The ‘Topps Rules’

 Around 1994 I had it made. I had a decent sized card collection for a kid my age (11). I kept some of it in a fishing tackle box, and the rest in a shoebox. At some point that year , I got a St. Louis Cardinals book that pictured all of the Topps Cardinals cards from 1952-1988. It was around that time when I decided to put my cards into binders. 

That Topps Cardinals book would shape the way I organized my binders. While it would probably take a few years for my organization habits to be fully formed, the book helped me organize my cards from the first time I put a card in a 9 pocket sleeve. 

As you can see, my book has seen better days. I still have it, as well as a Red Sox one from the same year. I need to get my hands on the Tigers one. 

I will point out some things from the book that shaped my habits and show pictures from the book. 

The book would start out with the year, and then have a write up of how the team did that year. It would then have the team set from that year. It is a little confusing since it isn’t done in yearbook style. You sometimes see cards of guys who didn’t play in the year described in the write up, as they played the year after. Sometimes, players would be described in the write up, but didn’t have a card, as they got traded and were put in their new teams’ book. 

Topps organized the cards alphabetically by last name. This can be rule #1. That is how I organized my cards. I figured if that’s the way Topps would organize them in their book, it was good enough for me, so I have never broken rule #1. 

Rule #2, for team photo cards, they were put at the end of the year. Rule #2 that I follow. 

Rule #3, rookie combo cards were put at the end as well. This is the first rule I break since I put the card with the most prominent players’ last name. 

Rule 4, if a player has a subset card as well as a base card, they are put in numerical order (with the Gibson World Series and base card). It can be confusing sometimes if you get 2 guys with All-Star cards and one has the base card first and the other has the All-Star one first, but I’m ok with it and I follow it. 

Rule #5, horizontal cards are positioned so the left side of the card will be at the bottom of the sleeve it goes into. I follow this rule so closely that I position horizontal cards from other companies that way even if it means that the back will be angled different than the vertical cards in the set. 

Rule #7, Topps puts the Traded set along with the regular set (Dayley is a Traded card). While I follow this rule, Topps appears to break this rule in 1986. 

I guess I need to reorganize my 1985 and 1986 cards. For some reason, Topps put the ‘85 Topps Traded cards in with the ‘86 set.

Todd Worrell got a card in the ‘86 Topps Traded set, and as you can see, the ‘86 Topps Traded cards are strangely missing. 

As we can see, the ‘87 Topps Traded cards are strangely back in the ‘87 Topps set with Lindeman, Magrane, and Pena coming in that set. I would have to say that somebody who currently works for Fanatics probably did the quality control with the book and just dropped the ‘86 Traded cards and stuck the ‘85 ones in the wrong set. Explains everything. 

One final rule, it appears as if Topps doesn’t want any multi-team league leader or rookie cards or checklists put in with your team set. You had better believe that I am going to put them in the team set. I want my team sets representing everything, so if I can put a 4-player Keith Hernandez card in the 1975 Cardinals section of my St. Louis binder, I sure as heck am. 

That’s all of the ‘Topps Rules’. I follow most of them, and the ones I break are for good reason. There are some Donruss team books that are similar that were released in 1988 with extra cards of guys that didn’t get ones in the regular issue, but I didn’t pay too much attention the one time I saw them at a show. I think I only saw Oakland and Red Sox ones, and there just weren’t enough guys I collected on those teams to justify spending the 15 bucks the guy wanted for each book. Donruss didn’t have any subsets besides for Diamond Kings in 1988, so it was really a moot point. 

Has anyone else seen these Topps books or patterned their binders to copy the books?  Do you follow the ‘Topps Rules’ or even care?  I feel like Topps had their eye on the ball with the way they portrayed each set with the way they alphabetized the players, did numerical order for multiple cards of the same player, and how they put team cards in the back. It would be cool if they issued copies of the books now. Only 1 or 2 problems. They would be the size of an old phone book because of inserts. And where in the heck would they place all of the parallels?!

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy