A Most Excellent Collecting Adventure

A few days ago the official trailer came out for Bill & Ted: Face The Music.

You can see the trailer below

I talked about my excitement for this movie last year as part of my 80s week.

To say I am excited for this movie is a huge understatement.

Bill & Ted debuted in 1989 in Bill & Ted: Excellent Adventure.

I have shown off some of these 1989 inspired Topps cards in the past.

In 2014, Bowman officially announced they were back (did they ever really go away?) With a "diamond refractor" card inspired by 1989 Bowman.  The image used is from the 2013 All-Star game.

The insert set was officially dubbed Bowman is Back and featured a card back in a style similar to those oversized 1989 Bowman cards.


1987 Topps was the first set I ever put together with my dad, but 1989 is when I considered myself a kid who collected baseball cards.  I loved that set and think that Topps should show it more love.

2014 Topps Chrome released a chrome version of Cutch using a 1989 design.

This is where things get fun.

Where there's Chrome, there's usually Superfractors.

And I have it!
I wrote about it over 2 years ago.

As a kid who opened probably a case of 1989 Topps, I never thought there would be pieces of jersey or bats used by my favorite players embedded in the cards.

Look at how awesome that looks.
These rarely pop up for sale these days and are all numbered to only 25 copies or less.

And to wrap up my collecting adventure is a pair of 2014 Topps mini diecuts that were available in Series 1 and Series 2 packs.

 I love these mini cards.

Kudos to Topps for actually doing a different writeup on the back.


Topps isn't the only manufacturer that recognizes that fans cling to nostalgia.
Panini released a 1989 Donruss MVP inspired subset in their 2019 Optic release.  Some players had base versions and some players had autograph only versions.

Cutch got the autograph only treatment and all the different parallels feature on card signatures.

Many of these are numbered to 3 or less copies.

The set featured a pretty diverse group of signers from Keith Hernandez, Willie McGhee, Kevin Mitchell, and Jose Canseco to legendary players like Ken Griffey Jr, Brooks Robinson, Ryne Sandberg, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Frank Thomas.  There are also fan favorites like Steve Garvey, Dale Murphy and Cutch.  The hit king, Pete Rose, has an auto in it as well.

The sequel to Bill & Ted came in 1991 with the release of Bill & Ted: Bogus Journey.

I have a few 1991 cards featuring Cutch thanks to a 2016 Topps Archives release that used the 1991 design as one of the 3 designs that year.

The nice thing about Cutch appearing on the 1991 design for 2016 Archives is that there is an Operation Desert Shield SSP variant to go with the blue and red border parallels.

The black border 1/1 is stunning with the black alternate jersey

The back shows Cutch's impressive run as the leader in the National League in many offensive categories.

Topps began to really start pushing their 5x7 cards in 2016 and I was fortunate to grab a gold parallel numbered to 10 copies.

Panini got into the nostalgia throwback game as well when they released a 1991 Donruss Studio inspired card as part of their Father's Day release.

Above is the black and white test proof (/5 copies), Base, and Lava flow parallel.

The back discusses Cutch's enjoyment of the Discovery Chanel and dubstep music.

Getting multiple 1/1s of Cutch in 1989 and 1991 designs has been both a most excellent adventure and a totally bogus journey.

With a career heading towards a twilight and it looking more and more like there won't be a baseball season this year, it is time to Face The Music that new releases of Cutch will likely become less available.