The Best Topps Set Countdown - Finale/Recap

Before I get started with the recap, I would like to celebrate my 300th posting.  WOOHOO!  Actually it's probably like 310, but I deleted a few posts here and there, but let's just forget about those.

Enough self congratulations on with the recap of The Best Topps Set Countdown.  I know a lot of you were surprised, to say the least, with my selection of 1986 as the best Topps set ever.  Honestly, I do not think it is the best design and the photography is middling at best and would probably be best suited for a spot in the 20's or 30's.  However, like I said last week without that set I wouldn't be a card collector at all.  There are a lot of things I collected as a 9 year old that I no longer even think about such as action figures, stickers, board games, bugs, rocks, etc. and baseball cards could have easily ended up on that list.  1986 Topps made me LOVE baseball cards and it will always deserve the top spot in my book.


LINKS
Let's start out with some links to the previous 12 posts for some of you to catch up on.

1-5  6-10  11-15  16-20  21-25  26-30  31-35  36-40  41-45  46-50  51-55  56-61


DECADE STATS

1950s
Highest Rated - 1954 (#3)
Lowest Rated - 1957 (#55)

1960s
Highest Rated - 1962 (#2)
Lowest Rated - 1970 (#59)

1970s
Highest Rated - 1971 (#6)
Lowest Rated - 1979 (#53)


1980s
Highest Rated - 1986 (#1)
Lowest Rated - 1982 (#50)

1990s
Highest Rated - 1991 (#4)
Lowest Rated - 1999 (#61)

2000s
Highest Rated - 2009 (#11)
Lowest Rated - 2010 (#58)


2010s
Highest Rated - 2011 (#23)
Lowest Rated - 2012 (#31)


What do the stats say?  Well not much really other than there have been really good sets and really bad sets at all times, although it does give one pause to see that my "newest" top 10 set is 21 years old.  Does this mean that Topps has stopped putting out memorable sets?  I think it is more a product of my own bias toward the sets of my youth, but most of the recent Topps product is not that great either.


CHANGES?

The more I have seen of 2012 Topps, the less I really like it.  The extreme closeups of most of the photos is really just not done well.  To top it off there is not one Rockies card that I would say qualifies for even the top 20 cards of the year.  If I were to redo this list, there would be two sets that ended up substantially lower, 1966 (which I just flat out goofed on and deserved about 15-20 spots lower) and 2012 (which would probably settle into the low 40s/high 50s).

Some that ranked maybe a tad bit too low were mostly from the 1970s, but once again that is mostly due to my age and when I started collecting.  1970s cards were too new to be vintage and too old to be modern when I started collecting in 1986, so I never really developed an attachment to those cards.  I'm sure everyone has a period like that in their personal histories as well.

But that's the great thing with a list like this.  Every other blogger could do this countdown and have a few similarities, but none would be exactly the same.  Heck even if I did it again it wouldn't be exactly the same.


THE FUTURE

I am looking forward (with trepidation) to 2013 Topps.  I think it needs to be a colorful year.  There has been way too many similarities in the past few years and we, as collectors, need a 1975-style change of pace right about now.  It probably won't happen due to parallels dominating the hobby at the moment, but I think we are due a "game changer."


I hope you all have enjoyed this feature as much as I have and I thank you for taking the time to read my (sometimes rambling) thoughts on the subject.  On Sunday, I will doing a "reboot" of sorts on this blog and I plan to get back to more regular blogging again.  But I will let you know more about the details on Sunday.  Thanks for reading.