1988 Topps UK Minis

 

This is a set I wasn't all that familiar with until I came across a lot of Kirby Puckett cards which contained his UK mini.  I blogged about that card here.  That was about 18 months ago and ever since then I've kept an eye open for this set.  So after the big card show a couple weeks ago, I stopped in at a local LCS and there up on a cheapie shelf was a small plastic box with the complete set.  It was like the fates aligned and I finally have a complete 1988 UK mini set.

Overall I like the design.  It's colorful but I kind of feel like whoever designed this set simply put three stars in the upper right as filler, probably because they didn't know what else to do with that space.  Hey, how about putting something related to Britain?

There are plenty of stars in this set.  I really like that Henderson photo.

Fernando mania spread across the pond.  Another good looking card.

In rare instances I found that Topps may have used the same sequence of photos for different sets.  Here we have the UK mini, the League Leaders mini and finally the Topps Super Star sticker all using very similar photos.  I haven't found any instances yet where the regular issue photo matched any of these.

The back side of the cards is as colorful as the front. But the red/black stat line can be difficult to read.

This 88 card set is really affordable (I paid $2), and the cards are fun to look through.  I measured these up to the '88 League Leaders set and they are the same size.  However I found that these are also just a bit smaller then the '75 mini set.  So now I'm going to have hunt down a properly fitting sleeve for these cards.  Or maybe, just maybe, I'll binder my mini's together now that I seem to be accumulating a few.