There is one element of card “design” that I feel makes or breaks a look, and it has become a lost art in my opinion. Player photography has been a main reason why I will over pay to get a card, but it can also be a reason why I want to avoid a product completely. Companies like Panini have shown time and time again that they have no fucking clue how important a player photo is to a card. Its also one of the main reasons I hate their products as much as I do. When you fall on your face in choosing player photos as much as they do, its hard to be a fan.

Enter Topps and their reimagined Stadium Club brand. Over the last few years, Topps has put a premium on great photos for the set, choosing to let the pictures be the design, and keeping everything else at a minimum. After seeing some of the results for the 2016 edition of the set, all I can say is that the time and effort that Topps put into the product to choose the photos was well worth it. The cards look absolutely awesome in their presentation, with a focus on the fun side and visual side of baseball.

Here are some of my favorites so far:

2016 Stadium Club Clayton Kershaw Auto Gold /25

2016 Stadium Club Mike Trout Photo Variation

2016 Stadium Club Robinson Cano Auto Orange 1/1

2016 Stadium Club Adam Jones Base /10

2016 Stadium Club Willie Mays Base Foil /25

2016 Stadium Club Mike Trout Base Orange B&W

Instead of choosing photos that capture the usual parts of the game, they instead looked for other ways to showcase what baseball is all about. Sometimes the result is funny, sometimes its intense. Because it works so well both ways, the set benefits as a whole. That isnt saying it doesnt have some of the more traditional approaches to photos, but that’s not why people buy Stadium Club. People have started to buy the set to appreciate the parts of the game that they identify with, not the normal fielding and batting pictures that are all over every other set.

Add in the hard signed autographs and it only gets better. Finding a way to incorporate the autograph content and still be able to showcase what makes the cards great is a true accomplishment. So many times we are left with autographs despite the overall visual appeal of the set, and thats when things get more into what Panini thinks is the best way to approach a design.

I havent even gotten into the co-signers cards, beam team cards, or Lone Star Signatures – all of which are throwback to the versions of the set that I loved in my youth. Stadium Club was a high end set back in the day, and cards like Beam Team were prized possessions.

If you havent decided on a box to break or just want to enjoy opening packs of great looking cards, this is the product for you. Not too expensive, not too much going on, but a lot of great cards to gaze upon as you rip through the wax. There are some bigger hits in the set, dont get me wrong, but that isnt the way to truly appreciate Stadium Club.