 1 percent of all that. 

But, as always, I'll take the Dodgers.