2003 Topps Heritage #179, 2007 Topps Wal-Mart #WM20 |
Any schlub can take a current picture and slap it onto a template approximating a vintage Topps design. Heck, I've been doing it for years with my Chachi sets. But Topps is Topps, and when they revisit card designs from their own history, they should be spot on. Anything less is just plain lazy.
I've presented Chase Utley's baseball cards from the 2003 Topps Heritage set and the 2007 Topps Wal-Mart insert set side by side. Other than the shrunken size, the Heritage card looks and feels like a 1954 Topps card. And I'm fine with the semi-transparent Topps Heritage logo in the bottom right corner as an identifier for the set. The Wal-Mart card would be wonderful if I had put it together, but Topps should hold its reproductions to a higher standard. The modern Topps logo doesn't belong on the card, let alone in the top left corner. The font is slightly off, and the Phillies logo is too small when compared to the original. Finally, Utley's facsimile autograph is missing.
With the Wal-Mart card, I always wondered why Topps didn't just go back to the fine 1954 Topps template it created (and presumably still has saved somewhere) when it put out its 2003 Heritage set. It's your history and your "heritage," Topps. Do it right, or don't do it at all.
2 comments:
I wonder what "templates" topps still has around. I noticed on the Bo Jackson from this year's CYMTO set had a different logo on it than the original did. Do they not have the ability to simply steal a previous card from ther records somehow? Do they need to create them all over again?
I've often thought about the same thing. You'd think they'd be able to just do a high resolution scan of an old card, clean it up a little, and print it out.
I just think a company like Topps should be able to perfectly recreate its own designs from the past 60 years. Once they've mastered a design (as with the Heritage sets) why go to using a different "template?"
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