Nope, Definitely Not Collecting "Throwback Thursday"

I had sort of lost track of what was going on with Topps' weekly "Throwback Thursday" sets. I'd subscribed to email updates from Topps a little over a year ago, and ordered a 6-card Throwback Thursday set in the early part of this year because I thought it looked quite handsome. Blogged about it here, in fact. But I mean, yeah - these are just money-grubbing limited edition sets designed to make suckers out of all of us, right? Also - that and the fact that Topps started sending me emails every single goddamn day, to the point where I had to unsubscribe. Now I'm so unsubscribed that I can't seem to re-subscribe, even though I want to. So this is why I forgot about "Throwback Thursday" as a concept, and why I missed out on a few phenomenal-looking cards.

Folks, that's why there's an eBay. There will always be someone ready to make a buck off on top of someone else's buck. I'd seen a scan of Topps TBT set #39, which features "six lightning fast players, current and retired", based on a Topps "World on Wheels" design from 1954 (which is in itself a pretty cool set featuring cars - check it out here). It's in an edition of 1,665. There's a Trout card and a Luis Robert card and even a Trea Turner card. The first two I didn't really want to spring the $ for; the latter I don't think I saw. But the other three just looked so awesome that I bought them straight-up on eBay. I simply had to. Ricky Henderson you can see above. Here are the other two I went for:

I'll treasure them forever and always. But I wasn't done buying Throwback Thursday cards, or so I found out. Set #36 featured "six next-generation stars", and is based on a 1998 design. Well one of those cards was Mike Yastrzemski, or the "real Yaz" as we call him around here. Again, it was something I couldn't pass up, even if it was being sold by some grubby capitalist totally trying to exploit the dignity of my labor. But no, I am definitely, absolutely not collecting "Throwback Thursday" cards, no way.

The Real Yaz

Giants fans, like any fans, have to take our thrills where we can get 'em when the team is bad, and in 2019 a big chunk of those thrills came from 29-year-old rookie Mike Yastrzemski, also known as "the REAL Yaz". You may know him as Carl Yastrzemski's grandson. We know him as the guy who hit 3 home runs in one game in his rookie season; who clubbed 21 in total last year in only 371 at-bats, and who hit a healthy .272 and played a marginally decent outfield to boot.

It's nice to have him around, and certainly it would be even nicer to see if he can eke out even more value in 2020. Who knows what awards Mike would be running away with right now?

Anyway, in the course of putting together some 2020 Giants sets, I've got my first Mike Yastrzemski cards in hand. I don't think he's someone I'll be collecting as a matter of course - he may not last beyond whatever our next baseball season's going to be - but while he's at the peak of his powers, it's nice to have a few of his cards around. Here's what they look like, starting with a 2020 Heritage Chrome parallel, and then this 2020 Gypsy Queen you see here:

Here's the normal 2020 Heritage. I really do love the look of 1971 Topps, and it's great to see Heritage finally catch up to this year.

Finally, in the same 2020 Topps Heritage set is this "New Age Performers" card. Until next time, please enjoy these cards of the superior Yastrzemski!