Are These Some of the Coolest and Most Overlooked Baseball Cards of 2014?
When you're busting packs of flagship Topps Baseball, you're probably not thinking of landing a massive hit. It's a low-end product that's about every but the hits. Sure, boxes in recent years promise one but most of the time it's a very small and very plain swatch. For the most part, 2014 Topps Series 2 Baseball is the same. But the Trajectory Jumbo Relics, which aren't ridiculously tough, offer swatches normally reserved for high-end brands like Museum Collection, Tier One and Five Star.
Trajectory Jumbo Relics are an expansion of sorts for the basic Trajectory inserts that were in 2014 Topps Series 1. The name carried over to Series 2, but only as autographs and relics. Jumbo Relics are numbered to 99, which is very high for premium gamers in a flagship Topps set.
At that type of print run, it would be safe to expect plain, single-color swatches. And while those do exist (along with bat slices), about half of them come with a more compelling swatch like a seam stripe or even an instantly recognizable patch piece.
So the checklist stinks, right? It's not all old-time Hall of Famers, but there are some solid names in the 2014 Topps Trajectory Jumbo Relics set. They include Mark McGwire, Felix Hernandez and Mike Trout. Quality swatches are normally paired up by the player. For example, a lot of the Billy Hamilton and Pedro Alvarez have awesome patches while Ken Griffey has a big white swatch.
One would think that the combination of patches galore and flagship Topps would result in massive prices. That's not the case here. There are some exceptions, but most, not matter how big or distinct the patch, are going for under $50 on eBay.
The following gallery features some of the highlights of what's surfaced so far. Not all of the jumbo relics in this set are this spectacular but there are more of them than you might think.
2014 Topps Series 2 Trajectory Jumbo Relics Highlight Gallery
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Dave L
Why would Topps use what is clearly a piece of a Phillies uniform while showing a young Steve Carlton as a Cardinal? Add this to the list of reasons why Topps is pointless. Wainwright and Miller representing Cardinals already. Not a Phillie in this subset. Very little Phillies love to be found from Topps in general.