Top Card Designs - Visualy

These are my top 10 card designs. I am not glued to these as my top 10, as I may discover new cards later on and have not seen everything, but as of right now, these are my top 10 from artistic and visual appeal.

1. Tops Pristine Basketball 03-04 ( Shiny with basketball in background and team colors - Lebron Rookie)
2. UD baseball 1989 (Base path running along side – Griffey Rookie)
3. UD Glass Autofocus Basketball 2003 (Clear glass with images of basketball players)
4. Ovation Basketball 2000 (White with bubble texture)
5. e-x 2001 Basketball (Shiny team colors. Nice Clear design, and they look like parallel cards to begin with)
6. Topps 1987 Baseball (Wood grain, nice and classic look, very popular year for baseball)
7. Ovation Baseball 2003 (Team logo embossed with light teal color on left)
8. 1995 Flair Football Preview ( Shiny card with portrait of player)
9. Flair 2002 Baseball, Basketball, Football (Bronze, nice clean and consistent look that worked for all sports)
10. Topps 1986 Baseball and Football (Black Topp)

I collect football cards almost exclusively so most of my fave designs are football releases.

Many of the card designs of the sixties were amazing:

1961 Fleer AFL


1963 Topps


1966 Philadelphia Cards


1965 Topps AFL (ah the Namath RC perhaps the holy grail of football cards)

1966 Topps


1967 Topps

The seventies had some beauties also:

1970 Topps


1972 OPC Hockey (many childhood memories of these bad boys)


1972 Topps


1976 Topps

I’d better stop but I’ll finish up with the eighties:

1984 Topps


1985 Topps



1989 Pro Set


1989 Score

I like the score 89, in part because they had some of the hottest cards that year, and the colors were bold and simple. Very nice design. I think sanders, deion, and Aikman had rookies.

I also like the 85 topps football with the black. That made my top 10.

The 66 topps and 61 Fleer have some nice design elements too.