Wrapped in Plastic, It's Fantastic! 3

I hadn't planned on picking up anything from the 2015 Topps Archives Signature Series product, but as the cards started popping up on eBay I found that there were some items on the checklist that appealed to me. For this product Topps added foil stamps to buyback cards, had the baseball players autograph them, and then encased them in plastic slabs to sell in one-card boxes. I've already shown off a 1990 Topps Jim Abbott and a 1989 Topps Traded John Kruk card from the set, but there was one other name on the checklist that I wanted to chase down: Rollie Fingers.

My main problem was deciding which Rollie Fingers card to chase. I wanted one that showed his iconic mustache and I eventually settled on this 1981 Topps example. There is something odd going on with the 1981 Topps Rollie Fingers buybacks in this set. There are two different print runs, and I can't tell what differentiates them from each other. There are examples numbered # / 44 and examples # / 11. As far as I can tell they are the same cards, not reprints or O-Pee-Chee variations or anything like that. They are just the same card with different print runs. I put a lot of bids in on both types and eventually came away with one from the # / 11 print run, with this copy being # 06 / 11.

With the addition of this card I have acquired all the cards I set out to get from the 2015 Topps Archives Signature Series product. They make great additions to various parts of my collection. I think this was pretty neat as a one-shot product, but it has the potential to get stale unless each year has an entirely different checklist of players. I think that would be difficult to manage and it probably wouldn't be more than a couple of years before the pool of Hall of Famers and fan favorites got depleted to the point that Topps would be sorely tempted to reuse players. So I hope that Topps doesn't run this thing into the ground.