1988 Topps Rack Pack

I recently added this unopend rack pack of 1988 Topps with the Wallach All-Star in the center spot by way of eBay.  Over the years I acquired a few other unopened packs with Wallach, but this is the first rack I've been able to get my hands on.  

I'd be hard pressed to come up with a better one.  The Wallach All-Star is in the prime center spot, flanked by a Dave Winfield All-Star insert and Alan Trammell.  As an extra bonus, there is a Tony Gwynn showing on the back.  Short of a the Wallach base card being in the Trammell spot, trying to improve this with say a Mattingly or Raines is really just nit-picking.  I may end up trying to frame this some how, but it's not a huge priority at the moment.  I'm just very happy to add it to the collection for now.  Below are some more photos of the pack.

             

2017 "Rediscover Topps" 1988 All-Star #399

Card Review: 9.2

This is one of my all-time favorite Wallach cards.  Well, not this one, the "real" one.  These "rediscover" cards make things confusing.  In any event, I'm docking this "2017" card a little bit for the unnecessary foil stamp that isn't on the "real" 1988 Topps All-Star card.  I'd dock it more, but the foil stamp is the only thing that makes this a "new" card.

I don't mind the concept of these things, but they certainly make life difficult for OCD-ish collector's like myself.

 
 

Number in my collection: 3

By Color:Blue: 1
Red: 1
Gold: 1

2017 "Rediscover Topps" 1988 Topps #560

(Gold)

Card Review: 9.1

I'm docking this card about a point from the 1988 Topps base card for the foil stamping.  I mean, it's still a 1988 Topps card, printed, packaged, and sold with gum back in '88.  Topps adding some gold stamping doesn't change that.

In any event, I believe this is the gold variation.  I'm in no hurry to over pay for the silver, bronze, red, and blue (or whatever else there may be).  If they start showing up on sportlots for 18¢ I'll go ahead and add them to my collection, but with one in hand, I'm not paying any more than that for an '88 Topps card.  I don't care what color the stamp is.

Number in my collection:

Gold: 1
Red: 1

(Red)

1988 Topps #399 All-Star

Card Review: 9.9 This card immediately became one of my favorite Wallach cards the second I pulled one from a pack for the first time.  I even remember the exact spot on the floor in the house in Phoenix where it happened.  My father's childhood friend Ross had flown in from Rome, NY to visit.  Ross came armed with a box of 1988 Topps, and cello pack box of '88 Topps for my brother and I to split.  My brother and I spread out on the floor to tear in and stuff our faces with gum.  

Ross owned a tobacco/candy distribution warehouse in Rome, and subsequently had cards much sooner then the general public.  So this was our first look at the set, and also made us the first kids in the neighborhood to have them by a couple of weeks.  Ross was always my brother and I's favorite visitor. This Wallach couldn't have been more impressive to me if it was glowing inside the pack.  I'm sure I took pause, slurring though a mouthful of gum, to show off this master piece to everyone else.

Ross was also the guy who started giving me a box of cards every year when I was born, well before I was old enough to do anything but drool and chew on them.  The '83 Topps box he gave me was the box I pulled my first Wallach from, and he inadvertently is to blame for starting this collection.

Wallach was a National League All-Star five times (and deserved to be at least another four times).  As a kid it used to irritate me to no end when he would make the All-Star team and not be included in the Topps All-Star subset.  I've learned since then, that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of how Topps did their "All-Stars."  They only took one player from each position, not all the All-Stars, making the actual All-Star team wasn't even required.  So the fact that Topps did two All-Star cards of Wallach wasn't a slight, especially considering he was never named a starter on the All-Star team (though he should have been at least two or three times).

In any event, this card was, and remains one of my All-Time favorite Wallach cards.  As an eight year old I actually had my mother (who was an art teacher, and remains a fantastic artist) draw a giant poster of this with crayons, which I proudly hung on the door of my room for a couple of years until there was nothing left scotch tape could do for it.  I'm sure she wished she hadn't because she ended up doing similar ones of other players for all the kids on the street.  By the end I think she was mailing it in, because there were some funky looking Don Mattingly and Kirby Puckett's coming out of her "studio."

Number of this card in my collection: 164

2013 update: 337

2014 update: 384

2015 update: 524 

2016 update: 579

2017 update: 607

2018 update: 705

2019 update: 763

2020 update: 823

2021 update: 826

2022 update: 931

2023 update: 953

2024 update: 1,006

2025 update: 1,025

2026 update: 1,029

1988 Topps Cloth

Card Review: Incomplete  I'm not sure what to make of this.  At $9.99 it's the 2nd most expensive Wallach "card" I've ever bought.  It's on "cloth" that is about as thick as a paper napkin if you were to peel it apart, but no where near as brittle.

I did some digging online and found a Card Collector Digest article on this set, and a youtube video testing the theory that they were made to grow and expand when submerged in water (they don't).  I'd like to see the guy try to rip one in half, but he doesn't.  To summarize the article and video: (1) there aren't very many of these, and (2) no one really seems to know what Topps was going for or why they scraped it.  (3) Of the cards out there, about half are still on uncut sheets, and the other half were cut like the one above.

Feel free to correct me in the comments if you know something I don't.

Number of this card in my collection: 1
2013 update: 2

1988 Topps File Folder

 I don't know how many of these were done, obviously fewer than the 792 cards that make up '88 Topps set, but more than a handful.  I'd guess in the neighborhood of about 25.  I remember having a few of these as a kid (never the Wallach), though for the life of me I can't remember who.  I think I had a few of the '89 ones too.  As far as I know this was the only one put out of Wallach.  I currently have 14 of them.  13 kept in the box they came in, and one that I stuff other odd-ball Wallach related items in.

I picked up my first one sometime in undergrad.  It was a period of time during which my collecting was almost non-existent.  I had other ways to waste time then that I found much more entertaining.  I lugged one of these around for a couple of semesters until it finally fell apart.  After Law School, I slowly resumed collecting, as my previous ways of wasting time were no longer acceptable, and stumbled upon a guy selling these and I gladly took them off his hands.

           

1988 Topps #560

Card Review: 9.9   Perhaps the single best photo Topps ever used for a Tim Wallach base card is the one on this card.  Coming off a monster season in 1987, it appears Topps put a little extra effort into Wallach's card, giving him the glamour number as well.  Toss in one of my all-time favorite Topps designs, and you have the recipe for a classic card.

If I'm being honest, I have to admit that at the time this was not one of my favorite Wallach cards.  I didn't dislike it by any means, but it wasn't on my short list for favorite all-time card.  Over last 25 years this card, and this set, has really grown on me.  I put it in my Top 5 and depending on my mood it gets consideration for #1 (though sentimentality will always have me go with 1983 Topps when pushed on the subject.

Fun Facts: *1988 was the first year Topps gave Tim a card # ending in "0", one of 4 he would receive
* 1988 was the 3rd of 8 straight years Topps would put Tim on a card # ending in "0" or "5," the so called "Glamour #'s" reserved for the biggest stars.
* This card was reproduced on a giant 8x11 school folder along with other mega-stars from the set

Number of this card in my collection: 125
2012 update: 138
2013 update: 403
2014 update: 442
2015 update: 536
2016 update: 602
2017 update: 625
2018 update: 700
2019 update: 745
2020 update: 796

2021 update: 798

2022 update: 874

2023 update: 938

2024 update: 967

2025 update: 981

2026 update: 982