Some Assembly Required: A History of Collectible Baseball Card Puzzles
What could be more relaxing than a quiet evening paging through albums of childhood baseball cards each page sparking memories of favorite players, bygone ballparks, and that year your team came oh so close! Then again, for some folks, a cup of hot coffee and a thousand-piece puzzle is the perfect escape to wind away a dreary day. On the other hand, maybe Old El Paso had it right: "¿Por qué no los dos?" As it turns out, puzzles and baseball cards have long gone hand in hand. Here are just some of the hobby's many examples.
1935 Goudey Four-In-One
Following two years of more traditional baseball card designs, Goudey switched things up in 1935 with a four-in-one design that featured a quartet of players on each card front. However, the card fronts weren't all that underwent a major change. Backs, which had previously included player bios, were now puzzle pieces. The set had nine different puzzles in all, most of them six-piece but three of them extra challenging at twelve pieces apiece.
1955 Topps Double Header
Sold separately from the standard 1955 Topps Baseball set, the Double Headers were so named because they paired two players to a card, one on the front and one on the back. When folded approrpriately, the player on the back would take on the lower legs of the player on the front. Technically, that by itself might qualify these cards as puzzles, but the far cooler puzzle aspects of the set came from arranging the proper cards side by side to form ballpark panoramas.
1968 Topps All-Stars
Taking a page out of the 1935 Goudey playbook, the 1968 Topps All-Star subset included two puzzles that could be formed from the backs of the cards. One was of 1967 American League Most Valuable Player Carl Yastrzemski, and the other was of 1967 National League Most Valuable Player, Orlando Cepeda. Each required ten cards to complete.
1980s Fleer Super Star Specials
Fleer led the decade in fun back in the 1980s, and its Super Star Special puzzle cards were just one of the many ways the Philly card maker made it happen. Sometimes the company's two player combos paired the greats of the game, such as Rickey Henderson and Reggie Jackson on "Speed and Power." Other times, the tandems were more whimsical, such as with its "Holland Tunnel" or "Black and Blue" pairings.
Topps Project 70
Just when the baseball card as puzzle art form seemed dead, leave it to the oft-maligned 2021-22 Topps Project 70 to bring it back. Though a complete analysis of the 1000+ card set might turn up even more examples, two readily available examples were Jacob Rochester's well done Satchel Paige/Josh Gibson 1942 World Series diptych and Matt Taylor's ridiculously cool Bash Brothers combo. (Purists may quibble over whether or not the latter pair forms a true puzzle, but none can debate its overall coolness.)
In all that makes three companies and five decades worth of baseball card puzzles, which is not to say there haven't been even more. Some deeper cuts include the 1977 Topps Cloth Sticker backs, of particular interest to fans of pillbox caps, and the 1985 Renata Galasso Dwight Gooden set. And of course, though not all collectors would count them as baseball cards, the glorious Dick Perez puzzles found in Donruss packs back in the company's heyday. And if those aren't enough, the hobby is filled with figurative puzzles, if not literal ones, such as why is Hoyt Wilhelm in 1991 Topps Archives twice!
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Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.