Topps Project 2020
Most Recent Cards
398. Rickey Henderson - Don C
399. Mike Trout - King Saladeen
400. Mike Trout - Mister Cartoon
Topps Project 2020
395. Ichiro - Don C
396. Sandy Koufax - Ben Baller
397. Nolan Ryan - Keith Shore
In Project 2020, Topps partnered with 20 artists to reimagine 20 iconic rookie cards from the past. You’ll see through the work these aren’t your traditional baseball cards.
Below I’ll explore the work of the artists, the print runs and stats, and a full photo gallery of the cards with pictures from Topps.com.
Background
My initial reaction to these cards lacked depth and critical thinking.
I viewed them through the lens of a traditional collector who was used to buying traditional cards and paying $5-$8 for on-demand offerings like the Topps Living Set. The $20 price point and the 400 total cards threw me for a loop, and the thought of dropping $8,000 to get the set was staggering. While interesting, the design of a few of the early cards didn’t appeal to me. I just didn’t think this was a product for me at the price.
Two things about this make me chuckle and realize I still have some learning to do.
First, I completely overlooked the fact that the primary audience for these cards is not traditional card collectors.
I’m not a big art guy, so to be honest I don’t really know much about the 20 artists or their work. I completely overlooked the fact that many of them have significant followings and fan bases who were used to spending well over $20 to get a print of their artwork. $20 for a single card may be kind of steep for a card guy, but not so in the art world.
The potential for Topps to market these products to a whole new segment was something I completely overlooked. As much as I pride myself in thinking outside the box when it comes to collecting, I blew it with this one.
John Newman from the Sports Card Nation podcast has interviewed many of the Artists and you can find his podcast archive here. I have also linked to each specific Artist’s episode in the “Artist Collection” below!
Second, I disregarded the success of past on-demand products.
On-Demand products from Topps are not new. I was late to the game on the Topps Living Set and I paid the price to catch up. Literally. The early cards from the TLS spike to well over $100. Montgomery Club, Throwback Thursday, and Total were all profitable for early adopters. Why shouldn’t I have taken a chance on this one as well?
I need to continue to challenge myself to think differently when analyzing which products I want to buy and sell. I can’t just think about the current market, but who else might this product appeal to? Have we seen similar products do well?
I bought my first two cards well into the release. Blake Jamieson’s Don Mattingly #33 and Andrew Thiele’s Mike Trout #35 were the first two I bought as an experiment. The results were positive, so I started buying at least 2 of each release beginning with card #57. It takes a couple weeks for Topps to ship them, so there is a bit of a lag between when you pay and when you have them in hand to sell.
The first several cards I purchased had reasonable print runs, but then they started to skyrocket to the five digits. Beginning in the early 100s, the print runs began to trickle back down to the 4 digits per card. I moved to buying one copy of each card before completing stopping in July. The backlog was too big for my liking. Starting in August, it seems the supply chain issues have cleared up and Topps is rapidly catching up with the backlog.
Check out the podcast I did on the project! All the episodes can be found at the podcast link at the top of the page.
Secondary Card Values
These cards retail on the Topps Website for 19.99 each, with discounts available if purchased as a bundle or if purchased in bulk quantities.
Early cards are selling for hundreds of dollars, and some are going for thousands of dollars on eBay at this point, and even with increasing print runs even the most produced cards are still selling for well over their direct cost.
The prices across the board were skyrocketing as of late May, but since then have really crashed back down to more moderate levels. Starting with card 84, and the corresponding “high print runs”, the secondary values are selling at or below cost.
I believe part of this is speculation and a somewhat limited supply of cards available for sale. Since Topps is running several weeks behind, a significant number of cards sold in May are pre-sales. Customers who bought direct from Topps don’t have them in hand yet. There are a couple things which could significantly impact prices.
First, there is a huge risk that eBay customers flood pre-sellers with return/refund requests because they grow tired of waiting for their card to come. It’s a good bet that many of those eBay sellers have already spent that pre-sale money.
Many of the cards from 60 on are selling below cost, but the more recent cards in the mid 200s seem to be stabilizing at a level that could lead to small profits again.
Click on any card in the Photo Checklist below to see current eBay listings.
The popularity of this set really started to spike around the #57 Rickey Henderson card and since then have been consistently 2x - 3x the print runs of the first 56 cards. I am curious to see the impact to secondary values with the current levels of production, but it will take a few weeks to see it play out since there is a lag between the pre-order window and Topps actually getting these cards into collector’s hands.
Project 2020 Stats
Here is a listing of the artists and the print runs associated with them. Ben Baller leads the way averaging about 14k cards per release. Grotesk has the lowest average run with 3,717.
Topps Project 2020 Print Runs by Artist
Another view many people like to see is the ranking by player. As one might imagine, Mike Trout has the highest average print run at this point, and now Brett is bringing up the rear.
Topps Project 2020 Print Run by Player
Photo Checklist
Artist Collection
Andrew Thiele
Ben Baller
Blake Jamieson
Don C
Ermsy
Fucci
Grotesk
Jacob Rochester
Joshua Vides
Keith Shore
Matt Taylor
Sports Card Nation Podcast interview with Matt Taylor
Mister Cartoon
Naturel
Oldmanalan
Sophia Chang
Player Collection
Jackie Robinson
Willie Mays
Ted Williams
Roberto Clemente
Sandy Koufax
Bob Gibson
Nolan Ryan
George Brett
Rickey Henderson
Cal Ripken Jr.
Tony Gwynn
Don Mattingly
Dwight Gooden
Mark McGwire
Ken Griffey Jr.
Frank Thomas
Mariano Rivera
Derek Jeter
Ichiro
Mike Trout
Also, if you haven’t heard, I started a new Podcast called the WaxPackHero Sports Card Minute! It’s available here directly on the site at the Podcast link at the top of the page, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and TuneIn! Check it out, let me know what you think, and tell your friends!