Cards You’ve Never Seen: 1992 Topps Debut ’91 Todd Van Poppel Promo

It isn’t too often that you get a look at the prototypes and mockups of Topps’ oddball and direct market sets of the Junk Wax era. One of my favorite sets and one that I wish could’ve continued through the 1990s is the Topps Debut set, featuring each player who made their major league debut the previous season. Image a 1993 Topps Debut ’92 Mike Piazza or a 1996 Topps Debut ’95 Mariano Rivera…plenty of interesting what-ifs there.

This is the only known prototype from the 1990-1992 sets as far as I could find. There is a Golden Spikes Award version of Alex Fernandez’s 1991 Topps Debut ’90 card, which also happens to come in two versions itself. Looks like Mr. Van Poppel was the lucky subject of their testing out the design elements for the final version. While this card is likely just a mockup and was probably never printed, please comment if you can confirm a physical copy. I’d love to showcase it here, especially images of both sides.

1992 Topps Blackless (Missing Ink) Variations

A recent trip to the card shop in search of some junk boxes yielded one1992 Topps Wax Box and one 1997 Score Hobby Reserve Box (complete waste of money). The Topps box was quite a score because almost every other pack had two Match The Stats game cards, which were the primary reason for the purchase. But in the last quarter of packs, these two cards popped out:

Quick Look: 1992 Topps 1000 Yard Club GOLD Variations

Check out this rare look at one of the scarcer early-90’s insert sets produced; 1992 Topps 1000 Yard Club Gold was an unannounced parallel to the rack-issued insert. To this day, very little info is known about them such as how many were made and what their method of distribution was (though random rack insertion seems the most obvious).

The Barry Sanders card pictured below is the only copy of this parallel that I have ever seen in person: