2020 Topps Stickers Cubs on the Back

I'm back with the backs. The Cubs fared much better, with an even dozen players.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some thoughts...

• Robel Garcia, again??  Enough of him, really, please stop.
• The three players that had front cards also have back cards.  Is that necessary?
• Some of the backs were pricier than they should have been because of the player on the front.  Contreras shares a card with Mike Trout, raising the price.  The front of the Bryant card has Glyber Torres.  Did New York Topps do that on purpose?  Justin Verlander is on the front of the Hoerner card.
• I long for the day of the perfect nine stickers!

2020 Topps Stickers Cubs

When Topps stickers returned in 2011, it was a dream setup for this over-organized person.  Each year there were nine stickers of Cubs players (and for each team, in fact) along with a team logo sticker.  The ten small stickers fit nicely on a twelve pocket page.

My sticker nightmare began last year when Topps went to a completely different format.  First, the stickers were enlarged to the size of a regular card.  They abandoned the nine per team format.  They also put players on both the front and back of the card. 

The nightmare has continued into 2020.  Full size stickers, no consistency with the number of players, players of both the front and back... yikes!

This year the stickers seem to have been largely ignored.  I have yet to see a team set offered by any seller on Ebay.  Usually I have a few to pick from.  I used Sportlots to buy my stickers and there weren't many available there either.  Most players have less than six stickers available from the various sellers.  Are the stickers a Covid-19 casualty or is there just no market for them?

Today I have the Cubs that made the front of the stickers.  It's pretty slim pickings.  Out of 237 stickers, just six belong to the Cubs.  Even worse, those six stickers represent just three players.

 

Bryant, Rizzo, and Hoerner are three players on the front.

 

 

The other fronts are Hoerner again, on a Rookies and Rising Stars card, Clark the Mascot, and Wrigley Field.

The Cubs did a bit better on the backs, and I'll have those tomorrow.

1977 Holiday Inn Cubs Discs

Last week I showed the 2007 cards given away by Holiday Inn.  That wasn't their first time with baseball cards.  Thirty years earlier they partnered with MSA and issued a set of 70 discs.   The discs were given away when you bought a children's meal a the inn's restaurant.  We often stayed at Holiday Inn on vacation when I was a kid and ate at the restaurant too.  If they gave these away a few years earlier I may have gotten one, but by 1977 I was 16 and our family vacation days were over.

Two Cubs were included...

... the newly acquired Bobby Murcer and the fading Jose Cardenal.

I wonder what Holiday Inn has in store for use in 2037?

One Down, Two to Go

I had a post last Tuesday on the 3D cards that I'm missing from 2003 and 2004 Vintage.  On the very same day as the post, one of the three cards was listed on Ebay.  I got an email that morning from Ebay and a heads up in the comments from reader Jeff.

I pounced on the card immediately!

Upper Deck made one big improvement with their 3D cards compared to the Kelloggs originals.  The Vintage card lays flat and has no cracks!

However, if you look carefully at the pictures on the card, you'll notice a glaring mistake. The background is the Cubs' home, Wrigley Field.  Sammy is wearing road uniform.

Maybe UD was paying homage to Kelloggs showing all the players in the early cards at Shea Stadium, while often wearing their home uniform.

Sure, let's go with that.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 17,987 Cubs cards from 219 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1962 Post #188 Ernie Banks  What a great way to start!

1980s: 1982 Fleer #600 Randy Martz  Fleer did not value the card numbers like Topps.  They numbered all the players from the same team in sequence.  A scrub like Martz ends up with #600 in Fleer.  Dave Winfield has #600 in 1982 Topps.  Randy Martz, you are no Dave Winfield.

1990s: 1999 Stadium Club #272 Mark Grace  They've captured Grace with the classic follow-through shot.

2000s: 2003 Team Issued Ron Santo  This was given away when the Cubs retired Ron Santo's #10. It was on Sunday, September 28, the last game of the season.  The Cubs had clinched the division the day before and Wrigley Field was still buzzing the next day with the Santo ceremony.  

His quote of the day was, "That is my Hall of Fame!"

2010s: 2010 Topps Factory Team Set #CHC8 Ryan Theriot  The Riot puts the tag on Jimmy Rollins.

2007 Holiday Inn Cubs

I didn't know that Holiday Inn had baseball cards until I saw them in a blogger's post a couple weeks ago (sorry... I don't remember which blog it was).

Holiday Inn gave away cards over the summer of 2007 to Priority Card members. Each night's stay got you a pack of four cards.  That really doesn't sound like much of an incentive.  The set has 60 cards and a Cal Ripken insert set.  There were three base cards and a Ripken insert in each pack.  You'd have to stay a lot of nights to complete the set.

The cards were produced by Upper Deck and have the UD logo on them.  Oddly, there is no mention anywhere on the cards of Holiday Inn; no logo, no special "HI" numbering, no nothing.

The two biggest hitters on the 2007 Cubs team were in the set.

It's a nice design and I assume that they used a green border for Holiday Inn.  But again, odd that the sponsor is not mentioned any where.

The folks at Holiday Inn can thank me now!

2020 Topps Total Wave 1 Cubs

Topps Total is back again this year, using the same format as last year.  The cards are released in 100-card waves every few weeks and available only through the Topps website. 

Four Cubs cards are in the first wave, which I now have in hand.

 

 

Oddity here --- Three of the four players are Cubs first round draft choices.  Lester is the slacker, a second round pick of the Red Sox.