Start Your Personal Team Collection Right
Collecting your favorite team is one of the most popular and rewarding ways to dive deeper into The Hobby. While there are universally adored players and legends from every team and widely accepted grail cards that can make any collection pop, one of the beauties of team collecting is that every collector’s journey will be unique.
Team collecting gives collectors the chance to capture the history of their favorite team. But at heart, it’s a personal expression that lets you show off your team and fandom.
Topps RIPPED will be running a series of features that dive into the uniqueness and eccentricity of team collecting. Starting with MLB franchises, we’ll look at ways to collect your favorite team. To get things started, here’s a primer about the ins and outs of team collecting and what makes it so special.
An Opportunity and a Challenge
No matter the team, building a collection focused on a single franchise comes with opportunities and challenges. If you’re collecting a legendary organization like the New York Yankees, there can be a premium on finding the exact cards you want. But, with so much attention paid to the team, collectors may find a larger array of cards and releases from which to collect. And, while history can make Yankee cards sought-after, the decades of players and stories give collectors many ways to build their collections.
A newer franchise, or one without as big of a national following, can present the opportunity to find diamonds in the rough. But focusing on a less-storied history, or fewer legends and superstars, can make some of the best cards more universally chased. Every team has its own eccentricities within The Hobby, and that’s part of what gives team collecting its charm.
Chasing The Grail
So, what exactly is a grail card? Often, the term is used to describe an incredibly coveted card of historic significance in The Hobby. Think 1952 Mickey Mantle, 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth, or 1952 Jackie Robinson—cards that have extraordinary value and meaning. A 1933 Goudey Ruth sold just last year for $1.62 million. Many such cards even find their way into museums, art galleries, and, of course, the Hall of Fame. While not every card reaches these highs, every major sports team has grail cards to call their own.
Ask any collector what their grail card is, and you’ll get a million different answers. More broadly, a grail card is the card you dream of having. The one that matters to you more than any other. Of course, that’s sort of like picking your favorite song, right?
Chat with someone in The Hobby, and they’re likely to have a few grail cards to talk about. For many collectors, a grail card is that dream card you can spend years chasing down, and by no means is it simply the most valuable card in a personal collection. In a personal team collection, your grail cards are yours to be chased.
Your Team, Your Way
You’ll want to have stars of past, present, and future represented in your team collection. But it’s your team. You could collect cards of players from a memorable year — maybe the group that fell a game short of the playoffs or one that played with a memorable style. Perhaps it’s the one that fought with each other in the clubhouse or the one that finally won it all.
When it’s your team, the stories, and the collection can come from anywhere. Popularity, value, scarcity, sure, but also loyalty, love, nostalgia. My favorite player from my childhood to collect? Mike Greenwell, because when I was a young kid, he gave me a bat at Spring Training to take home as a souvenir.
Chasing The Rainbow
An emphasis on a favorite player can be a great way to distinguish your team collection. Chasing the Rainbow is the collecting phenomenon in which a collector chases not only a player’s cards but that card in all of its parallels. It can be a fun and rewarding way to keep the chase for your favorites going.
The Number on Their Back
Finding the card number that corresponds to the player number is often considered a great pull within a numbered parallel. Your favorite player is Bryce Harper? Hunt those #3’s! 2025 Topps Baseball Series 1 played with a variation on this theme, with Base Card Player Number Variation cards.
Down on the Farm
Who knows a team better than its biggest fan? Be ahead of the curve with the best prospects in your team’s organization. Look for rookie cards, but also keep an eye out for earlier Bowman cards. These kinds of early pulls can add some great pieces to your collection.
Every Team is a Story
This is what it comes down to: The history, eccentricity, and personality of each club and their fanbase. Every team has a story. Every team collector has their own tale to tell.
