It’s Fall, Y’all: Ranking the Top 5 “Autumn” Cards for Collectors

Sweater Weather, Fall Foliage, and Topps

Today, we’re looking at cards that give off fall vibes. It’s getting a little colder out, pumpkins will soon be everywhere, the leaves are changing colors, and you can hear the high school marching band playing on Friday nights from miles away. 

There have been some very cool fall-themed Topps cards lately, too, with two notable subsets in 2024 Topps Baseball Update Series alone: Autumn Tales and the Jack O’Lantern/Halloween foil parallels. 

So now, we’re taking five fall-themed cards and ranking them using a Very Sophisticated System — with points awarded for the overall aesthetics of the card (would you buy a poster of it?), the red/yellow/orange foliage factor OR some gourd inclusion, and the general fall “vibes” of the card. Can you look at it long enough and (dramatically) feel it in your bones?  

Note that we are excluding the overtly fall ones that would run away with this, like Autumn Tales and the Jack O’Lantern foils. The judges will allow almost anything else. 

With all that out of the way, grab your turtlenecks, knee-high boots, and jean jackets, because we’re heading out for some autumnal fun:

5. 1985 Garbage Pail Kids #16A Weird Wendy (19 points)

• Aesthetics: 8
• Foliage/Gourds Factor: 2
• Fall Vibes: 9

The original choice here was Jack O. Lantern, but the judging panel shut it down for “obviousness” — if we can’t do Autumn Tales, wouldn’t a boy with a pumpkin head also be a little too spot-on? Plus, we’ve honored him at Halloween already. So, we pivoted to Weird Wendy. And as the rules state here at RIPPED: 

“You can only have one GPK per rankings article, lest the list become overrun with them because so many are applicable.”

The problem is that Weird Wendy doesn’t rate in the Foliage/Gourds category. There’s nary a pumpkin in sight. And while 2014’s Heady Hector would have done well here, it doesn’t give off the same fall feel. There’s something about a witch, a full moon, and a bat. Put them all together, and it fills your head with images of a coven in the woods, their breath visible on a cold night. We can just assume there’s a pumpkin behind her at this point. 

4. 1982 Topps E.T. #45 “Night Ride” (20 points)

• Aesthetics: 10
• Foliage/Gourds Factor: 2
• Fall Vibes: 8

I think when we look back on this column in 20 years, we’ll wonder why we forced the “foliage/gourds” category as a factor. Or maybe we’ll look like geniuses. Either way, this card is iconic.

E.T. has some very special fall vibes. It takes place around Halloween, but the story is set in Southern California, where there’s not a ton of crunchy foliage beneath your feet or witchy clouds of breath coming out in the cold. Even still, this image in particular screams “fall” to a large group of people. Elliot’s hoodie, the clear night, the giant moon, the Spielberg woods/aliens vibe, it’s Halloween. E.T. is a very “fall” movie and this is, therefore, a very “fall” card. 

3. 2024 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini Got the Itch #GTI-1 Apple (22.5 points)

• Aesthetics: 8
• Foliage/Gourds Factor: 6.5
• Fall Vibes: 8

Apples often get left behind in our all-out fall consumption. Apple picking is revered. Apple pie is prominent. But the apple itself doesn’t get enough recognition. But a scratch-and-sniff apple card? Put it in a box somewhere, pull it out, and have a deep inhale whenever you need to be transported to one of those sweater weather October days. 

“Nothing revives the past so completely,” Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “as a smell that was once associated with it.” And as we like to say here, “An apple is basically a gourd, so we award it 6.5 points.”

2. 2025 Topps x Bob Ross The Joy of Baseball #13 Gunnar Henderson (23 points)

• Aesthetics: 9
• Foliage/Gourds Factor: 7
• Fall Vibes: 7

You have the dead trees in front (which, as we all know, Bob Ross always added last, almost on a whim, but more on that below), the colorful fauna, what appears to be foliage in the background, the creepy “it’s dark at 5:30 now” sky — there’s a definite atmosphere here. There are a couple other cards in the two Topps x Bob Ross sets that have it, too — notably the 2023 Ohtani — but this is the one we keep coming back to for the best representation of that fall feeling. 

Because we care deeply, and the answer would have bored a hole in our heads for years to come, we did a little research on this card. Actually, a lot of research. The Bob Ross painting used as the backdrop is called “Indian Summer” and first aired on (of course) Halloween 1990. You can see the full episode here. It’s really pretty incredible to watch the painting come to life and then go look again at the card and notice all the little nuances.

Hearing how Bob Ross describes everything on here (“Think where a little limb would like to live if it had its choice”) will just make you appreciate this card even more. 

1. 1950 Bowman #62 Bob Perina (30 points)

• Aesthetics: 10 
• Foliage/Gourds Factor: 10
• Fall Vibes: 10

This card really should be called “Fall, featuring Bob Perina.” It’s football, the orange in his uniform matches the foliage, he has long sleeves, and he’s striking the Heisman pose for some reason (which is neither here nor there, but it’s interesting). The sky is even kind of cloudy and darker. This is fall, friends! And this card is in The Met!

Plus, as an old-fashioned bonus, you learn on the back that “Bob sells radios in the off-season.”

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