On Monday I took the latest issue of Beckett Vintage Collector magazine out of the mailbox and leafed through it without any haste. I didn’t have an upcoming article, the last one was in the previous issue.
So I was surprised when, after three articles, I saw my name in a story about the 1954 Topps set. God damn, I wrote that! Over a year ago!
I already thought this one wouldn’t run. That happens sometimes, it’s happened before with one of my articles. And as a writer and editor for a newspaper, I understand how that goes. Sometimes the article doesn’t fit, there are too many other articles that are more current or have better art or whatever. Or maybe the idea just isn’t solid. I have to admit, this one wasn’t one of my better ones.
But I was happy to see it in print. I have now appeared in the last three Beckett Vintage Collector issues, which has never happened before (there won’t be a fourth time in a row, I’m out). And this is article number 22 in total.
I intended the article to appear in celebration of the 70th anniversary of Topps from 1954. The set is important for many reasons, but I focused on the design. While combining a portrait shot with an action shot wasn’t unique to the ’54 set — think of the Hassan Triple Folders, for example — it was a first for Topps and may be the first time both images were presented in the same room.
This came about because Sy Berger wanted to get action shots on his cards after conducting a survey that showed collectors were interested in them. Thus was born ’54 Topps and it was such a success that Topps recreated the same design in a horizontal format in 1955 and 1956.
From then on, Topps – and almost every other major baseball card company – revisited that headshot/action shot design in the years that followed. Topps gets a lot of attention for retiring the design every twenty years since 1963, as it resurfaces in 1983, 2003, and 2023. But here’s just an idea of how often it’s been used:
There are many more examples, which I discuss in the magazine article (it’s actually a kind of list regurgitation).
I don’t really have anything new as a spin-off topic from this article. But as I approach the seventh anniversary of my first article appearing in Beckett, I thought I’d list my seven favorite articles published since 2019.
Here we go:
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1. MINI-CLASSIC
My favorite article was of course about the 1975 Topps mini set, my favorite set of all time. It was the second article I ever wrote for Beckett and it appeared in both the Beckett Baseball publication and the Vintage Collector. I think this is the only time this has happened to me.
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2. LOUD AND CLEAR
My second favorite was about the 1972 Topps set. This was for the 1970s issue and the only article “assigned” by the editor and not by me with suggestions. I was asked to choose a set from the 1970s to write about, and I chose 1972 because I thought it would be the most fun. I liked the way I wrote this, colorful and light, as did the set.
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3. STORING HISTORY
I wrote the next article after the one from 1972. This was about airbrushing Topps, one of my favorite topics. I especially like that I was able to use a then-recent meeting with Bobby Valentine and his conversation about his 1973 airbrushed card with an autograph finder as a lead-in for the article. It made all the difference.
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4. A BEAUTIFUL BASEBALL CARD SET
Perhaps the article that made me work the most. There are so many elements to the 1991 Topps set and I’ve researched so many different aspects, scouring the archives, uncovering interviews, and interviewing a super collector myself. This article appeared exclusively in the Beckett Baseball article, and while I’m well past the age of sending clips to potential employers, I think this would be the only article in my magazine.
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5. PURE FUN
I wrote this article exactly seven years ago at that time (it’s possible I had already submitted it). It was the first one to appear in the magazine, my first magazine article!! I drove around the world looking for copies of this thing – my write-up of the 1976 SSPC set. It’s an epic moment in my writing career, right on the heels of my first newspaper article, the first time I covered a professional game, and the first article to win an award.
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6. ILLUSTRIVE ILLUSTRATOR
The only article, I believe, where I came up with the title, at the editor’s request. This article was about another set (or sets) that I’ve loved since I was a kid: the Laughlin sets from the 1970s, mainly the World Series sets from the early 1970s. I have since completed the 1970 and 1971 sets (at least as far as I can) and they have taken on even more significance after researching the artist, the late Robert Laughlin, and speaking with his very generous grandson for the article.
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7. BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
I like this article because it’s a real vintage set collector topic – all about the big numbers of sets from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I researched which players appear most often in the high number sets (Jose Pagan is number one) and made a blog post about it. I then turned the blog post into a magazine article. I did that 2 or 3 times.
There are several other magazine articles I’ve written that I’ve enjoyed. In fact, there are really only two or three that I wish I could have done better, or where I don’t think the subject matter was as well thought out.
When I started this seven years ago, I didn’t know where it would end. I was so happy when the first article came out and realized a wish I’ve had since I was a young teenager. The only thing on my mind going forward was sending a few other story ideas and hoping they would pick one. But if not, that first article was something I could hang my resume on for years to come.
Now it is 22 articles and 7 years ago. Who knows how long it will take (again, more ideas needed). Thanks to Beckett’s editor Mike Payne for continuing to publish my material and to Ryan Cracknell for suggesting me for the position.
And, as always, on this blog for making it all possible.
#Surprising #appearance