Considering the trade happened about a month ago, I haven't talked much about the Rays trading the face of their franchise, and the greatest Ray of all-time Evan Longoria to the Giants for Christian Arroyo and other prospects. I decided that the best way to voice my opinion on the trade is a top 5 cards post.
Longoria has been an intricate part of the Rays organization since his debut back in 2008. Since then, he's had over 5000 at-bats and has played over 1000 games for the Rays and has spent all 10 years of his career there. That will change this season when he takes the field as a Giant. I understand the Rays wanting to rebuild, but Longoria has done so much for the city and the team that I feel they should've kept him. It's almost like it was easy for them to get rid of him after he spent 10 years in Tampa Bay.
Anyway, I have 28 cards of Evan Longoria that I have accumulated since I started collecting him last year. Here are my top 5.
#5 2014 Topps Allen & Ginter
2014 Allen & Ginter has a whole lot of great landscape photos that were included in the set, including Longoria's base card. I'm a huge fan of landscape images on baseball cards as long as they bring something a bit different to the card, and this photo does that. It allows for Longoria and the interesting background at what looks like Great American Ballpark (don't hold me to it I'm not certain) that wouldn't be able to be included all on 1 regular card. Not to mention that the 2014 Allen & Ginter set is one of my favorite Allen & Ginter sets ever made, so that gives the card another nice feature to make it one of my favorite Evan Longoria cards.
#4 2016 Topps Perspectives
The Topps Perspectives insert from 2016 was basically a Stadium Club type of card put into the Topps Series 1 set that surprisingly worked well. The photos that were chosen for the insert set are quite interesting, more so than the boring images included in the base set. They feature impressive defensive plays, cards of players going out onto the field, and photos taken right before a swing from the perspective of someone in the batter's box. The big gold letters aren't my favorite part of the card considering the card is supposed to focus more on the image, but they gave the player name a new type of role as it looks to be part of the image itself, so I'm able to look past it and put this card at #4.
#3 2015 Topps Archives
2015 Topps Archives is my favorite Archives set ever made because it includes 3 of my top 15 favorite Topps sets of all-time, 1957, 1976, and 1983. Topps decided to put Longoria in the 1976 Topps set design, a decision that leads to the creation of one of my favorite Evan Longoria cards in my collection. Obviously, the Rays didn't exist when 1976 Topps came out, so Topps had to get creative and think of how the Rays cards in the 1976 set would look. And while I believe green would work better than orange, Topps still did an excellent job with almost every single aspect of this card.
#2 2017 Topps Fire
I appreciate when Topps pares a team's main color with the color on a baseball card, because of how much better that combination makes the card. 2017 Topps Fire is no exception to that as Longoria's base card that includes Longoria in a light blue jersey and a well-done blue and grey background on the card. The placement of the "fire drops" on the card adds a nice feature to the set, specifically this card design which happens to be my favorite of the set. I really enjoy every part of this card, and while I wish they'd include the team name rather than the logo on the top left, I can't really complain about a card like this.
#1 2017 Topps Archives
The 2nd Archives card to make the list is from one of my favorite Topps sets of all-time, and I was very impressed with how well Topps was able to recreate the iconic all-landscape card set. Every single element was well-done in this set whether it's the 2-color player name, the color photo, the black and white photo, and even the 2 colors (in this case red and yellow) was done exceptionally well. Even smaller details like cardstock were very good decisions by Topps. All of these well-executed elements were able to create an absolutely gorgeous card that was unable to be beaten on my list of top 5 favorite cards of Evan Longoria.
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