Somehow, I've managed to land nearly 75 percent of the 2025 Topps flagship set. TCDB says I have 516 of the 700 cards.
This is despite making exactly one retail purchase of 2025 Topps the entire year. I bought a blaster back in February when it came out. Nothing since. I've done very well with cutting back on spending for new sets that are merely "meh" to me.
But thanks to a great send of almost the full Series 1 checklist and gifts of hanger boxes and random packs from loved ones, I still have accumulated enough that I'm battling the "go ahead and complete it" whispers in my brain.
But, no, right now I'm treating 2025 Topps like I do all flagship sets that don't inspire me enough -- just get that Dodger team set.
I finished that off with an online purchase that arrived recently. I needed only six Series 2 cards so I've got some dupes to repurpose. Here are those six:
I hate it when the Mookie Betts card is elusive, so that's out of the way.
Traditionally I write a post every year about the best Dodger card in the Topps flagship set. However, I'm a little tired of the samey sameness of flagship over recent years. Topps is very committed to zooming as close to the player as possible (but fortunately not as close as during the 2010s years) and showing as little background as possible. They might as well knock out the backgrounds completely if that's the plan in future years. Do something interesting with that empty space.
The continued focus on hitters hitting, runners running and pitchers pitching gets tedious, too. That Ben Casparius is about the only card in the team set that looks a little different.
So for the best card in this year's set, I don't know, I guess maybe this:
One of the nice elements of the 2025 set is the photo breaking through the design. There are several examples with the Dodgers. This one is the most fun. Hyeseong Kim has such an interesting swing -- I honestly don't know how he doesn't hit anything except foul balls with that -- so this card stands out, which most other cards in the team set do not.
One area in which Topps has improved -- at least for the Dodgers -- is producing large team sets. For the second straight year, the Dodgers have more than 30 cards. Here is the whole set in picture form:
The images are fine. I mean it's not 2016, thank goodness. It seems like there are fewer celebration shots this year, which I'm happy to see. Not many horizontals. And the checklists have been cut back for the Dodgers from last year.
Last year there were 32 Dodgers cards in 2024 flagship, which was the fourth-most for a Topps Dodgers flagship set ever. This year there are 31.
Also, I declined to include two cards in the picture that feature Teoscar Hernandez, which means they're technically Dodger cards. They're both related to the Home Run Derby last year. So add those and that's 33 cards!
Out of all the Topps Dodgers team sets only two other sets have contained more cards -- 1960 with 37 and 1959 with 35. The 2025 set is tied with 1952 Topps, which also had 33.
2025 is not without filler (though you could say the same for '52 Topps). There are the checklists and the two Ohtani cards but still I think more is better when it comes to team sets -- think Topps Total (but please make the design more interesting than Topps Total).
Topps' flagship set has been 700 cards the last two years, so that's probably one of the reasons there are more cards. But Topps still plays favorites. Teams like the Mariners, Marlins and White Sox have less than 20 cards in their 2025 sets.
This post will probably serve for what I've done each year for the "best Dodger card each year" unless I suddenly fall in love with some other card other than Kim. Like I said, I'm cutting back.
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