Topps Packaging Formats

[Rich Klein]

Originally Posted by deweyinthehall

In a decision I'm bound to regret, I've begun looking into the packaging formats for Topps baseball in the late 90s-early 00's.

For earlier years it was simple - wax, cello, rack, vending, repeat.

But by 1998 it had become pretty wild - 8 cards, 11 cards, 16 cards, 40 cars, retail, hobby, HTA, Blasters, etc.

Before I go too much deeper - is anyone aware of a source that already might show all the packaging options for a given year? TCDB and the Baseball Card Pedia each are lacking material that a quick e-Bay search provides.

Many years ago, through about 2007 or 8 I wrote many of the distribution methods for the Beckett OPG. Here is an example of that. It stops in either 2007 or 2008

https://www.beckett.com/baseball/2003/topps/

The information you want is in the set information field.

Regards
Rich

[deweyinthehall]

Thanks. Even 2003, though, was released in many other formats - 12 card packs/24 per box, 11 pack blaster boxes, etc.

[Zach Wheat]

This isn't an exact answer to your question but you might want to track this by the Topps Product Code. Most producers have something similar. Originally, I started tracking this to find out if 1991 Topps DS cards had a different Topps Product Code over the normal 1991 Topps (they didn't) but quickly realized I was looking for something different.

Topps Product Codes are printed are both sheets at the time of printing, the wrappers as well as the final boxes.

Here are several links that might be helpful; the first link pertains to Pokemon cards, but discusses the same concept. I am not aware of an up to date Topps list by year and product type....

https://toppspokemontradingcards.com...ectorGuide.htm

https://forums.collectors.com/discus...om-80s-and-90s

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=282238

Good luck!