For the first time in a long time. Topps (Fanatics?) has gone this far intime without releasing the next years design.
Usually the have released the design before the prior baseball season ended.
Growing up in the 1970s, collecting Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey card, usually the first time you saw the new card designs was when you bought your first pack and opened it up. For me, that was the case until the early 1980s.
Once I reached my late teens in the early 1980s, I realized it was just easier to send away for a complete set as opposed to trying to complete a set through packs. 2 of the companies I remember using (from ads in the Sporting News) Renata Galasso and Larry Fritsch card to get my sets. I think it was 1984 in an advertisement I saw the Topps design (I think it was Strawberry) before I got the cards / at the time they were released. The think Baseball Card Magazine previewed the cards before they were released beginning in the mid 1980s.
However, I can still take myself back to my childhood days and remember holding those unopened packs in my hand and just wondering what awaited me inside. For some reason those first 1972-73 Topps Hockey packs generates that greatest feeling for me.
I know that it is an impossibility today to not see the cards until you open the pack - but we can only wish.
I definitely didn't care for having the design released during the season. Now that it's 2024 I think it would be fine to release it, but it doesn't bother me that they haven't.
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