I have a couple of 1975 Topps-centric posts to publish before the 50th anniversary year of my favorite set -- and my first year of buying cards -- is through.
This is the first of those posts. Ten years ago I wrote "A history of 1975 Topps tributes," in which I documented all of the '75 Topps themed cards that I had known up to that point. It was pretty thorough, but it's 10 years old now and there have been so many more tributes since.
In that post I asked readers for other examples and said I'd add them to the post. But I didn't do that. I even forgot the post existed.
The only reason I'm updating it now is reader Dave kept commenting on it with other 1975 examples. He provided several in 2022. Perhaps I noticed that then, but I forgot about it again. Then, at the start of this month, he offered up another example. That got me to finally address this and provide an update.
So let's start with some of Dave's examples. One of them, the 1991 Baseball Cards Presents magazine cards, I already referenced in the earlier post. That's what the Bo Jackson card is at the top of the post. It's his birthday today.
Let's begin with a card Dave sent me two years ago. It's from the 1975-76 Calbee set and shows slugging great Sadaharu Oh. Not all of the cards in this Calbee set use this design but it does have the honor of being the quickest to jump on the '75 Topps design. No two-tone borders or fat team name headers but you can't mistake '75 staples like that baseball in the corner and the rounded inner border.
The 1976-77 Venezuelan League stickers also hopped on the design pretty quickly. I don't own any of these but sure would like to.
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The 2017 Topps Throwback Thursday online set included lots of past Topps designs. The '75 section of the set focused on team cards and used the floating heads common with the '70s Cubs cards but in '75 the White Sox were the team that featured floating heads.
I included lots of '75 Topps custom examples in the original tribute post but I didn't know about Gummy Arts at the time. He churns out lots of fun tributes to this day, often on previous Topps designs. The 2020 Gummy Arts features four different cards with '75 designs: Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Basil Fawlty (from Fawlty Towers) and Hank Aaron.
I know zero about professional soccer but the '75 design will find me no matter where it is. In 1975, Topps issued a soccer set that used the same design as its '75 baseball set. It is well-known among soccer collectors and I mentioned the initial set in my first post. But Topps is also well-known for paying tribute to itself and the design has returned in more modern soccer sets.
This is from 2021-22 Topps UEFA Champions League. It's an insert. I don't remember who sent me this. Maybe Shlabotnik Report? He does like the original 75-76 Topps Soccer set.
So those are all the new example from Dave's suggestions, but I'm not done showing updates. It's been 10 years! And Topps keeps trotting out retread designs!!
I'll start with one that I did mention in the first post but I didn't own an example at the time. I do have one now.
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In 2001, Topps Archives debuted and the cards featured players on either their rookie card design or their final card design. This Lindy McDaniel isn't the most exciting example -- it's the same as the original '75 Topps card except for the Archives stamp. But I don't have some of the more interesting ones, like the Gary Carter card that is an enlarged photo from the 4-player rookie card in the '75 set.
Another custom -- from one of the best, the creator of the When Topps Had (Base) Balls blog. I have three of his 1975 examples. I should get all of them. This is from the 2014 set.
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Archives was still going in a different iteration in 2019. Starting in 2012, Topps used a variety of past designs in each set every year. For 2019, it used the '75 design for the first time. Of course I had to collect the whole thing and devote a binder to it, too.
A couple of non-athlete versions that are in my collection and I'm sure I've posted these before. I think each are one-offs, though the 2014 Big Boy card is numbered 46 on the back so not sure. The comedian card was issued in 2021. I got that last year.
Back to soccer. The 2021 Topps Chrome MLS set also featured an insert set that uses the '75 design.
Not done with the soccer. In 2022-23 Topps devoted a set to just about every pro league under the sun (or at least it seems that way to a non-soccer viewer). The Scottish Premier League set used the '75 design in its chrome insert set.
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And, finally, the big one -- the set referenced in that 2015 post as being the be-all and end-all of '75 Topps tributes: 2024 Topps Heritage.
There are lots of previous blog posts and even comments on other blogs about "what would it be like" for me when Heritage finally paid tribute to the 1975 design. I was pretty sure I'd go insane with purchasing. And I did buy lots of packs and completed the whole thing in six months. But some of the Fanatics/Topps monkey business prevented me from truly embracing the chase.
Still it's the biggest of the '75 Topps tributes thus far.
Will there be any others? Probably. Though I anticipate fewer and fewer as 1970s collectors age out of irrelevance. We've already seen this in how the 1987 design has swamped all the other past design in terms of tributes.
But I will still have my eye out! Hopefully I'll get these examples added to the original post soon and may I not forget each of these posts when the glorious '75 design pops up again.
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