I have a few Topps-centric posts from 1975 to publish before the 50th anniversary year of my favorite set – and my first year of card buying – is over.
In that post I asked readers for other examples and said I would add them to the post. But I didn’t do that. I had even forgotten the message existed.
The only reason I’m updating it now is because reader Dave continually commented on it with other examples from 1975. In 2022 he has provided several. I may have noticed that at the time, but I forgot about it again. At the beginning of this month he came up with another example. That prompted me to finally address this and provide an update.
Let’s start with some examples from Dave. I referenced one of them, the 1991 Baseball Cards Presents magazine cards, in the earlier post. That’s the Bo Jackson card at the top of the post. It’s his birthday today.
Let’s start with a card Dave sent me two years ago. It’s from the 1975-76 Calbee set and features the great Sadaharu Oh. Not all cards in this Calbee set use this design, but it does have the honor of being the fastest with the ’75 Topps design. No two-tone borders or chunky headers with team names, but you can’t mistake ’75 staples like that baseball in the corner and the rounded inside edge.
The 1976-77 Venezuelan League stickers also appeared quite quickly on the design. I don’t have any of these, but I would like to.
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The 2017 Topps Throwback Thursday online set featured many previous Topps designs. The ’75 portion of the set focused on team cards and used the floating heads common to the ’70s Cubs cards, but in ’75 the White Sox were the team with floating heads.
I included many custom ’75 Topps examples in the original tribute post, but I didn’t know about Gummy Arts at the time. He pays many fun tributes to this day, often on previous Topps designs. The 2020 Gummy Arts includes four different cards with ’75 designs: Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Basil Fawlty (of Fawlty Towers), and Hank Aaron.
I don’t know anything about pro football, but the ’75 design will find me wherever it is. In 1975, Topps released a football set with the same design as the ’75 baseball set. It is well known among football collectors and I mentioned the first set in my first post. But Topps is also known for paying tribute to itself and the design has returned in more modern football sets.
This is from the Topps UEFA Champions League 2021-2222. It’s an insert. I don’t remember who sent me this. Maybe the Shlabotnik report? He likes the original 75-76 Topps Soccer set.
So these are all the new examples from Dave’s suggestions, but I haven’t finished showing updates yet. It’s been 10 years! And Topps continues to release innovative designs!!
I’ll start with an example I mentioned in the first post, but didn’t have an example of at the time. I 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, an enlarged photo of 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 examples from 1975. I should get them all. This is from the 2014 set.
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In 2019, Archives still had a different version. Beginning in 2012, Topps used a variety of past designs in each set each year. For 2019, the ’75 design was used for the first time. Of course I had to collect the whole thing and dedicate a folder to it too.
A few non-athlete versions that are in my collection and I’m sure I’ve posted these before. I think they’re all one-offs, although the 2014 Big Boy card has the number 46 on the back, so I’m not sure. The comedian card was issued in 2021. I got it last year.
Back to football. The 2021 Topps Chrome MLS set also included an insert set that uses the ’75 design.
Not done with football yet. In 2022-2023, Topps dedicated a set to just about every pro league under the sun (or so it seems to a non-football viewer). The Scottish Premier League set used the ’75 design in the chrome insert set.
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And finally, the big one: the set referenced in that 2015 post as the ultimate tribute to ’75 Topps: 2024 Topps Heritage.
There are many previous blog posts and even comments on other blogs about “what would it be like for me” if Heritage finally paid tribute to the 1975 design. I was pretty sure I would go crazy buying anything. And I bought a bunch of kits and completed the whole thing in six months. But some of Fanatics/Topps’ monkey business kept me from really embracing the chase.
Still, it’s the greatest tribute to ’75 Topps yet.
Will there be others? Probably. Although I expect these will become fewer and fewer as collectors from the 1970s age and become irrelevant. We’ve already seen this in the way the 1987 design has swamped all other past designs in terms of tribute.
But I will still be amazed! Hopefully I’ll get these examples added to the original post soon and remember each of these posts when the glorious ’75 design resurfaces.
#history #Topps #tributes #continued