Collecting Every Topps Tigers Base Card
Fred Hatfield and Billy Hoeft might be obscure names to some Detroit Tigers fans and collectors. But for John Dingeman, those two players who appeared in the 1952 Topps set hold the utmost importance. Hatfield and Hoeft ended up being the final two cards in Dingeman’s quest to collect every Tigers Topps base card from 1952 to present.
It wasn’t easy for Dingeman to track down the cards of both players since they were in the rarer high series from the 1952 Topps release. When Dingeman did see the cards pop up in auctions, he kept getting beaten out at the last second. Talking to Ethan Sharp, an employee at True Sports Cards & Collectibles in Rocklin, California, Dingeman was advised to keep a watchful eye on those two cards and be ready to pounce when they’re listed. He hadn’t seen the cards pop up in a month, and he was ready to give up.
“Ethan says to me, ‘So, let me understand, you’re going to tell somebody you have every base card of the Detroit Tigers, except two cards?'” Dingeman said. “He said, ‘I don’t believe you. You’re going to have to go find those cards.'”
While walking out the door of the card shop, Dingeman hit refresh on one of his online searches. Miraculously, both cards had just been listed.
“I reversed back into the store,” said Dingeman, who was born and raised in Detroit and now lives in Sacramento, California. “They were listed really cheap and were seven-day auctions. Ethan’s like, ‘Don’t bid on it or anything for seven days. With five seconds left, you may not win, but decide on a price that you’re willing to pay for those cards and that’s your budget.’”
Dingeman ended up winning both auctions.
“I was super stoked when I did, because this is like, finally a quest is done,” he said. “It took me the better part of 18 months to do it.”
Starting an Ambitious Detroit Tigers Collection
Having collected cards as a kid, Dingeman returned to The Hobby in 2021. His childhood collection had been stored in run-down boxes, and he wanted to get those replaced. Dingeman started recording inventory of his cards while moving them into the new boxes. Filing through his miscellaneous baseball, football, basketball and hockey cards, he discovered he was missing some prized possessions: his Tigers cards.
“So, I opened this last box, and I was about ready to throw it away, but it was too heavy to throw away,” Dingeman said. “The reason I was going to throw it away was because it just looked like junk.”
Low and behold, they ended up being his lost Tigers cards. Dingeman had the idea of putting together Tigers team sets from about 1975 to 1990. He would stop by local card shops and dig through their commons boxes.
“I slowly started to piece those together,” Dingeman said. “Then I decided, maybe for my grandkids I’ll go to my birth year and I’ll go forward. Picking up all of the 1990s was not hard. The newer 2000s were not hard.”
Completing a full Tigers set
Going back to 1971, Dingeman received help from the Hobby community. Card shop employees would call when they bought large collections. One shop had received a bunch of 1967 Topps cards, and Dingeman was given the chance to rifle through those. He reminded the employee he was only going back to 1971 but was urged to take a look at the ’67 cards and ultimately fell in love with that year.
“Now I started collecting some of these other cards, maybe I could go all the way back to ’52,” Dingeman said. “So, I did.”
When he was close to wrapping up his project, he still needed the 1954 Topps rookie card of Tigers legend Al Kaline. Most of the cards in Dingeman’s collection were ungraded, but when he was searching for the Kaline, he received some sound advice once again from Ethan Sharp at True Sports Cards and Collectibles. Sharp told Dingeman to look at the graded Kaline’s in the shop’s showcases. Some of the slabs read: “Evidence of Trimming” and “Evidence of Coloring.”
“I’m going to tell you for this card, I think you can get a better deal on a graded card,” Sharp told Dingeman. “If you buy it raw, people are hoping that they get a solid grade and you’re underpricing it. But if you buy it graded, you can look it up with PSA or whoever the grading company is and confirm that it’s legit. Second, you’ll see if there’s evidence of anything.”
Once Dingeman had the Kaline, Hatfield, and Hoeft cards in hand in May 2024, his project was complete. He had the full run of Topps Flagship base cards from 1952 on — all 2,065 cards — in penny sleeves and top loaders. He knocked out the 2025 Topps Baseball Series 1 cards when they were released in February.
Future Collectors
Dingeman plans on adding to the Flagship run every year. He’s hoping it’s a project his grandchildren will latch onto in the future.
“I have a grandson and a granddaughter,” Dingeman said. “I have a younger daughter who’s not married yet, but she’ll have a family, I’m sure. The oldest is my grandson, Jaxson. I told my daughter, ‘I’m probably going to give him the collection.’ My wife and I made the decision for Jaxson, we are buying the factory sealed sets from his birth year. So, we have 2020-24 right now.”
Earlier this year, Topps’ social media page on X, formerly Twitter, posted Dingeman’s accomplishment as a Tigers collector. That stirred up mixed comments.
“I know some of the remarks online are like, ‘It’s the Tigers. What are they worth combined, $10?” Dingeman said. The doubters never mattered to him, though. To Dingeman, his collection is priceless.
