Underrated Brand: 1998 Topps Stars

By the late-90’s, competition in The Hobby was fierce. Pinnacle, Fleer, Upper Deck and Donruss were coming up with some of the most insane, innovative and beautiful designs collectors had ever seen. You’d be amazed what one can do when the budget doesn’t involve buying up game-used jerseys and throwing them into a shredder.

Topps wasn’t resting on their laurels mind you but it appeared that every time they tried something new, it would fail miserably (Laser, D3). If it weren’t for their Bowman and Finest lines, you’d think they flat out gave up trying to compete during that era.

While I have written many times about their successful Bowman Chrome introduction, Finest & Refractor debut, along with other popular brands of theirs, often, the short-lived Stars brand gets overlooked. While Stars did make it all the way into 2001, for me one of their best releases came in 1998.

For starters, every base card had five parallels; Bronze, Red, Silver, Gold, and the most-rare, Gold Rainbow, numbered to 99. The Galaxy insert line (see scan below) also had parallels, some which were numbered as low as 5. Odds of pulling one of those cards were 1:13,643 packs.

To add to an already loaded product, there were classic Rookie Reprints along with Rookie Reprints Autographs of Hall of Fame guys like Johnny Bench and Mike Schmidt. Back in 1998, autographs were not guaranteed and were extremely difficult to pull. Oh, did I mention they are all signed directly on-card?

There are a few ‘98 Stars boxes on eBay with prices around the $50-$60 dollar range but if you are patient you will be able to get it for a little cheaper as more hit the secondary market. It’s a cheap, fun product with great potential that I would highly recommend to any and every collector.