Today is National Baseball Card Day, according to Topps anyway. As I’m sure you’re aware if you’ve made your way to this blog, I’m a big fan of baseball cards — even as an adult. The main call for NBCD is to get collectors into hobby shops and buy cards. Topps facilitates this by providing shop owners “free” packs to distribute to customers for coming in and/or buy cards. Well, since there’s a pandemic going on, the idea of going to a card shop today seems particularly dubious. Still, I try to not be a scrooge for any holiday, let alone one that caters to my interest in particular. So here’s how I celebrated today.

Earlier this week, Topps unveiled the design for their 2021 flagship release. In addition to disappointing many “collectors” by revealing Jo Adell rookie cards won’t be in any 2020 product, the reception was overwhelmingly sour. I found a lot of issues with the design and tried my hand at rectifying them a bit to meet in the middle of what Topps decided on and what I consider to be “good”. The finished product still has a few flaws but I’d call it a definite upgrade.

Well, since that day, I’ve been in a card designing mood, leading me to spend my Saturday putting together a few more design ideas for what some might consider a more traditional baseball card look. So here are 4 new designs (2 cards of each) that I think bring to mind some of the rich history of baseball card design without ripping anything off entirely. Hopefully these bridge the gap between traditional and modern.