Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Introducing the 2023 Chachi Set Design


On Labor Day afternoon, Topps released the first images of its 2023 baseball card set on social media.  As has been my recent tradition, I'll wait until Topps makes their presentation of the next year's flagship set design before releasing the first images of the next year's Chachi custom Phillies card set.  I'm generous, not needing much attention, and I like for Topps to have their time in the spotlight for a little bit.

For those of you new to the Chachi set of cards, they're named after our late, great first dog Chachi, and not (directly) the character from Happy Days or the weird actor who played him.  Here's a page with links to details on the genesis of the set, as well as a launch pad to view all prior year base cards from Chachi sets dating back to 2005.  To date, I've used old Topps designs as the basis for my Chachi sets, and I'm getting closer to eventually breaking that pattern.  But not yet.

As I write this, we're six cards away from a complete 1965 Topps set, which will forever be known as my lockdown set as it helped keep me sane during the pandemic years.  We started collecting the set in December 2019, a few short months before the world was turned upside down, and I'd like to think we'll complete the set in either late 2022 or early 2023.  With this set and its iconic design taking up so much space in my brain in recent years, I thought I'd pay tribute to it by using it for the design of my 2023 Chachi cards.  This is the first Topps set from the 1960s I've tackled with a Chachi set, and you can expect to see all the usual inserts in 2023 - Fan Favorites, 1965 Topps Missing Links and Friendly Encounters.  What you won't see are many action shots.  I'm going to try to stay true to the original, using only cropped shots or posed photos.

I'm excited to spend 2023 and one more year with the 1965 Topps set, and I hope you are too.

Here's a look at what could come next in the Chachi set lineage, and I'm a little surprised I'm anxious to tackle another set from the 2000s.  The 2022 Chachi set has been a lot of fun so far, and I'm hoping to need to figure out how to design postseason cards in the style of the 2000 Topps set.

1969 - Not a great design, but I'm going to spending more time with this set in the coming years, so it's now a possibility.
1972 - The only flagship set from the 1970s I've not used yet.
1984, 1987, 1989 - Topps has spoiled these designs for me, due to overuse in recent years' insert sets.
2001, 2003, 2006, 2008 - Over the past few years, I've really come to appreciate the designs of the 2006 and 2008 sets.
Other Future Candidates - 1981 Donruss, 1981 Fleer, 1982 Donruss, 1983 Fleer, 1985 Fleer, 1987 Donruss

2023 Chachi Preview #1 (9/7/22)
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)