Monster Card of the Week - 1985 Topps 3D

Topps has a long history of producing oddball baseball sets in addition to their eponymous set (I highly recommend the Topps Archive blog if you’re interested in some of these old oddball sets). Topps continued their tradition of issuing oddball sets in the 1980’s with sets such as Tattoos, Rub-Downs and 3D Stars. This week’s Monster card comes from the 1985 3D stars set and features Hall of Fame hopeful Jim Rice.

I’ll be honest in that I don’t know much about this set. The few cards that I have came from a baseball card grab bag that I bought when I was younger (I think these may have been the original repack boxes because they were full of 1980s oddball stuff). So I don’t know how much packs originally sold for, or even how available they were. What I do know is that I feel about this card the same way I feel about a lot of oddball cards – I love it and hate it all at the same time.



I love the card itself. It is printed on more of a plastic substrate than traditional baseball cards and the players’ photos are embossed to give the advertised 3D effect. The cards have a simple design that allows the player photo and the 3D effect to be the focal point of the card. And the 3D effect is actually quite stunning – the scan really doesn’t do it justice. You can really feel Jim Rice popping out of the background, that killer gaze focused intently on the unidentified pitcher’s next offering. There is nothing on the back of the card, it’s all about the 3D.

What I hate is the fact that, like most oddball designs, it is impossible to store. It will fit into no box or plastic page that I know of. For someone who likes to keep all of his Red Sox cards organized together, grouped by year and manufacturer as much as possible), these oddball cards are immensely frustrating. My solution thus far is to keep them all in a shoebox (that real shoes came in) tucked into a corner of a closet. Every now and then I pull the shoebox out and shuffle through the cards. But when I’m done they go back into the box which goes back into the closet.