Over on Facebook, I posted photos of a bunch of nifty minor league baseball programs and Mets baseball cards that I got from Jeff yesterday. I haven’t had any baseball card posts in the past few days, so I thought I’d focus on this Mike Piazza Record Breakers insert as our “Mets baseball card of the moment.”
Since it celebrates Piazza setting a new Mets’ single-season RBI record in 1999, I initially thought it was a 2000 Topps baseball card. It’s actually from 2002.
I remember Record Breakers as a way for Topps to include an extra card of players who had some sort of notable accomplishment in the base set in the late 1980s when I’d first started collecting baseball cards. (I’m not sure a player setting a single-season team record would’ve necessarily made the cut then, but Piazza was – and is – a big star, so why not?)
By the early 1990s, Record Breakers had fallen out of fashion but at some point after I’d gotten away from baseball card collecting, they came back as inserts. Only in the revived format, they were a vehicle to feature star players rather than chronicle the previous season.
I like the card front, which features a photo of Piazza in front of a giant Mets logo. I’m not sure what the purple stuff is supposed to symbolize, but it’s definitely got the “broken” look going so it’s appropriate for a “Record Breakers” card. I’m less sold on the minimalist back, but at least the writeup is in big enough text to read and stands out on the yellow background.
PaulHadsall.com 