Contains more Mike Piazza than the Hall of Fame

When we last checked in with Topps revivals of decades past, we saw the unenthusiastic return of Stadium Club.  With a generic format, terrible photography, and no standout cards, it looked like Topps had pushed the modern-retro thing just a bit too far.  After all, the Major League cards in Archives were a huge hit, Gold Label returned in a classy, though limited, form, and Finest had one of its best designs in more than 20 years.  Stadium Club seemed to show that Topps was out of ideas, but they didn’t stop there.  Topps dug back into the turn of the century well for one of its shortest-lived but fondest-remembered experiments: Tek.

Topps Tek ran from just 1998 to 2000.  In a departure from cardboard, Tek is an all-acetate product.  Plastic cards?  It’s an interesting novelty, but it wouldn’t last.  The product’s unique hook was that each player is featured on a variety of different patterned backgrounds.  The 1998 version, which featured John Olerud and Mike Piazza as Mets, had 90 different patterns for each player.  The 1999 version (with Piazza), cut that to 30 but had two photograph variants for each player.  2000 (again Piazza) narrowed the checklist even more with just 20 different patterns, five each with four different photographs, the last five being colored pattern short prints.  Tek was tailor-made for player collectors and made base cards relevant again. And then it was gone.  The rise of autographs and memorabilia and the eventual emergence of parallels pushed quirky concepts like Tek aside.  Those player sets were fun to chase but almost impossible to finish.  Tek was a journey.  14 years later, the journey begins anew. Read more »