Topps Hoops

A look at Topps in their first year of their new NBA deal.

I have to admit that I didn't have a ton of nostalgic feelings for Topps basketball cards when their returned to (licensed) cards was imminent. I know a few people posted images of their Steph Curry rookie cards when it became clear that the Fanatics-owned company was coming back to the league in full force, but NBA cards were not very popular in those days. Their original vintage era was before my time, and they didn't come back to the hobby until I was starting to bow out during their comeback season of 1992-93. Everything that's come out out since then has been a bit of a curiosity to me and nothing more as I didn't collect at all from 1994-on until I started the blog around 2008, at which time Topps NBA cards were once again on their way out. Since Fanatics apparently couldn't help themselves and wait until Panini's clock ran out, there were actually unlicensed NBA sets going back at least a couple of years prior to this past season, and they looked... well... terrible!

Here's a look at a card from the 2024-25 season. Instead of merely Photoshopping out the licensed markings, they decided to move the player's jersey number up and embiggen it to make it the central focus. It just looks weird, and all of the various flourishes they added to the design and their various parallels did not help in any way.

I'm actually here to talk about the fully licensed sets, however. For the flagship 2025-26 set, they copied the baseball design. I don't actually have a regular (non-parallel) base card scanned at the moment, so try to imagine Deandre Ayton's card at the top of the post has the expected solid white borders and such. The real travesty here is, well, two-fold:

1. Aside from rookies with their expected photo day/draft day poses, the player photo selection typically dates back to the beginning of the 2024-25 season, about a full calendar year before these hit the streets on October 23 of last year. Topps refused to do the Panini thing (update the team logo, but use an old photo and indicate the date the player changed teams) and also refused to do the, uh, Topps thing and just Photoshop the player into his new uniform. This third option seems like the laziest and worst. (Ayton spent this season with the Lakers.)

2. The backs of the cards have been Panini-fied in that there's just a single line of previous season stats along with career totals. Market research must have indicated that basketball fans don't care about stats. This is also the first release that I'm aware of that actually carries the "Flagship" branding on the back instead of Series One or something similar. Strangely, cards that have a vertical/portrait-oriented photo on the front have the same sort of orientation on the back, while horizontal/landscape-oriented fronts come with a horizontal/landscape back. I don't really understand the justification for this, and I'm sure it annoys the heck out of anyone trying to build these sets.

Topps also released a Holiday version of this set a week later, complete with similar design and parallel concepts that the MLB set used, only with no updates to player photos or teams.

Topps dropped their third NBA product of the year around Christmas time in Topps Chrome. I was able to afford precisely one hanger box, and only because I had a coupon at GameStop. These things were very expensive. You might expect some updated photos/teams here like they do with baseball, but you'd sadly be wrong. Here's a Prism parallel of that same Ayton guy from 2024. Different photo, but same old team.

On April 22nd, Topps released their first licensed Bowman basketball set to feature pro players in quite some time. This set also included a select group of college players on NIL deals as the "prospects" portion of the set. Similar to the baseball sets of the past, there are Chrome parallels to collect. Topps also screwed up the Blazers logo for certain players. Check out how dark this looks in comparison to Shaedon Sharpe's card below:

Strangely, I noticed they actually fixed the "dark logo" issue with these cards in their digital app (NBA Collect), which is about as close as you'll see to Topps acknowledging any errors these days.

No stats, but you do get a "Bowman Briefing". It probably goes without saying at this point, but there were no updated player teams or photos in this set as far as I can tell. Both Henderson and Sharpe are still with the Blazers at this time, though.

Fast forward to May 14th of this year and you'll see the first Topps-branded release of NBA Hoops. I was actually pleasantly surprised in a way with this release as the cards are more substantial looking than most past Hoops releases. They are thick and shiny as a sort of "elevated" foilboard set. Unfortunately, well, there was zero effort made on the checklist as once again we are treated to 2024 player photos and teams.

The backs fit in well with previous Hoops releases.

On May 28th, with the league already very deep in its playoff schedule, Topps released the first licensed Signature Class set in retail formats. Again, they used 2024 photos. Simons spent last season with the Celtics before being shipped to Chicago at the trade deadline. I also don't have a scan of any of the base cards from this set, but just imagine this design minus the shiny boxy look as this is a Chrome style "Pandora" parallel. There would be no stats on the back.

Topps also put out a handful of hobby-exclusive releases during the past season-plus, including stuff like Chrome Cosmic, Finest, and Midnight, but these all similarly had a low effort vibe to them. There is a forthcoming Chrome Update set coming out in about a week which will finally feature some player movement over a year in the making, but a quick glance at the checklist shows a ton of overlap with the original Chrome set. It seems like the primary reason for putting this out in the wild is to feature Luke Doncic cards, who was apparently left out of the main set, as well as getting a second crop of the same rookie class into the mix.

Will this time-delayed, low effort vibe continue into the next season? Will this also be applied to their NFL sets? I think I know the answer to those questions already.

New and Old Wave

A surprise mailer of cards from the spring.

Back in April I was the lucky recipient of another interesting package of cards from Padrographs. I've been deep into the World Cup lately and feel like I've barely had a minute to do much with the blog or the collection, but I found some time during a weather delay before tonight's Mexico/Ecuador knockout match.

First up are a couple of aqua-tastic Cardinals parallels. Matt Svanson, who appears on a rookie year card numbered to just 299, has been in and out of the St. Louis bullpen this year. Willson Contreras has found a new home in Boston this season after finding a new position (first base) beginning with last season.

Next on the docket is a pair of Bo Nix rookie year cards. The Broncos card on the left is the retail version of Nix's card from 2024 Panini Illusions, while the Ducks card is from a Panini Prizm draft type set.

The biggest surprise of the whole package, however, was a team set (?) or at least team lot of some locally issued cards of the 1989-90 Oregon State Beavers basketball team. While I don't normally collect cards from my rival school, like many Oregonians from my era, I grew up rooting for and watching a lot of Beavers basketball. After some hugely successful seasons under Ralph Miller in the early '80s, Gary Payton's final season essentially marked the endpoint of me following the team and rooting for them.

The "Orange Express" nickname will always remind me of listening to their old radio play-by-play voice Darrell Aune. Scott Haskin was just a freshman here, but he would go on to be picked in the 1st round in the 1993 NBA Draft.

Mid-Week PWE Round-Up

A long lost Whitey and more from a couple of familiar Dodger-loving faces.

There have been a couple of old-school '80s variations on my want list for quite some time. It took me a long time to get the "Terry" version of the 1985 Donruss Terry Pendleton card (as opposed to his evil twin "Jeff") and now with a PWE that arrived from gcrl around the beginning of the year, I have an elusive Whitey Herzog variation from 1983.

The more common version of this card has Whitey's "Record as Manager" with a yellow background to match his bio info at the top of the card. I can't say I spent a ton of time searching for this card exactly, but I'm very happy to cross it off my list.

The Hamm King also increased his lead in the race while adding two more Hamms to the Hamm box.

Next up in the not-very-timely review of small envelopes from the first several months of the year is a pouch from, you guessed it: Night Owl Cards! There was a really nice variety in this generous package sent to the west coast in late March, including a numbered card of former prospect (and former Colorado Rockie) Elehuris Montero.

The older they get, the more fun these types of duo insert cards featuring players from opposing teams get. It's fun to look back on a time where we were on the edges of our seats to see what Albert Pujols might do to Mark Prior (or vice versa.)

I wish these '76 Revisited inserts from last year's Topps Heritage set were a lot easier to pull, or that the design was somehow part of its own set. I'd rather collect something that looks like this than, say, Topps Archives in its current state.

Night Owl tossed a few more Ginter minis my way, including a rookie year one of a guy who really borked up his career.

Just when it seemed like people were giving up on the stashes of Jordan Walker cards they were holding on to, the guy has started playing like an All-Star. Is it sustainable? Is the Cardinals relative success in 2026 sustainable? It's tough to say. I still expect the Cardinals to lose a lot of games.

Is there anything more fun than a food issue card? What about a vintage food issue card? This one looks like it was cut from the box by a very intoxicated person (or perhaps, more likely, a young person), but that just makes it all the more special. I need way more of this stuff in my life.

The last set of cards came over in another envelope in April from gcrl, who once again sent a fun Whitey Herzog card. This one is an embossed buyback card that was apparently inserted into the 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites product. If you're having trouble spotting it, the embossment is in the lower right corner on the back of Whitey's red jersey. There's a bit less of a permanence to how they mark these buybacks compared to the foil stamps that are common in more recent sets. Does anyone prefer these?

Also included in the envelope was a four-pack of Cardinals minis from the most recent Allen & Ginter set. It's a nice looking group.

The flagship Topps set has been inundated with parallels, the number of which seems to be growing at an alarming rate since the Fanatics takeover. I have more I could say on this topic, but will anyone seriously be able to identify what most of these parallels are supposed to be in just a few years?

Here's another one of those tougher-than-they-should-be-to-pull Heritage inserts.

Postage stamps have not actually been stamps in quite a long time, and now you can even have cards featuring stamps that are actually stickers. This is from the 2023 Topps Heritage set before they really started messing with all of the inserts and parallels.

When I originally started the collect these Propaganda inserts from the 2009 Topps Update set, the idea of having propaganda style posters of current MLB players seemed like a fun nod to the past. Now these are just kind of unsettling, but I still feel the need to finish these off.

Thanks to the often generous Dodgers bloggers for sending this stuff my way. I always appreciate a nice surprise PWE.

How Are Those Bats? (Heating Up)

More cards from Padrographs!

This is a dizzying time of the year to be following sports. We're already four weeks into the MLB season, soccer is soccering, the playoffs kicked off for two major American sports leagues, and there's drafts-o'-plenty. I've been the lucky recipient of a few unannounced packages of cards from Padrographs in recent times, and today I thought I'd show off some of the contents from one I got back in January after getting a nice kick in the pants a couple of weeks ago when yet another generous package showed up.

These cards were heavily focused on 2025 products, and the gem of the bunch is this Albert Pujols Chrome "silver pack" version of his 1990 Topps inspired insert from the flagship set (Series 2?) This particular one is the rare aqua version, numbered to 199 copies. I have enough trouble collecting each of the regular cards for my team collection each year, so this was a really nice find.

Here's a six pack of some more of those 2025 releases. Nathan Church has settled in to be a regular presence in the outfield so far this season after being called up last August. Strop is an international signee that was only 17 when he got his first card (in Mojo! form), so I don't have much to say about him yet. The rest of the dudes are pretty well famous, with two now ex-Cardinal stars, an all-time legend, a Large Mac headed to my Heritage set binder.

JJ Wetherholt not only made the big club out of spring training this season, he's been on top of the batting order for every start he's made (all at 2B, with Masyn Winn firmly entrenched at his natural position.) His batting average is a bit low thus far, but he's more than made up for it with walks upon walks upon walks.

This is one of those Topps Flagship insert things that I think has something to do with those giant Costco boxes. Not being anywhere near a Costco or being willing to pay above retail price for something like that, it's been a couple of years since I've bought one. The "Flagship" design may well be something that was rejected in the process of coming up with the new base set design (or maybe not), but the ones I've seen do offer a nice alternative to what you usually see.

Rod included some nice in-person autos, including early '90s stalwart hurler Bob Tewksbury.

Adam Moffat also signed a card at one point. He was an expansion pick of the Timbers after logging a few years with the Columbus Crew, but only made a handful of appearances with Portland in their inaugural MLS season.

Last up is one of those "cards that could have been" style custom cards. Driessen's lengthy MLB career concluded with part of a final season with the Cardinals, but he has no official cards as a Cardinal or any kind of "sunset card" with his final stats on the back. (I would very much like to own his 1987 card with the Louisville Redbirds someday, though.)

Contest Results!

 

Another March Radness contest is in the books. Let's check the results!

With Michigan holding off UConn last night, we have some winners to announce in the annual March Radness thing.

Taking home the 1st Place prize is Bump and Run (Trevor P). Congrats! Jafronius was the only other entrant to pick the Wolverines to take it all, and as a result he gets the 2nd Place prize. In 3rd Place with the best non-Michigan bracket was Jeremy D. And finally, Erin who "Does not watch sports" came in hot with the worst bracket.

Congrats to everyone (except Erin, who will be annoyed with me if I try to give her any more cards) and many thanks for participating.

Bonus points to anyone who can spot the relevance of the image above.

Contest Update!

An update before the Final Four and a bunch of Christmas cards.

We're in the home stretch of the latest edition of the March Radness contest, and it all came crashing down for me on Sunday when Duke was felled by the shocking end to their contest with UConn. Huskies alum (and member of the back-to-back title teams) Donovan Clingan was just about to take the floor at halftime of the Blazers game we were at when he found out about the wild ending. While Jeremy sits in 1st place currently, I'm unsure of a path to victory for him as his predicted winner (Florida) is long gone. It all looks like it will come down to who takes the real title to determine our winner, with Trevor riding high with Michigan, both Brendan and Emily in play (Arizona), and Dominic lurking with his Connecticut pick. (Nobody tell Erin that she has clinched the worst bracket this year.)

Speaking of Michigan, we've got a ton of great cards to show today that came from big Wolverine guy Dennis of Too Many Verlanders over the holidays. Incidentally, the namesake of his blog is back in Tiger Town for what could conceivably be his final stop on his MLB tour.

I am pretty sure I have more "fancy" cards of Jeff Ayres (fka Pendergraph) than any of his normal base cards, but such is the way of the young hooper that doesn't blossom into a starring role in the pros. This one comes with a free mystery substance. I'm not going to forensically analyze this exactly, so let's just call it dirt?

I believe I have a lesser copy of this chunky jersey card of the one-time Cardinals closer. This one is a silver (or gray?) version numbered to just 149 copies, though.

Travis Outlaw was a bridge between the "Jail Blazers" era and the good vibes of the B-Roy/Aldridge days. Fun player! This is a fun card as well.

It's sort of amusing that this is called "Color Guard" when there is a distinct lack of vibrant color on it.

Here's a couple of other significantly more obscure Blazers on a signed card (or signed things affixed to a card, at least.) Portland certainly had some misadventures in the draft before landing Damian Lillard. Williams and Babbitt were a pair that didn't work out so well.

One of the things I like the most about Panini's draft sets is that they show players in the fully licensed college uniforms. This insert idea distorts the coloring and patterns of Franklin's Ducks uniform beyond recognition, unfortunately.

Hey, it's picture time! Encased cards don't scan so well, you see.

Here's a quick six-pack of cards from the various teams that I follow. Pacific really had some goofy designs.

And here's a nine-pack of all Ducks! I think my favorite here is the combo Freeman/Mariota card in their college uniforms.

I was fairly ambivalent about the Diamond Kings brand, but I do miss their framed parallels. This one is numbered to 99.

Blog favorite Ugo Amadi checks in here with a silver Prizm autograph from the much beloved Panini Prizm Draft Picks set.

And now we head all the way back to 1982 for a gander at a Garry Templeton Fleer stamp. I still have a lot of needs in the stickers and stamps areas.

The ticket motif that Panini Contenders is based on doesn't always work, but I like this design. The green foil helps as well. (Does anyone use paper tickets anymore? And they certainly aren't perforated, are they?)

It's baseball season! I hope everyone has been enjoying the first week of the long MLB marathon.