1998 - The Opening Day border is silver, the base set's is gold
1999 - Same as 1998, with Opening Day's border silver and the base set in gold
2000 - The borders are nearly identical. The only real difference is that the name and "Topps 2000" is silver with Opening Day and gold on the base cards. I'm not sure if you can even tell the difference on the scans.
2001 - Opening Day has a blue border, while the base cards' border is green. The blue looks much better on the Cubs cards.
2002 - The border on the Opening Day cards is a darker gold, almost a copper color. Opening Day has silver lettering while the base set uses gold.
2003 - Opening Day uses a lighter shade of blue, everything else is the same.
2004 - The white on the base cards is replaced with a gray border, and the bases' silver lettering is blue on Opening Day. That made the Opening Day cards much easier to read
2005 - The only change between the two was the lettering, blue on OD and gold on the base. And again, the blue is easier to read and on the Cubs cards, looks much better, matching the blue uniforms.
2006 - Again, its just the letter color that changes, and again to blue, but this time, its the base set that is easier to read. Opening Day's blue letters against the black background are very hard to see.
2007 - A huge change with these as the black border on the base is changed to white. And to me, the Opening Day cards look much better. I wish the base was white, too. The lettering changed colors too, from silver on the base to OD's gold.
2008 - Another big change, with the border switching from white to red. This time, its the base that looks better to me.
2010 - After two years of big changes, Topps barely change the design at all. The lettering on the names and the Topps logo is the only difference.
And finally, if you're curious, here are all the Opening Day logos.
I did not collect 2004 OD but I wonder if most cards had a different photo. I know that in 2008 the Devil Ray cards in OD had different photos because of the name change. Also the 2008 some of the OD cards were photo cropped tighter than the far away look of the regular set. In 2005 Nomar (Cubbies) has different photo's in both sets.
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