I realized only a couple of days ago that Topps had released its Archives brand.
I don't know how anybody keeps track. Archives' arrival has come a week, maybe two, after Allen & Ginter arrived. And that came shortly after Topps Holiday debuted, which seemed to be released practically on top of Topps Update.
All of this showed up after months of virtually no new releases at all -- or none that your average plebe collector (that's me!) would notice.
This does not seem very consumer-friendly. I can't focus on four new products bunched up near the holidays when my money is tied up in finding gifts for others. But I'm sure Topps/Fanatics doesn't care. This release schedule is probably the best way to "maximize profits," which seems to be the only objective in business these days.
So, no, I haven't had any time to buy any Archives. Nor any Allen & Ginter. I decided to pass on Holiday and I took care of Update with one purchase of the Dodgers team set. This means I needed the interwebs to show me this:
-Yastrzemski.jpg)
As Charlie Brown would say on "A Charlie Brown Christmas": I can't stand it.
Here is Carl Yastrzemski's 2025 Archives card spelled incorrectly ... twice. Y-A-S-T-Z-R-E-S-M-K-I is not his name.
We just went over this with Archives last year (well, earlier this year) when the 2024 set spelled poor Carl's name the same way.
I don't even know how they came up with that combination of letters. It takes all the concentration I can muster to spell it like that -- incorrectly. But apparently the folks working on Archives think that's the way it's spelled because here it is, spelled the exact same incorrect way for the second straight year.
It's baffling that somebody couldn't be bothered to double-check the name by doing a simple online search. It's clear the folks there aren't that familiar with the player, wouldn't you just do it to be on the safe side? He's got 11 letters in his last name!
But it's even more baffling because I just posted about Topps' troubles with the name back in February. And there was that snafu with his grandson's name in 2022. Not only that, I wrote a whole article in a national magazine about name misspellings on cards. And the Yastrzemski problem led off the entire article!
Get The Name Right, Topps!
Look, here's part of the article with both the Mike Yastrzemski and Carl Yastrzemski errors pictured. The misspellings are different on each card.🤦:
No, I don't expect a blog post or a magazine article to effect an industry the way they once did. I'm entirely sure no one at Topps read either of these things. And that's part of the problem.
Topps cares so little about the things that traditional collectors care about that it can't be bothered to get details right -- even details about a Hall of Fame player that the company once had zero difficulty spelling for the entire length of his career. In my article up there, I cite a quote from Mike Yastrzemski when Topps spelled his name wrong in 2022. Mike said: "I thought it was really funny actually." I wonder if it's still funny the second and then the third time.
Topps -- I mean, Fanatics -- does care about some things. It cares about breakers and flippers. It cares about what they think and what they want and how much money they have. There is no room for anything else, apparently, not the collectors who have put 40, 50, 60 years into this hobby and mostly with Topps.
Maybe I'm wrong about that. But how can I think anything else? As someone who has spelled Yastrzemski's name phonetically in my head (Yast-r-zemski) since I was a youngster to write it out correctly, that's all I can conclude. Misspelling a player's name over and over is sloppy, which is an indicator of not caring, at least where I'm from.
And really that's why I haven't bought any Archives. Or Allen & Ginter. Or Holiday. Or Update.
Because Topps/Fanatics doesn't care about me.
Comments
It's understandable to make that error once. Maybe. Even though Yaz is a legend of the sport. But if I, a run-of-the-mill collector can come up with a simple way of remembering how to spell it correctly*, then a billion-dollar corporation can.
*whenever I have to spell it, I just sound it out to myself "Yas-tr-zem-ski" like i'm in grammar school. Works every time.
Maybe you could refer to them as ‘Tops’ until things change.
B. I didn't catch their Archives mistake last year, but the fact that Topps has misspelled it two years in a row is just sad. The fact that nobody over there is reading (or at least skimming) Beckett is even sadder. It's not the reason I'm cutting back on buying new products, but it sure doesn't help.