My Longest Run Of A Single Player’s Topps Cards

Lying in bed, unsleeping, I got to thinking about someone in my virtual social circles who collects entire runs of players.

It got me thinking “Of the players for whom I have all of their base Topps cards, I wonder… which one has the longest run?”

My collection is very scattershot and focus has never been my strong point.  I could barely keep up with the new cards when it went from one set (Topps) to three sets (Topps, Fleer Donruss) in 1981, and it just got worse in 1988 and forward… for example, I have always intended to finish sets like 1982 Topps and 1984 Fleer, but never got around to it because I’d be on to the next set.

After pondering the “longest run” concept in the darkness, I got up the next morning, fired up my database and started trying to figure out who had the longest run.

The first step I took was to group my cards by name and then determine which players I have the most base Topps cards of…  I figured that the longest streak probably falls within these players.

The highest counts are as follows;

• 26 cards:  Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens
• 25 cards:  “Dave Roberts” (Which I know isn’t really 25 cards of one player because my collection has 3 different guys named “Dave Roberts”)
• 24 cards:  Alex Rodriguez (please let it not be him), Joe Torre (many cards as manager), Rickey Henderson
• 23 cards:  “Frank Thomas” (same situation as “Dave Roberts”)
• 22 cards:  Lou Piniella (Really?  Wow), Mark McGwire
• 21 cards:  Bert Blyleven, Carlton Fisk, Charlie Hough, Rusty Staub, Tom Seaver

What’s interesting about this list is that it’s not until you get to Rusty Staub and Tom Seaver that I would say “Yes, I collect him”.

So the next thing I did was write a query to see if I had a complete run of any of these guys.  I was certain that I did not have a complete run of Nolan Ryan or Tom Seaver because their pricey early cards are standing between me and some vintage Mets team sets.

Looking at that list, I also realized that Cal Ripken is not on there even though he’s a player I casually collect (Mrs. Shlabotnik loves him), and that brings up a significant issue with my data – Cal Ripken is in my database as both “Cal Ripken” and “Cal Ripken Jr.”.

I write another query to search for base Topps cards which contain “Cal Ripken” with or without the “Jr” and I find that I own 19 cards of Cal — but I’m missing 2 cards from the 1990s. SHAME ON ME!

So, one by one, I do similar queries on the players above, and because I was enjoying the research I put a couple of other spins on things, which you’ll see in a moment.

Before I get to the winners in a couple of categories as well as the overall winner, let’s run through some honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention #1: I have every Topps Rusty Staub card except for his pricey, high-numbered rookie card… my incomplete run is 21 cards running from 1964 to 1986 – keep in mind that Rusty did not have Topps cards in 1972 and 1973

Honorable Mention #2: I’m also missing just one card from what would be 23 consecutive Bert Blyleven cards.  In this case we’re talking about a player I’ve never chased (outside of set builds). It’s happenstance that I have so many cards of Bert, and the one card I’m missing is not expensive, but I just didn’t happen to acquire it.

Additional Honorable Mentions: I want to list some other long runs so I can justify the research I did…

19 years:  Jerry Reuss (1971 – 1990)

17 years:  Eddie Murray (1978 – 1997);  Mike Jorgensen (1970 – 1986);  Keith Hernandez (1975 – 1990);  Willie Randolph (as a player, 1976 – 1993 – I’m missing a card as a manager because that card was listed as a Yankees card in my database)

What is believed to be my longest current streak (not counting 2023):

Evan Longoria, 14 years starting in 2009

Longest run out of the players I actively collect as part of a team or player collection:

Jim “The Toy Cannon” Wynn — I have every one of his 14 Topps cards from 1964 to 1977.

(Note:  The 1977 Yankees card is a Burger King card, and it’s here because I reused an image instead of scanning just the 1977 Topps card).

AND NOW…

My biggest complete Topps run of any player…

…Not a guy I actively collect (but it is someone who falls into the “kinda like” category)…

…Spanning 23 years from 1972 to 1994…

CHARLIE HOUGH!!!!

I dig knuckleballers like Hough, so there may have been a slightly greater effort to collect Hough than your average run of the mill player, but never in my life have I thought “I should collect Charlie Hough”.

…Until now.

EPILOGUE

This was fun to research and write, but ended up being more work than I’d intended… Mostly because I struggled to put my hands on a few of these Charlie Hough cards, which just underlines how much more work I need to do in organizing and streamlining my collection. (This is where regular readers of this blog say “So what else is new?”)

On the plus side, I added a few new goals to my list for 2023 and stumbled across a batch of unused and much-needed 9-pocket sheets.

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