COMC Challenge: 1997 Topps Mint

To begin we’d like to thank Scott Allen for being the winner of COMC Challenge #3.  He earned 1.300 history points for providing a great link to a checklist for the N245 Actor and Actresses set. Those cards are extremely popular and a great telescope to famous people in the late 19th century.

For Challenge #4, we are going to return to baseball and 1997 for another real mystery. 

For those who may be new to reading this column, the purpose is to show off a set that’s a bit of a question mark and hope you can provide the answer.  So far, you haven’t disappointed!  The end result is that COMC.com gets the information to use in being able to identify sets and cards sent in by collectors. Their verifiers do an astonishing job and have gotten better and better as the years have gone on but there are still mysteries to solve and this is one of them.

I’d like to thank Grant from COMC who sent me a link to a Freedom Cardboard Message Board thread about the 1997 Topps Mint set. I love when people send me information about sets which are not well known in the hobby and it’s great to know that it was someone from COMC carrying the passion for the hobby even after his work day has ended. That’s true of everyone at COMC it seems.

Here is a link to that thread http://www.freedomcardboard.com/forum/baseball/129101-1997-topps-mint.html and the description is pretty straight forward.

Our questions are, is there a checklist and a full set known? Were these cards the prototypes for what became the 1998 Stars and Steel set?  Tell us what you know or what you surmise.  You can see a sample Greg Maddux image at left.

I do not remember seeing these cards in 1997 and I don’t think any members of the Beckett Baseball Price Guide team noticed them either.

The exciting part of this chase is this is very hard to find an answer online because of the conflicting search terms due to the word ‘Mint’ in the title.

This COMC Challenge is to let us know whether you might have a full set for which you can provide a checklist or maybe you can at least add to the few cards we know about. The winner will receive 1,000 History Points from COMC.

We’d like to thank Pete Calfas of Lake Forest, IL for the scans. Much appreciated and good luck to all.

Drop me a note ([email protected]) and we’ll pick a winner next week.

COMC.com is pioneering safe and easy online consignment of your sports cards. You send them in, COMC lists them and you price them. You can also buy from a massive inventory of submitted cards. To get started, visit COMC.com.

Related Stories:

Chatting with Sid Bream: His Earliest Cards, TTM Requests and Greg Maddux Notes: Maddux to Sign at NSCC; Bruins Cup Jerseys; Fanatics-Kohl’s Partnering Interactive Infancy: 1997 Donruss VXP 1.0 CD-ROM COMC Challenge: 1951 Burger Beer Cincinnati Reds COMC Challenge: Checklist for This Set of Negro Leaguers COMC Challenge: White/Silver Variations in 1994 Collectors Choice COMC Challenge: Can You ID One of the Other Cards From This Jumbo Retail Set? Launch of The COMC Challenge: Help Complete Checklists