Anyone familiar with these pages will know that while Topps baseball cards (as opposed to Donruss, Upper Deck, etc.) are the nearest and dearest to my heart, I freely admit when I think Topps makes inexplicably bad decisions, both within the confines of one of its own sets, and in comparison to the sets of its competitors. The 1992 set is, for me, perhaps their greatest such error. In 1992, both Fleer and Donruss moved to high-quality stock with glossy, almost metallic finishes on the front and back. Fleer included several insert sets, with the Rookie Sensations set in particular driving the hobby wild for a while because of the Frank Thomas card. Donruss made its annual Diamond Kings subset into a beautiful insert set again offered the Elite series. Score produced it's usual huge, widely varied set with a host of inserts and Upper Deck continued to set the standard for quality (and cost). What did Topps do? Well, 1992 was a year of firsts for them as well - the first year with no wax wrappers or gum since 1950; the first year with no Glossy send-aways since 1982; the first with no Glossy All Stars since 1983; the first with no box-bottom cards since 1985; the first with no Glossy Rookies since 1986, and the first year with no Tiffany parallel set since 1983.
What we got was a big, boring offering with zero traditional insert "sets", but with a frustrating new concept called the "parallel" insert (much more on that below). I built all 5 major sets in 1992 from packs, and every time I turned to Topps I thought there had to be something more...but there wasn't.
In 1991, Topps' design had been simple, yet attractive. In 1992, it was simple and bland. A large image was surrounded by an inset colored frame with white bars highlighting the edges. The player's name appears in a colored banner along the bottom left, and the name of his team in a complementary-colored banner set in the lower right. The "Topps" logo appears in white or black in one of the upper corners.
Cards are printed on bright white stock, and the backs feature the usual statistics, vitals and card numbers against this white background. In a true "what were they thinking" move, Topps included an image of the player's home stadium along the bottom. Images are small, often grainy and have an almost fish-eyed perspective which makes one long for the reverse imagery of any one of Topps' 4 competitors.
While the card stock is white and the fronts have a smooth texture, the backs have a familiar cardboard feel, and the stock itself is thinner than usual. All of these things together give the entire set a flimsy feel.
"A" Sheet
"B" Sheet
"C" Sheet
"D" Sheet
"E" Sheet
"F" Sheet
6 different printing sheets each held 132 unique cards, for a complete set total of 792 cards.
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Although wrapped in quasi-opaque cellophane, basic packs were still referred to as 'wax packs'. Packs contained 15 cards along with a "Match the Stats" game card. Precious few packs (1 per box, in fact) contained a much-hyped Topps Gold parallel insert card (more on these farther below). Packs came 36 per box and were priced at 55 cents each.
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Wrappers featured a side panel advertisement for obtaining a 'no purchase necessary' game card.
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Wax boxes came in one of 4 varieties - featuring the image of a card of Kirby Puckett, Rob Dibble, Bip Roberts or Devon White on the lid.
Each Match the Stats game card described a 'stat' achieved by a well-known current or former player - in the upper right corner of the card, the accomplishment was described in a small box, with the stat itself in a small circle. Players then had 8 chances to find that same stat 3 times by scratching off the gray circles before scratching off a single 'out'. The grand prize was a $100K baseball card show shopping spree, which included a 4-day, 3-night trip to a show of Topps' choice, along with the services of a security guard and an 'expert guide'. Five $15K sprees also were available, for which the winner was presumably on his or her own. Another prize was a complete set of Topps Gold cards, with assortments of 100, 50 and 10 Topps Gold cards also available. A total of 52 different basic game cards were available, and each came in either a white or gray card stock version.
Even if you held a losing card, you could still scratch off a section in the lower right portion of the card to reveal a number of 'runs'. From 1-10 runs were available. Each collection of 100 runs could be redeemed for a pack of 10 Topps Gold cards.
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Unlike wax boxes, cello and all other box types were only available in the Bip Roberts card variety.
34-card packs, which previously would have been called 'cello' packs, were available. They contained 34 cards along with a Match the Stats game card, and were packed 24 per box. They were priced at $1.09.
These were still generally known as cellos even if the wrapper was now made of the same material which was used in 'wax' packs.
One Topps Gold card could be found per box.
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Larger packs containing 41 cards and 3 Match the Stats game cards were available for $1.69 and came packed 24 per box. One Topps Gold card could be found per box.
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So-called jumbo or grocery packs included 90 cards and 6 Match the Stats game cards. Price and packing data isn't currently known. One Topps Gold card could be found per box.
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Rack packs held 45 cards and 3 Match the Stats game cards. Packs carried no MSRP, and came 24 per box. Each box held one Topps Gold card.
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Vending boxes contained 500 cards, 5 of which were Topps Gold cards. Cases contained 24 boxes.
Factory sets came in 3 basic box varieties - full color, white with printing and white with a label. Each contained the full set plus 10 Topps Gold cards. Information related to price points, intended point-of-sale and packaging is not currently available.
Of 792 total cards, 700 are basic player cards.
Included in the basic player card count are 10 cards highlighting members of the 1991 Topps All Star Rookie team.
520 - Jeff Bagwell, Astros 1B 23 - Chuck Knoblauch, Twins 2B
288 - Andujar Cedeno, Astros SS
84 - Leo Gomez, Orioles 3B 12 - Luis Gonzalez, Astros OF
292 - Ray Lankford, Cardinals OF
522 - Milt Cuyler, Tigers OF
78 - Ivan Rodriguez, Rangers C
537 - Mark Leiter, Tigers RHP
614 - Al Osuna, Astros LHP
Cards 2-5 featured record breaking performances from the 1991 season. Card backs offer newspaper-like accounts of the events. Card #1 was again Nolan Ryan's basic player card.
Cards 386-407 are 'All Star' cards with the N.L. running from 386-396 and the A.L. from 397-407. Players appearing in this subset didn't necessarily appear on the rosters of either 1991 squad, but rather they seem to be Topps' selections for the best players at their positions in 1991. In addition to all the standard defensive positions, a LHP and RHP starting pitcher a and relief pitcher are included for each league.
N.L. and A.L. cards differ in the use of orange and green coloring in key areas on card fronts. Card backs provide a brief highlight from the player's 1991 season, and a listing of the leaders , by league (according to the league of the player depicted on the front), in a variety of statistical categories in 1991 including RBI, R, HR, Average, OBP, SLG, Doubles, Triples, ERA, Wins and Saves.
A total of 28 players taken in the first round of the June, 1991 amateur draft appear throughout the set. Backs detail their high school or collegiate careers.
The set includes cards depicting the managers of 23 of the 26 clubs (the White Sox, Cubs and Red Sox had not named managers for 1992 by the time the presses started rolling). Card backs provide summarized statistics from the manager's professional playing career, and detailed statistics from their major league managerial career. The backs of all manager cards are oriented vertically.
The set includes 9 Top Prospects cards, which each feature 4 youngsters, by position, who Topps believed were close to making their MLB debuts. This marked the first issuance of what was once a perennial feature of Topps sets - multi-player rookie/prospects cards - since 1982.
The set includes 6 checklist cards perpetuating Topps' terrible practice, started in 1990, of checklisting cards by team and subset rather than numerically as had been the tradition for three decades.
A full checklist of the 1992 set, featuring multiple printable formats, can be found at the Trading Card Database HERE.
Hall of Famers Mike Mussina (242) and Jim Thome (768) appear for the first time int he 1992 set, as do Kenny Lofton (69) and Manny Ramirez (156).
Hall of Fame closer Rich "Goose" Gossage (215) takes his bow in 1992, as do Alvin Davis (130), Brian Downing (173), Ken Griffey, Sr. (250), Pedro Guerrero (470) and Dwight Evans (705).
Topps again produced a 132-card boxed Traded set late in the season to reflect those players who had changed teams and players as well as managers not included in the base set. Cards are numbered 1T-132T.
The set contains 127 basic player cards, including members of Team USA, the national collegiate team, as well as 4 managers and a checklist. With the exception of the addition of a "T" to card numbers, the Traded cards are indistinguishable from cards in the main set. For the first time since 1982 the card stock used for each was identical.
Nomar Garciaparra (39T) and Jason Varitek (123T) make their debuts as members of Team USA.
Traded sets were available in two different complete set packages as illustrated here. Point-of-sale and case packing information is not currently available. As with their regular set counterparts, Traded set cards were available in the Topps Gold parallel variety, as detailed below.
For the second year in the row, for reasons which defy explanation, Topps issued a 'micro' set. Sold solely in factory set form, it is a reproduction of the entire set in tiny 1x1 3/8 inch size. Sets were accompanied by a 12-card partial parallel set which featured the cards of a dozen players with gold foil backgrounds.
And now we get to 1992's contribution to baseball card history - the parallel set. Parallel sets would become a central element of most card sets over the next few decades, but it all started here...for good and for bad.
786 of the 792 cards in the 1992 set were issued in a parallel Topps Gold version, where the banners containing the player's name and team were overlaid with gold foil. The background Topps logo on the reverse was also printed in gold and read Topps Gold. Topps Gold was Topps' principal selling point in 1992, and they certainly hyped the heck out of it. Gold cards were hard to come by - boxes of any pack type would reveal just a single sample. 10 were available in the full-color factory sets, 5 were included in vending boxes, and you could win complete factory sets, or assortments of 100, 50 or 10 different, in the Match the Stats game. But, all of this still made collecting any appreciable amount a daunting challenge.
Factory Gold sets each contained a special card (#793) of can't-miss Yankee future star Brien Taylor. Cards were autographed and came with a certificate of authenticity.
Taylor would never see MLB action owing to an injury suffered defending his brother in a bar brawl.
Instead of issuing Topps Gold versions of the 6 checklist cards, Topps opted to create cards of players not included in the main set to take their place, giving them the card numbers assigned to the checklists. These are:
131 - Terry Mathews (Rangers)
264 - Rod Beck (Giants)
366 - Tony Perezchica (Indians)
527 - Terry McDaniel (Mets)
658 - John Ramos (Yankees)
787 - Brian Williams (Astros)
Finally, as detailed above, you could obtain 10 Topps Gold cards by collecting collecting 100 'runs' from Match the Stats game cards.
(insert sound of needle scratching across a record)
BUT WAIT!!!!
Shortly after they debuted, it became clear that simply by using a flashlight, it was possible to read the information hidden behind the scratch-off material on unscratched cards. As a result, Topps wound up with more 10-pack Topps Gold requests than anticipated.
This was problematic because their marketing had worked and people were buying unopened product searching for the rare Topps Gold cards, but others were now cleverly able to make getting Topps Gold cards easier and cheaper.
What to do?? Shortly after realizing this, Topps decided that all 10-packs which were distributed in response to 100-run submissions would have the addition of the word "Winner" in gold foil to differentiate them from those obtained 'legitimately'(?) the hard way.
It was an awkward solution which didn't really please anyone and which lives on in baseball card lore.
The traded set was also available in Topps Gold form, but only via factory set packages from hobby dealers. The traded checklist card, #132T, was replaced by a card of Kerry Woodson of the Mariners.
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The final note in the story of 1992 Topps Gold is that late in the year, to try to make non-Winner Topps Gold cards just a little more available, Topps issued special 41-card jumbo packs that each included a Topps Gold card. These differed from the regular jumbos only in that the $1.69 price was not printed on the wrapper and that packs featured 2 gold stickers - one advertising the fact that the pack contained a Topps Gold card, and the other indicating the pack was part of something called Topps' Grand Slam Celebration. Details of this historic event are currently unavailable. Packaging information for these packs is unknown.
It is believed that the gray-stock Match the Stats game cards were primarily if not exclusively available in these packs.
In a move reminiscent of their old salesmen's samples from 30 or so years before, Topps distributed pre-production samples before the set was released in either late 1991 or early 1992. One sheet featured 9 regular cards and the other featured those same cards in their Topps Gold incarnations. Some people today remember these as having been handed out by Topps representatives at card shows. They can be distinguished from their legitimate counterparts by the presence of a diamond-shaped label on the reverse.
More mysterious is a series of 9 pre-production cards which were issued individually (not in sheets). These nine feature some different players, their card numbers do not correspond to their counterparts in the regular set, recent statistics are not provided, the reverse design isn't in final form, and there is an oval label on the reverse instead of the diamond. All of this suggests a much earlier release than the sheets, but no information is currently available as to method or location of distribution.
Full-color factory sets issued near year's end were packaged with a "Holiday Special" overwrap and included a small set of nine 1993 pre-production cards.
Several dozen cards in the set featured a horizontal orientation which permitted some wider and more creative images.
One good thing about the 1992 set: it marked the final time that Topps resorted to using paint jobs on its cards. Beginning in 1993, those days were over. Obviously, in more recent years they've employed updated technology to almost imperceptibly produce artificial images which is upsetting in its own right, but at least the days of ugly, obvious 'art' work were through. Particularly when none other competitors EVER felt the need to do likewise.
Some boxes of 1992 Topps included a topper which could be unfolded to create an advertising sheet, presumably to be hung in the windows of card shops. Here one is shown including in a cello box, but they likely came in other packaging as well.