Topping themselves
Some of your favorite players get an artistic rebirth by Topps
Topps applying a modern twist to some of their classic baseball cards.
A worthless baseball card can be priceless.
Looking at some stick-ofgum-stained cardboard from 1987 can provide an experience that temporarily transports you to your childhood, as you’re transfixed by the image and homage to a hero draped in a cap, not a cape.
The ballplayer is forever young, you’re forever young as you imagine sitting outside a Five-and-Dime, opening a Topps wax pack you bought with five dimes.
Well, Topps has some brand new cards that can take you back, too. The company is releasing iconic cards from the past, but redesigned by modern artists. It’s a creative and ambitious initiative called Project 2020.
For the year 2020, Topps had the first-year cards of 20 players recreated 20 times by 20 artists. Every Monday-Friday, Topps unveils two of the cards on its website — each for sale at $20 (well, $19.99). The cards are only available for 48 hours. Topps prints as many as are purchased and ordered online, and that’s it.
And one of the 20 cards is a Card — the 1959 Bob Gibson. Inside a circle in the center of the card, there’s the freshfaced pitcher from the chest up. The rest of the card is pink. And in all lowercase, “bob gibson” streaks above the circle atop the card. So far, Topps has released four versions of the Gibson rookie card — from artists Tyson Beck, Sophia Chang, Keith Shore and a man who goes by the name Grotesk.
“I’ve never done anything like this Project 2020, which has just gone crazy,” Beck said from his home in Australia. “As soon as they pitched me the idea of recreating iconic baseball cards, I’m like — I’m all in. Some of them are the most-iconic cards ever, and to be given the keys to kind of get to just do what you want with them, it’s just unreal.”
Some of the selected 20 cards include the 1955 Sandy Koufax, the 1955 Roberto Clemente, the 1975 George Brett, the 1987 Mark McGwire and the 1993 Derek Jeter issues. Some of the selected 20 artists include extremely popular creators such as Ben Baller (1.4 million followers on
Instagram), Mister Cartoon (633,000 followers), Joshua Vides (164,000 followers) and Beck (92,000 followers).
The inspiration for Project 2020 came from crossover collaborations in the sneaker and fashion industries.
“We tried to pick 20 artists that had a very unique and different styles, and then we said, ‘Have at it,’ ” said Topps’ global director of e-commerce Jeff Heckman. “We wanted to take a really different approach to this and be like, ‘Hey, you’re a tattoo artist, by trade. You’re a jeweler. You’re somebody who does splatter art, why don’t you do baseball cards?’
“And it really is art. So a lot of the reaction we’ve seen has been the way people react to art. Some people love it. Some people don’t care for it. Some people are middle of the road. And that’s great, because that’s what art is, right? Not everybody looks at Monet and Picasso and things in museums the same way.”
For instance, the Gibson card by Grotesk is sharp, whereas the Gibson card by Shore is — again, just one man’s opinion — grotesque. Each card is unique. For instance, Chang’s design pops with white asterisk-like stars scattered across the card and stencil drawings of a glove, ball and his nicknames “Gibby” and “Hoot.”
Strategically, instead of releasing the set all at once, they’re releasing two each weekday. It’s a clever initiative. And, without baseball so far in 2020, Topps’ weekday releases of Project 2020 cards is at least something to look forward to involving the national pastime.