A worthless baseball card can be priceless.
Looking at some stick-of-gum-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 and now you're probably hearing that dang song "Forever Young" in your head as you imagine sitting outside a Five-and-Dime, opening a Topps wax pack you bought with five dimes.
Well, the famous brand has some brand new cards that can take you back, too. Topps 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 only are available for 48 hours. Topps prints as many as were 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 fresh-faced 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. For me, it's much more enjoyable to be recreating iconic cards than just making new cards. I just feel like there's so much more history and purpose behind these cards."
Some of the selected 20 cards include the 1955 Sandy Koufax, 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 seen 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 by phone. "And a lot of these artists we work with, one of the reasons we picked them is because we knew they weren't going to just redraw a baseball card. So 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. Some people don't know what to make of it. 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."
Beck described his card's look as something like "scrapbooking in school. For me, it's how I started, it's the origin of me as an artist. I used to cut things out of newspapers, sketch things and kind of build it all up in my art sketchbooks.
" ... With the Gibson, I looked back at the original card and the initial thing that strikes me is the pink in it, because that's just such a rare color for a baseball card. And then I dove into a bit of research on Bob Gibson. For me being a basketball fan, I was amazed to hear that he played for the Harlem Globetrotters. So I kind of made a very small reference to that on the card. It is written on the bottom left of the card. What I did was actually I incorporated bits from the back of the card onto the front of the card, across certain areas. So his nickname is there and a bunch of minor-league stats _ because it was his rookie card."
Heckman said his e-commerce staff considered other Cardinals for Project 2020. Ozzie Smith was an option, but his rookie card was with the San Diego Padres.
Strategically, instead of releasing the set 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. For fans of any age, and even for those who stopped collecting cards decades ago, it can provide a thrill of anticipation and nostalgia.
"I grew up collecting in the '80s and early '90s," said Heckman, 41. "The first set that I remember was the 1985 Topps set ... . I have vivid memories of putting cards in binders and going to little drugstores and getting my parents to give me an extra quarter to get a pack of cards ... . All these '80s cards (in Project 2020) are recognizable and were a huge part of my childhood."
