2015 TOPPS HERITAGE TERRY COLLINS
Nostalgia is a distorting lens.
Ralph the ice-cream man used to stop in front of my house every day from late spring to early fall, ringing his bells in four-beat measures that made me dash out my front door and sail over the concrete porch steps.
I’d scrape together my available nickels and dimes for a couple of packs of baseball cards, maybe some Wacky Packages if they were in season. And when the weather got warm, I’d order a Circus Surprize orange sherbet.
This conical-shaped treat was wrapped in waxy paper, which you’d pull away from the top corner and peel to get at the sherbet. The sherbet sat on a flat circular base, which was designed to prevent the melting ooze from getting all over your fingers.
The “surprize” in question was the plastic stick that held the sherbet– as you ate the cone, the stick was revealed to be in the shape of a circus animal (or a strongman), and specific animals could be redeemed for a free Circus Surprize pop.
Now, in my memory, this was a 50-cent ticket to heaven. The frozen treat was creamy, smooth, tart, and immensely satisfying. The sun those days was always warm and brilliant, and the soft summer grass was a welcoming blanket. And every other stick was that prize-winning monkey of your dreams.
But really, the sherbet was a chalky, processed, pressed disaster, filled with all manner of binders and esters to help it keep its shape. The artificial orange flavor made Tang crystals taste like fresh-picked Florida Ambersweets in comparison. The sticky mess began right when the wrapper was removed, and the drips spread quickly from your hands to your pants to your face, while the hot grass swarmed with eager ants. And each and every stick was that same damned no-account elephant.
Topps Heritage brand is predicated on nostalgia. The packaging is meant to evince those halcyon days of yore, and the cards are printed on a thick clay-coated, vintage-y stock.
Over the years, Topps has worked hard to replicate the quirks of their Golden Age sets, incorporating intentional errors and short-printed high-number cards, all in the name of verisimilitude. But they’ve taken things to a whole new level in the 2015 set by introducing manufactured gum-stain cards.
These somewhat rare cards contain white markings on the reverse in the shape of an off-centered rectangle, meant to evoke the discoloration that would be left by a slab of Topps stiff pink gum back in 1966– you can see it most clearly on this Terry Collins card near the word “Angels.” As an added bonus, a faint gum smell has also been applied to the cardboard.
And time being a flat circle and all, I suppose there will come a day when I am nostalgic for the precious minutes I once spent sniffing the back of a Terry Collins card…
You do a great job with these posts, so well written.
Gum stains? SMH
If they want the true retro experience they’ve got to airbrush those Johnny Unitas haircuts on all of these guys. Give Terry Collins that look that Jerry Grote sported on his ’66 card
And would it kill them to have a manager put his hand to his mouth and bark out some instructions?
The TC on the card will blink as much as the real life one.
To me, it’s all of TC’s ear-pulling that I can’t stand. He listens to the question, then yanks on his ear, then replies. Every time.
But again, if I didn’t say this clearly in my first comment, I look at the headline and think, “I don’t care about a stupid Terry Collins baseball card.” But then I read it, and I am always won over by the writing. Just a great job.
Thanks so much for the kind words, James! Means a lot coming from a pro like you.
And I know, Brian– would it kill them to include some buzz cuts and barking managers? (BTW, “Buzz Cuts and Barking Managers” will be the title of my new album, due out in the fall on Interscope.)
When did you leave Sire?
Seymour Stein stood me up for lunch once, and that was it for me and Sire…
The ear pulling is the way he gets the neurons firing.Like pull starting a mower.