a slight return of manager cards!

well well well. i have been lamenting the loss of manager cards in topps heritage over the last few years as it has denied me cards of dusty baker and dave roberts to collect. thankfully, topps included roberts in a flagship insert set - "mlb awards" or some such thing - a few years ago, and both roberts and baker were part of the short printed "skippers" mini insert set in 2016 allen & ginter's (i still need to get a copy of baker's card, by the way).

then along came 2021 topps archives. when i saw that roberts and baker were on the autograph checklist, i figured it would be as fan favorite players, since both were definitely that during their playing careers. but no - they are managers!

i am pretty happy to have a new card of dusty as a non-dodger; especially one that features him in a new uniform. the aforementioned skippers card is the only one i know of from his time with the nationals, so i really do need to track one down.

as for roberts, it's great to have a certified autograph of him as the dodgers' manager. i already had a ttm auto from him on that aforementioned awards card which kept alive my string of autographed cards of dodger managers back to walter alston, but certified is preferred.

topps even went with the 1982 design even though there were no manager cards issued in that set. just great all around stuff that i was all too happy to track down on ebay. for the record, twins' manager rocco baldelli is also featured in the managerial subset which is nice to see, but the other highlight is kim ng's card - even if topps put "marlins" above her name rather than "general manager".

there were no steve garvey cards in archives this year which was a bit of a surprise given his appearance in a number of other topps releases. topps did recycle some of his old cards for their 2021 archives signature series retired players edition, and i dutifully picked up a few of them:

the first two were purchased from comc and i didn't notice that the seller had salvaged the one-touch holders. i put them in one-touches after they arrived though, although i have some uncaged autos from other releases (like 2004 topps originals) that i've left loose. i should work on my consistency. the last card there is the tiffany version of garvey's final topps card. this is the third or fourth year that garvey has been included in this set, and i really don't need to add another signed buyback of his 1987 card, that's for sure. i might be the only person around who would like to see a jim tracy card included in this set, however. more manager cards, please!