Wednesday, October 18, 2023

any differences this year?

with 2023 topps update out, i can finally get this annual post posted! it's the comparison between topps flagship dodger cards and their counterparts from the factory team set.  mookie betts' team set card looks like this:
it's distinguishable from the flagship set thanks to the white topps logo as well as the numbering on the back:
topps also added "team set" below the number. they are getting better about distinguishing sets, but i wish they would expand this practice to inserts like upper deck and panini used to do, or still do in panini's case.

anyway, here we go. flagship on the left, team set on the right.

lad-1 mookie betts
outside of the difference in logo coloring (which i don't consider a real difference), there is no difference here.

lad-2 j.d. martinez
logo placement switch for no apparent reason.

lad-3 gavin lux
nothing to see here

lad-4 julio urias
nada

lad-5 freddie freeman
nope

lad-6 clayton kershaw
negative

lad-7 tony gonsolin
again, no.

lad-8 michael grove
rookie card logo relocation. again, no obvious reason why whis would occur.

lad-9 noah syndergaard
ok here we are. syndergaard got a dodger card in update that uses a real photo of him as a dodger. two photos, actually. it is a vast improvement over the photoshopped team set card that showed him wearing fernando valenzuela's number 34. big difference between these two cards!

lad-10 austin barnes
back to no difference

lad-11 james outman
another rookie card logo relocation

lad-12 max muncy
nothing

lad-13 chris taylor
nothing again

lad-14 will smith
again, nothing

lad-15 trayce thompson
even more nothing

lad-16 miguel vargas
not only is there nothing different, the rookie card logo didn't move

lad-17 walker buehler
and we end with...nothing.

i miss the years where there were at least a couple variations or even players (or managers or stadiums) that didn't show up in flagship. i hope we get a return to that in 2024.

anybody else buy team sets for other teams? any differences in those?

3 comments:

  1. I'd have a lot more interest in these sets if the cards were any different. This feels like a grift to get a few more bucks out of team collectors.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For the Cubs, Cody Bellinger has a photoshopped card in the factory set and a real picture in update. Justin Steele has a card in the factory set but no card in the base or update set. He was in the top 3 in NL wins and era. Not sure what more he has to do to get in the Topps set!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. you'd think someone would have noticed when they were prepping steele's all-star game insert card that he was missing from the main checklist!

      Delete