I pulled a sealed pack of 1988 Topps Big from a recent repack. Topps Big had a 3-year run from 1988-1990. I don't ever remember seeing them for sale. Did you collect these when they were new? Ten years or so ago I bought a box of the 1990 product, so I have quite a lot of those. I only had 4 of the 1988 set, all of which (three are Phillies, the other an Astro) acquired via trade.
The card clearly takes its design idea from 1956 Topps. All three years of the set have the same basic design, a head shot and a smaller action shot. The only real difference from year to year were the cartoons on the back. 1988 had three, 1989 had two and 1990 had only one.
Being called Topps Big you may suspect that they are bigger than 'normal' sized cards. They are about 1/4" longer on each edge. That means they won't fit in a penny sleeve and are usually too wide for a 9-pocket page.
The cards in this pack have not fared well even the pack was unopened. The cards are glossy on the front, but now the gloss is a bit tacky. And the cards have yellowed. The pack was unopened but not exactly air tight. I used some Photoshop magic to clean up the images. Here's what this card looked like right from the scanner.
I'm assuming they were really white when new. Here are the other 5 cards from the pack.
Except for the size, and the yellowing, they are pretty nice cards. They are colorful, feature a classic design and goofy cartoons. What more do you want, anyway?
5 comments:
I collected A LOT in 1989 (minimally in '88 and '90) and I never saw these for sale.
I had a bunch and I knew they were junk. Something about not being able to fit into the regular pages made them undesirable. I don't remember there being a "got to have it" card from the sets either.
I was an Orioles 'completest' so I picked up the Os in these Topps Big sets. But as has been noted they didn't fit the regular pages and I'd toss them into the 'junk' box along with coins, stickers and scratch-offs. When I dropped out of collecting it was easy to give all this stuff to the kids in my classes.
I remember these being for sale... At the time, I bought a pack or two, said something along the lines of "meh" and that was the end of that.
These days I'm more forgiving of the design, and I'm also no longer bothered by the size seeing as they fit quite nicely into 8-pocket sheets. A couple of years ago I bought a really cheap hand-collated 1988 set, kept the cards that fit into team and player collections, and I think the rest went in a box bound for Goodwill.
If a similar opportunity came up for the other two years of Big, I'd do the same thing.
The Topps Big cards from 1988, 1989, 1990 are excellent sets and very interesting! The first real retro themed Nostalgia sets that have that 1950's feel with a touch of "80's flair.
They are often sort of misunderstood and underappreciated. Take a look at a 1988 Topps Big Jim Rice for example and tell me that is not a really cool looking card.
Remember that although these cards are bigger the major plastic sheet companies make an 8 slot sheet page and they are easier to get than you think. That is how one puts 1953 54 55 56 in plastic sheets. Most card shops and certainly the internet had the answer. Dont throw away these cards and even though not worth much, they are certainly fun and nice to look at.
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