Living in the Moments (And Milestones)

I was recently going through some player collections with my dad when he stumbled upon a few cards from Topps Moments & Milestones. He told me he liked the set and asked me about it, a question that seems rather simple but is actually quite challenging.

What is Topps Moments and Milestones? Let me tell you.

Topps Moments & Milestones was a set that was produced during 2006-2008. It would create a card honoring a certain achievement or career total of a star MLB player. Simple enough right?

Wrong, let me break this down for you. Topps created 1 card for every strikeout, home run, win, hit, etc. that a player had that season. For example, Randy Johnson had 364 strikeouts in 1999, so Topps made 364 cards, one for each strikeout. Oh, and every card is serial numbered to 150. That causes the 2007 set to be 12,475 cards if it's 100% completed, that, to my knowledge is the largest set ever made.

Sometimes the images can be different for the same achievement can be different, other times they're the same. Probably cause it makes way more sense to change the picture up for Randy Johnson 364 strikeouts rather than Mark Prior's 18 wins, solely because of the smaller print run.

And despite the large set size, Topps made an effort in this set to differentiate the set design for some of the cards.

For example, both of these Vlady cards are from the 2007 set, the cards just look different because Topps decided to switch it up, making the cards as well as the gigantic set far more interesting and exciting to collect, so you don't have to see the same card and the same picture over and over again. 

And like most other sets, Moments and Milestones includes parallels, like this Derrek Lee card, numbered 3/29 that I found in the dime bin. This find was something exciting, but also disappointing, because it made me realize how the high print run is what caused these cards to become so cheap, which is probably why Topps, unfortunately, will never make a set like this ever again.