As I sit here and ponder how to say what it is that I like about this set, and I do like it, I'm suddenly pondering something else, and I'll get to it shortly. But let me start with this set first.
I dig these a lot. For anybody who may not know, the "MB" is slang for embossed in the printing world. For anybody who may not know what embossed means, check this out:
This gives the card a true three-dimensional feel and it makes for one very top shelf looking card. This is the Woodford Reserve of printing right here. Over the years Topps threw so many gimmicky cards at us, that a lot of the original ones fell into obscurity pretty quick. Such is the case with these. A great concept and a great design that Topps would never issue again.
Which brings me back to what I was pondering. Why doesn't Topps combine say six of these innovative type sets into one big set called Topps Mystery? Some other issues I would suggest would be things like the D3 cards, Gallery, Turkey Red, Finest, and maybe some other issue like Archives. They could issue 90 cards of each style (3 players per team) and make a modest 540 card set. Each pack would contain 9 or 12 cards of one design and each team would have 18 cards total. Then they could showcase all of their interesting designs in one easy to collect set. That way instead of issuing the same handful of players in all these small sets, they could incorporate a lot of cool stuff as well as a full team's worth of player into one nice set. And you'd never know which style of cards you were going to get in any one pack.
Oh well, something to think about.
The 1995 Topps MB Detroit Tigers:
42 Chris Gomez
50 Travis Fryman
76 Cecil Fielder
79 Tony Phillips
97 Lou Whitaker
121 Mickey Tettleton
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