I’ve had a few moments throughout my life where I’ve had
to stop, take in everything around me and say, ‘Wow.’
Lately, that’s happened a bit often (getting married had
something to do with it), but when it comes to cards, this may be a first. Of
course, there are cards that I love and enjoy, and have thought ‘Wow’ when I
saw them, but this was something entirely different.
In June, I started working for Topps creating baseball
cards. Not going to lie, the moment I walked through the building for the first
time, I had to take a pause, and then the next pause-inducing moment came this
week.
One of the first products that I worked on at Topps was
2014 Update Series. I had a hand in picking the All-Star images for the base
subset and the retail insert of All-Star Access. I tried to pick good images,
fun ones because the ASG is an exhibition. I also didn’t want to screw up in
any way.
On Thursday, I opened packs of 2014 Update, and while
there were a number of cards in there that I helped create, one of them made me
halt …
I have more than 2,000 Derek Jeter cards in my
collection, but this is the first one that I had a hand in creating. I selected
that image and cropped the photo. I had nothing to do with the design of the card,
but the image was all mine. I immediately put it in a penny sleeve and top
loader, and currently it’s sitting in my wallet. I know, it’s a bit dorky, but
this is now my favorite Derek Jeter card.
Of course, I start working at Topps at a time when Derek
Jeter had already announced his retired. But I can at least say I made his last
flagship base card.
Wow, indeed.
