With Project 70 finally coming to an end on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, I wanted to take a moment to show my appreciation for the product. There is a lot to be said about it and for this article, I wanted to focus on the most positive aspect of it: The artist and their cards. Rather than belabor the trials and tribulations, I thought it would be fun to do a quick article focused on my personal top 10 cards in the set along with some honorable mentions.
Top 10
Here are my Top 10 in reverse order:
10. Quiccs: Ichiro
This one just squeaks into my Top 10. I don’t collect Ichiro and the Quiccs set is good but never really nailed anything for me outside of this card. I grabbed the Ohtani and the Lincecum for PC purposes, but I grabbed the Ichiro card because I thought it was awesome. The Japanese theme with the Japanese flag, Kanji and the samurais all nail the Ichiro roots. And then the iconic batting stance pre-swing motion of grabbing his jersey and holding his bat out towards the pitcher almost like a Samurai would hold his sword out in preparation for battle is simply chef’s kiss.
9. Blake Jamieson: Kris Bryant
Jamieson is a returning artist from Project 2020 and one of the more successful ones in that set as well as this set. A few different ones were in consideration, but I really liked this Kris Bryant one. The first card of Bryant in a Giants uniform outside of perhaps a Topps Now card, I love the simplicity of the 1977 Topps design and the heavy usage of team colors with the orange background. If this wasn’t a PC team for me, it probably wouldn’t have made my list. Since it is a PC team, the minute I saw it released it was an instant buy.
8. Alex Pardee: Dave Parker
Pardee was the biggest star artist to come out of Project 75 and it was that way from the very first card he released - the Ronald Acuña Jr. Brightmare. None of his cards really struck my fancy outside of the Dave Parker card. I can’t really explain it, but when I saw that card, I instantly thought “what a badass!” and had to own it.
7. DJ Skee: Ronald Acuña Jr.
DJ Skee combined his love of music with his P70 cards. There are so many of his cards that I liked. With this Acuña card, he hit one of my favorite all-time hip hop albums ever. I pretty much love every single song on ATLiens by Outkast, which this card is doing an homage to. To this day I bob my head to that entire album. This card is more about the album than the player and art, but it all works and is a must include in my Top 10.
6. Chuck Styles: Hank Aaron
The first card in the Chuck Styles 20 card set and an iconic player on top of that. I had no idea who Chuck Styles was and Hank isn’t a player I PC, but I liked the look of the card a lot. It gave me that artistic feel without being over the top. Sometimes it’s just hard to explain, but I connected with it and decided to pick it up and see where it went. And where it went is me picking up all of Chuck Styles’ P70 cards (plus some companions), the only Project 70 artist that I went to these lengths for. And the card that is the catalyst for that deserves to be in my Top 10 for that alone.
5. Chuck Styles: Uncle Larry (Andrew McCutchen)
McCutchen just seems like an all around good guy from an outsider’s perspective, and the fun and swag he has with the Uncle Larry persona is great. To have my favorite P70 artist do it and do it well on a baseball card was an auto buy. Give me more baseball cards with this type of flair and personality.
4. Ermsy: Clayton Kershaw
Ermsy is another Project 2020 artist that continued on into Project 70 and from what I hear is quite a well known entity in the art world in general. He’s not my style, but regularly draws some of the higher print runs in the checklist, so I kept waiting for one to hit home for me. That ended up being the Clayton Kershaw card with my affinity for the 1987 Topps Flagship design. Couple that with the Castlevania inspired art and it’s a winner. I played so much Castlevania on the Nintendo back when I was a kid and couldn’t tell you the last time I thought about it, but this card brought all that back. An easy Top 10 selection for me.
3. Bobby Hundreds: Shohei Ohtani
I am not the biggest fan of the Bobby Hundreds “error card” approach he took to Project 70, but I love this card despite that slant. Ohtani is a player I started to really collect regularly about 18 months ago (Project 70 offered a lot of opportunities to continue that collection), so every single Ohtani card gets more than a passing look. This card started out strong with the 1987 Topps flagship design, one of my favorites as it was a major product for me towards the beginning of my collecting journey as a kid. I love the artistic nature of the Kanji lettering which is used here for Ohtani’s name. And finally instead of the state of California being the silhouette behind the Angels logo, we get the islands of Japan as the silhouette. All in all a lot of great artistic choices for a PC player that lead to an easy buy and a must-have in my Top 10 list.
2. Jonas Never: Joe Kelly
I like some of the Jonas Never cards even if he put out more than your average amount of Dodger cards. Regardless of the Dodgers affiliation for this card, it’s a double meme Joe Kelly card that captures two stories. When a baseball card can tell a single story it’s great, and we get double the fun with this one. We get the painting in the background where Kelly famously made the Cry Me A River face at Carlos Correa due to bad blood between the Dodgers and Astros. While Never couldn’t get the full pic approved, he was able to get the face-obscured pic (hidden by the team name) through the approvals which was very smart. And then he gets Joe Kelly in the Mariachi outfit. Kelly traded his jersey for a Mariachi jacket at Dodger Stadium from an actual member of a Mariachi band playing at the stadium that day and then wore the same jacket to a visit to the White House later in the season as part of a celebration of the Dodgers winning the 2020 World Series. All in all, epic stories lead to a great card. And stories associated with cards are one of my favorite parts of the hobby.
1. Chuck Styles: Shohei Ohtani
Favorite P70 artist. Check. PC Player. Check. Player looking like a bad-ass video game player with swords. Check. Easily a Top 10 card and one of the few I actually considered buying more than one of in hopes of increasing my odds of hitting the rainbow foil parallel. The companion card is just as cool as the base card with the full on Ghost of Tsushima treatment that the base card is modeled after. It’s hard to rank these cards because my opinion changes regularly, but this one was in contention for my favorite overall card in Project 70 the minute it released and for the moment I am putting it as my personal top card in Project 70.
Honorable mention
Blake Jamieson: Andrew McCutchen - Another Uncle Larry card that mimics the 2020 Topps Series 2 Short Print, but I’ll take the Chuck Styles version.
Blake Jamieson: Buster Posey - My favorite Posey in Project 70, but there simply isn't anything “special” about it. Love the card, own the card, but just didn’t have enough to push it into my Top 10. Having another Jamieson in my Top 10 also made it easier to exclude this card.
Brittney Palmer: Jim Palmer - The Pac-Man card looks great. I still don’t know what the tie-in is with Jim Palmer and/or the Orioles are with Pac-Man, but this was one of the first video games I ever played, so it’s hard not to be taken in by the legendary video game and baseball card mashup.
Chuck Styles: Ernie Banks - I couldn’t put every Chuck Styles card on this list, but Banks was the next one - the bear on the shoulder is just so cute.
DJ Skee: Fernando Tatis Jr. - The mashup with Fernando Tatis Jr. MLB The Show cover and the Bad Bunny album cover from YHLQMDLG is just so well done. It gave me a Grand Theft Auto vibe when I initially saw it since I’m a Boomer and know nothing other than a Corona commercial in regard to Bad Bunny. But even with my lack of knowledge, it is just such a swaggy card.
Jacob Rochester: Tim Anderson - I like Rochester’s general style in his Project 70 cards. Add in the classic Tim Anderson bat flip and this card was in serious consideration for my Top 10.
Jonas Never: Randy Johnson - One of the harder cuts from my Top 10. A few different artists put their spin on the Randy Johnson and pigeon encounter. Never did it best in my opinion when he also wrapped the classic Nintendo bird hunting game Duck Hunt into the art.
Lauren Taylor: Shohei Ohtani - I really like Lauren Taylor’s art - she was probably second behind Chuck Styles for me of the artists I knew nothing about and came to really appreciate their artistic style. None of the cards blew me away, per se, but the Ohtani was my favorite because of the PC nature and it felt like it incorporated the Topps design a bit more than the majority of her other cards. Pairing this card with her Mike Trout (another strong effort from her) as they are both horizontal looks really good as well.
Snoop Dogg: Will Clark - A PC player with the iconic San Francisco imagery of the Golden Gate Bridge, Cable Car, and Victorian housing. Team color matching with the black border as well and this was a hard one to cut from my list
Undefeated: Shohei Ohtani - If this card wasn’t so dark, it would’ve been much harder to exclude from my Top 10 list. A nice simplistic design that struck a chord with me.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot more that can be said about Project 70. The highs, the lows, the stats, the money, the hobby impact, etc. Rather than get into that slog, I’d rather look at what drove and kept my interest in the product - the cards I enjoyed the most. I did touch on some of the high-level positives and negatives in my 2021 Hobby Year in Review article if you are interested to see some more on the topic. With 936 cards in the product, I doubt you find two people who have identical Top 10 cards. And that is great and just another reason why I think this product was ultimately good for the hobby.
There are others that have much more informed opinions on this and I would urge you to check them out if you want the full scoop. Christopher Torres (CRT Sportscards) is THE best source on this in my opinion - check out his twitter and his website for great content and a ton of Project 70 data.