A Classic Set with a Simple Design
If there were a Mount Rushmore of the most recognizable baseball cards released in the 1980s, Mark McGwire’s 1985 Topps Team USA card would arguably be etched in stone. However, when the 1985 Topps Baseball set was released, McGwire wasn’t considered the top chase card. Kirby Puckett, Roger Clemens, Dwight Gooden, and Eric Davis burst onto the scene a year earlier, and they were the featured rookie cards in the 1985 set.
Mix in seasoned veterans like Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, and George Brett, and young stars like Don Mattingly, Cal Ripken Jr., Wade Boggs, and Darryl Strawberry, and the ’85 Topps Flagship release is one of the most nostalgic sets for Generation X collectors.
Mark McGwire and a Simple Topps Design
“The mid-1980s was not only a great time to be a collector, but it was in the middle of this big surge that we were experiencing in The Hobby,” said longtime collector Joe Orlando. “That set was one of those new releases at the time that was at the center of all that energy.”
Orlando, a former PSA president and current executive vice president of sports auctions at Heritage Auctions, has always enjoyed the design of the 1985 Topps set.
“Obviously, it’s very simple compared to the reflective technology that dominates the cards of 2025 and in recent times,” Orlando said. “But that was also part of its charm. When you look back at the history of baseball card manufacturing, sometimes it’s the sets that have the simple designs that are the most attractive to collectors.”
In 1985, Mark McGwire was in the Oakland Athletics’ minor league system, and he really didn’t hit the radar of collectors until he blasted a then-rookie-record 49 home runs during the 1987 campaign. His rookie season, paired with his record-breaking 1998 year in which he hit 70 home runs, has catapulted the significance of McGwire’s 1985 Topps card.
“If I recall correctly, I remember that card hit a whopping 20 dollars at the end of the ’87 season when he broke the rookie home run record,” Orlando said. “Just a couple years earlier, when the 1985 Topps issue was released, you could buy that card for a nickel, and I mean that literally.”
The McGwire, with its Team USA distinction, is the card that will always stand out the most for that year’s Topps release for collector Lanny Ribes as well.
“His rookie or his XRC or whatever you want to call it, it’s the first time [Topps] had ever done anything like that in a regular set,” Ribes said. “That was the only set that he was in for a couple years. Obviously, Clemens, Puckett, and Gooden all were big names back then, but I honestly think that McGwire was what put that set over the top.”
Subsets Galore in 1985 Topps Baseball
The 1985 Topps Flagship run was chock full of subsets and unique designs that made it fun for collectors. The most desired were the cards of the Team USA players from the 1984 Olympic team. McGwire was joined by 15 of his teammates in that subset, including Oddibe McDowell, Bill Swift, and Shane Mack. A young shortstop named Barry Larkin was also on that team, but he was excluded from the Topps set because he was still playing college baseball, and his amateur status could have been compromised by being included in the set.
The ’85 Topps set starts out with 10 Record Breaker cards, with Ryan, Rose, and Gooden leading the way. There’s also the First Draft Pick subset, which features 12 No. 1 overall picks from previous years, headlined by Harold Baines and Strawberry. Then, of course, there are the 22 All-Star cards and 13 big-league “father and son” cards, including Yogi and Dale Berra and Ray and Bob Boone.
“That was the first time I’d ever seen a father-son card, because they did it back in one of the ’70s sets,” Ribes said.
Building 1985 Topps Baseball Sets
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ribes decided to build complete sets of all releases in the 1980s, including 1985 Topps. He had a fun time hand-collating the set 35 years after it came out, and while the 50-year-old collector admits that he didn’t buy a lot of 1985 Topps when he was younger, he’s grown to love the set.
“I guess if you want to say it taught me anything, it was to go back to my roots and put together a set that I basically ignored as a kid,” Ribes said. While building the set, he also discovered an interesting tidbit that there were two different wax wrappers used that year — some with the “1985” banner around the baseball, and some without.
Ribes’ favorite cards from 1985 Topps Baseball are the Gooden, McGwire, and Cory Snyder Team USA, and his connection to the set runs deep. In 1986, his grandfather painted Gooden’s 1985 Topps card on a canvas and presented it to his grandson.
“He just did the portrait and painted that for me,” Ribes said. “That was one of the last things that he painted before he passed. About two years ago, Gooden was in St. Louis, and I got him to autograph it.”
