Q&A – Where Does This Barry Bonds Card Come From?

Question: Where does this Barry Bonds card come from? The design looks like 1997 Topps Baseball, but the photo and card number are different. Please help!

Answer: Cool find. Throughout the 90’s Topps would issue Pre-Production cards promoting that year’s newest card designs. Your Barry Bonds card is one of those cards. Topps issued them to promote the 1997 Topps Baseball design. Various outlets that Topps dealt with received them.

Nine cards (#PP1-#PP9) make up the 1997 Topps Baseball Pre-Production set.

• Frank Thomas #PP1
• Brady Anderson #PP2
• Barry Bonds #PP3
• Eric Young #PP4
• Ricky Bottalico #PP5
• Royce Clayton #PP6
• Tom Goodwin #PP7
• Craig Biggio #PP8
• Ellis Burks #PP9

Each card in the Pre-Production set utilizes the same photo that went on to be used in the main base set EXCEPT for Barry Bonds. The Barry Bonds Pre-Production card and base set card have two different images making it a bit more desirable.

Hockey Refs & Baseball Umps Come To Lil’ Teammates

Like a lot of collectors I received this Halloween flyer in my e-mail yesterday from Lil’ Teammates.  It looks like the NFL, NCAA, NHL, and MLB Collectible Team Sets sold exclusively at Kohl’s contain referees and umpires.  Lil’ Teammates has had NFL referees widely available for a while, but this is the first time they’ve issued hockey referees and baseball umpires.  Currently the hockey refs and baseball umpires aren’t sold separately, but they are thinking about possibly doing that for the holiday shopping season.