Night Owl Cards

  Twelve years ago I wrote a post about the return of the Topps Future Star(s) label and my lack of appreciation for it when Topps first broke it out in the late 1980s (although it also used "Future Stars" to describe its three-player prospect cards at the start of the decade).   Since first returning in 2014 -- actually its second return as the Future Stars went on hiatus for 1992 and 1993 before coming back in 1994 -- the Future Star has continued strong for every Topps flagship set except for one. It's so much a standard part of the base set now that I don't think anyone even notices it anymore, at least certainly not like collectors did in the late 1980s.   There's a reason for that, I think, outside of showing up every year. I went through the last 12 years and broke down the Future Stars for each. The idea for this post began as a dissection of the Future Star(s) logo, but I found totaling Future Stars for each year more interesting.   Let's start with ...

So, the "Future Stars" subset is back. Everyone knew it was coming back because when Topps released its prototype of the 2014 design back in August , it plastered "Future Stars" script on its Yasiel Puig mock-up card. Topps is obviously rather proud that the "Future Stars" are back. It's a nod to collecting from the 1980s when Topps first featured the phrase on its cards. Those who first collected back then probably got all gushy when learning that it would reappear. Me? Well, other than indicting "Future Stars" for the ruination of the card collecting hobby, I didn't give it much thought. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's look at the beginning of the "Future Stars" tradition. And no, I'm not starting with 1987 Topps. "Future Stars" first arrived in 1980 with Topps' traditional rookies subset. In previous subsets, Topps labeled the new players "rookie stars" or "rooki...