A Side by Side Look At The Three Levels of 2024 Finest

 So what do the three levels of this year's Finest look like?  Let's see them side by side.

Each of the levels has a slightly different background.  Also, the player name in the first level is right justified, and then it moved to the left in the second and third levels.  You can also see that for players with cards in multiple levels, different pictures were used for each card.

The backs have the same template in all three levels.  As I mentioned in previous posts, the level name is below the card number.  For players with multiple cards, the paragraphs were different on each card.  I was glad to see that because I was afraid Topps would get lazy and use identical backs.

2024 Finest Cubs - Rare

 Today's cards are the rare cards in this year's Finest set.  The rare are seeded one every three packs and are #201 - 300 in the set.  Initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to pick up the five Cubs cards because I thought they would be too expensive.  That wasn't the case, luckily, and I paid in the range of $3-5 for each.

Again, you can tell which subset a card belongs to by looking just below the card number.

 

Bellinger and Steele's only cards in the set were rare, while these are the second for Morel and Imanaga and Crow-Armstrong's third.

2024 Finest Cubs - Uncommon

 I wrote last week about the 2024 Finest and the three 100-cards levels in the set.  I got the common cards pretty easily.  It took a little time but I now have the cards from the second level, which Topps calls "uncommon."

Topps made it pretty easy to tell which of the three levels a card belongs to by putting the level name under the card number.  A less-easier way is by the design of the background on the front of the card.  I'll show all three of the different fronts in a couple of days.

I don't know if this was done with any of the other teams, but there are exactly five Cubs cards in each level.  Below are the five uncommon Cubs.

 

 

This is the only card in the set for Canario, Hoerner, and Swanson.  PCA and Imanaga ended up with cards in all of the levels.

1996 Sportflix Fixed

 We are at the end of the line with these posts as the 1996 edition was the last one for Sportflics / Sportflix.  

These are the only two Cubs among the first 96 cards in the set that featured the dual picture technology.

Sammy Sosa was the lone Cubs card among the 30 that have the UC3 technology.  These cards have a 3D look to them.  The set also has 24 rookie cards, but none of them are Cubs cards.

The producer of Sportflix cards, Pinnacle, decided to end the line after the 1996 set.  I'm sure the cost of the cards was a factor.  Within two years, Pinnacle went out of business.

Two More From the Most Wanted List

 I picked up two more cards off of my Most Wanted List.  They are the third and fourth I've gotten this year.  Four cards in nine months is much worse than last year's card per month, but I'm happy to be able to take care of anything of of the list at any time.

They are both from the 1985 TCMA 1949 Play Ball set.  

Look at the scene behind Jeffcoat.  The bleachers look so bare.  There's not addition, no ribbon screen, no video board, not advertising.  The apartment building has no rooftop seating either.  It's a totally different look now, and I'm not sure its for the better.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 21,895 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1942 Play Ball #40 Stan Hack  This isn't really from a 1942 set, but from a TCMA 1985 release.  They created a set as if Play Ball did have cards in 1942, using a design similar to the 1941 cards and players from that era.

1980s: 1986 O- Pee-Chee #384 Steve Trout Some times when the RNG picks a card from OPC you have to just take my word for it that the card is an actual OPC card since many times their front was identical to Topps.  But not in 1986... you can clearly see this is from O-Pee-Chee's set.

1990s: 1991 Topps Traded #105 Bob Scanlan Scanlan made his MLB debut with the Cubs in 1991 and appeared in 40 games.  He pitched mainly out of the bullpen but also made 13 starts.  His record was 7-8 with an ERA of 3.89.

2000s: 2003 First Pitch #172 Mark Prior  Prior lived up to all the hype in 2003 as he went 18-6.  But he was never the same after that year, winning just 18 more games over the next three injury-filled seasons.

2010s: 2011 Pro Debut All-Stars #12 Hak-Ju Lee  The Cubs traded Lee in January of 2011.  He went to Tampa along with four other players including Chris Archer in a deal that brought Matt Garza to the Cubs.  He never made it to the majors but did play six seasons in Korea's top league.

Eighties Alphabetically - Jiffy Pop

Baseball and popcorn are perfect partners, so it makes sense that Jiffy pop jumped on the baseball card bandwagon in the 1980s.  They issued an MSA-produced disc set for three years, from 1986 through 1988.  As usual, there are no logos on MSA items, so we get the ugly airbrushed caps.

Each year the set had a checklist of twenty players and each checklist has one Cub.

2024 Cubs Season Ticket Holder Set

 The Cubs once again teamed up with Topps to produce a set exclusive to season ticket holders.  Prices for the 15-card set on eBay have been much higher this year than in the past.  I guess the season ticket holders are looking to recoup some of the cost of their tickets.  

As an aside, yesterday the Cubs announced the prices for 2025 season tickets and there is an average of a 6.7% increase per ticket.  Making that increase worse, the Cubs will have just 79 home dates next year as two games being played in Tokyo in March are being counted as home games.  

Back to the cards...

There are 15 cards in the set and most are current players with a couple of prospects tossed in.  Michael Busch and Shota Imanaga are included and shown in actual Cubs uniforms (from pictures taken during spring training), not a photoshop job, so kudos to the Cubs for that.

The design is the 1984 Topps design with the Cubs season ticket holder logo added.  The backs are also the 1984 design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1995 Sportflix Fixed

 Sportflics was back in 1995 with a revised name. Now called Sportflix, the set consists of 170 cards.  The players included were the big names plus 25 rookies.  There would be no update and traded set.

As you'll notice, many of the pictures of the players are not from the same play or at bat.  In my opinion, that kind of defeats the best feature of the 3-D cards, being able to show a play as if you are actually watching it happen.

The mid-nineties Cubs were not very good, and have just five of the 170 cards.

2024 Finest Cubs Part 1

 The 2024 edition of Topps Finest was released on August 7.  Its going to take me three posts to show all this because, for the first time since 1997, Finest has three tiers of cards in the base set.  The first 100 are the common set.  I'll be showing those today.  The next 100 cards are called "Uncommon" and they come at a rate of one per pack (there are six cards total in a pack).  The final 100 cards are "Rare" and they fall one every third pack.

The 300 card set is significantly larger than recent Finest set which had just 125 cards.  And the three tiers make it much more expensive to track down all the Cubs.  There are a total of 15 Cubs cards, with five in each of the three tiers.  While there are 15 cards, they represent just ten players.  Shota Imanaga and Pete Crow-Armstrong have cards in all three tiers and Christopher Morel is in the first and third level.

The cards below are the Cubs in the Common set.  They were pretty simple to get and weren't expensive.  Four of the five came from one Sportlots seller.  

It wasn't as easy to get the ten cards from the higher tiers.  I took my time with those, trying to find them as cheaply as possible.  I ended up buying all ten on eBay from ten different sellers.  They are all in the mail now and I'll show each tier as soon as I have the cards.