1996 Topps Finest

The mediocrity of Topps Finest continued in '96 with a slight twist. This was their first issue that was numbered by Calculus majors. There were three different types of cards in the base set, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. These were not parallels, but actual separate cards. Then from these, the backgrounds were then again divided up into subsets such as "Prodigies" or "Franchise" just to name a few. Each card therefore had two numbers. It's number in the base set, and it's number in the subset.

Stupid I know. I will not attempt to list both numbers here (especially since my source for checklists did not number both and I do not own all these cards), but I can provide the G, S, or B designation.


The 1996 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:
S84 Cecil Fielder
S127 C. J. Nitkowski
B138 Phil Nevin
B152 Travis Fryman
B172 Chad Curtis
S223 Kimera Bartee
G290 Cecil Fielder
B336 Justin Thompson
B344 Cecil Fielder
B356 Tony Clark

There were also the refractor parallels of each card too. Yippee!

1995 Topps Finest

Again, I take issue with a set called Finest that contains someone as horribly bad as Sean Bergman, but I'm willing to let it go. I'm not really sure why Topps decided to add the protective laminate. Did anybody ever peel it off knowing that they were decreasing the value of valueless cards? Can you even decrease the value of a Sean Bergman card? Maybe if you unpeeled it and it became a Mike Moore card.......

The 1995 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:

3 Chris Gomez

42 Travis Fryman

107 Mickey Tettleton

124 Cecil Fielder

153 Mike Henneman

203 Alan Trammell

212 Tony Phillips

220 Lou Whitaker

257 Bobby Higginson

263 Chad Curtis

306 Sean Bergman

329 Felipe Lira

1994 Topps Finest

Year two of Topps Finest was a lot like year two of Stadium Club. Everybody who missed the boat the debut year before went out and bought these en masse, and Topps kept right on making more. (FTR, I still have never even seen a '93 TF card, hence why I missed blogging about them. What did they make, like a hundred of each card?)

The metallic finish gives it a cool look, but I question a set called "Finest" that includes Mike Moore, John Doherty, and Tim Belcher.

The 1994 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:

34 Mike Henneman

80 Eric Davis

83 Mike Moore

108 David Wells

159 Alan Trammell

178 Tony Phillips

219 Cecil Fielder

228 Travis Fryman

277 John Doherty

281 Mickey Tettleton

301 Tim Belcher

364 Lou Whitaker

388 Chad Kreuter

398 Bill Gullickson

435 Danny Bautista

The only insert in the actual Finest packs were the parallel refractor cards. There were "pre-production" inserts in Series 2 of regular Topps which looked just like the base cards, of which there was one Tiger.

159P Alan Trammell

2008 Topps Finest

There once was a time when Topps Finest were the biggest thing since sliced bread.

There once was also a time where you were lucky it they included three Tigers in the set.

There is now a time where you look at these and go ho-hum. Perhaps the fact that there are something like five or six different colored variations of each card has rendered this set irrelevant. 

Anyway, there is a decent selection of Tigers for such a small set.

10 Magglio Ordoñez

20 Miguel Cabrera

31 Gary Sheffield

81 Justin Verlander

95 Curtis Granderson

99 Dontrelle Willis

107 Ivan Rodriguez

I checked Topps website, and I think there are two insert cards. I've only found one, commemorating Verlander's no-hitter (on my birthday, a fact I never get tired of bringing up...) Supposedly there is one for Granderson too, but I've yet to find it anywhere. The Verlander is numbered to 99. It looks like a refractor, but it doesn't say so on the back, so who the hell knows.

FM-JV Justin Verlander

I don't have much else to add. But I should be receiving my Bowman team set shortly, which is one of the few releases that I look forward to.