Welcome to 78 Topps Cards!

Come one, come all to 78 Topps Cards at 78topps.blogspot.com!

This is the follow-up to my 88 Topps Cards blog. We're stepping another 10 years back in time to look at the front and back of every card from the 1978 Topps baseball card set.

We won't get up to full speed until next week, after the 88 Topps Cards blog is completely closed out. But you have already seen the first couple of posts here, and this is the general format:

• I'm posting 6 cards at a time, instead of 1 like on 88 Topps Cards.
• I'm including links to each player's Baseball-Reference.com page for easy access.
• I'm posting 4 categories of info for each group of 6 cards: The design, the photos, the stats, and the counters.
  
• "THE DESIGN" looks at elements of the design of the cards, such as coloring, layout, or commentary written on the back of the card.
• "THE PHOTOS" looks at the photographs used on each card.
• "THE STATS" looks at a good stat and a bad stat for each group. The stat are all taken from B-R.com's Play Index. Because I'm only posting 2 stats for each group of 6 cards, not every player will get his own stat.
• "THE COUNTERS" are cumulative totals for a bunch of different categories. They are all self-explanatory, except for "Loyalty Counter", which gives a +1 for any player who spent his entire major league career with a single franchise.
  

Every post will have a poll to select which card among the group of 6 is the best. Later, we'll pit the winners of each poll against each other, and eventually we'll find the best card of the 1978 as determined by you, the readers. (The first 2 posts did not have polls but they will be added later and I'll post a reminder about them.)

I'm also giving away all the cards posted on this blog. There will be another post to explain how the winners will be determined. It's going to be an unusual (and hopefully fun) method. Stay tuned.