Twins’ Justin Topa, a lifelong card collector, chases his own baseball card

FORT MYERS, FLA. – Justin Topa had pitched in the major leagues for parts of four seasons when a friend messaged him a photo of a baseball card last year.

Topa had waited his entire career to see it.

The card was from the Topps 2024 Series 1 set, a group of Seattle Mariners players huddling on the mound after a victory. Three infielders are easily recognizable because of the backs of their jerseys, but there is a pitcher covered in the middle with only his hat and part of his left face visible.

“Is this you?” Topa’s friend asked him.

Topa has been an avid baseball card collector since he was a young kid. His dad, Bob, was a big collector and it became a family hobby. Growing up near the New York Mets’ Class AA affiliate in Binghamton, N.Y., Topa was the kid who stood along foul lines asking for autographs on baseballs, hats and cards.

The hobby grew when Topa worked as a bat boy for the Binghamton Mets, where he saw David Wright and Jose Reyes. And a couple of decades later, upon close inspection of the partial face, he realized he finally had appeared on an MLB card.

“Once I got drafted [in 2013], I was always hoping I would be on a card eventually,” said Topa, a 6-4 righthander vying for a spot in the Twins bullpen. “It was kind of a full-circle moment being on a card. It brings back all the memories of opening cards with my dad, collecting with my dad.”

When Topa discovered his appearance on a card, it was the start of a quest. He chased the rainbow for the set — every set has different colored parallels of the individual card with varying rarities.

The card was printed with more than two dozen backgrounds ranging from “Gold,” “Blue Foil,” “Mother’s Day Hot Pink” and “Memorial Day Camo.” Some colors have hundreds of copies, so Topa sought serial number 48 to match his jersey number. Others were printed as a one out of one exclusive card.

Topa announced his search on Instagram last summer when he was sidelined with a knee injury, willing to make trades for versions of his card, which made him one of the busiest players in the team’s mailroom.

“Someone pulled the first card they printed and messaged me on Twitter,” Topa said. “I was like, ‘What do you want for it?’ He’s like, ‘No, I just want you to have it.’ I ended up sending him a couple of things like signed balls and stuff.

“I’ve collected all my life. I have a lot of friends within the hobby that have put up some different posts and mentioned it at card shows and stuff like that. They’re trying to help me out.”

After Topps realized Topa was a collector, he received his own card in a Twins uniform in the 2024 Topps Baseball Update Series.

Again, another quest to complete the set’s rainbow.

The first weekend after it was released “my dad got three or four boxes,” Topa said. “I had a couple of boxes. My brother-in-law got a couple of boxes. We still enjoy it. A couple of times a year whether we go back home or around Christmas, we’re always opening cards.”

Topa is about four or five short from completing the rainbow in the Topps update, missing the several of the exclusive one of one cards. The difficult part is he has no idea if they’ve been pulled yet, or whether a person knows he is looking for it.

“I’ve been scouring eBay,” Topa said. “I was joking I think I was bidding against my dad on a lot of things. Prices were going up for no reason.”

Topa estimated he owns tens of thousands of baseball cards. Other parts of his collection include signed baseball rookie cards from Hall of Fame players, a signed program from Muhammad Ali and an autographed Wayne Gretzky card.

His favorite part of his collection?

“Anything that I got personally was probably in relation to when I was a batboy for those teams,” Topa said. “A lot of guys that you have no idea, but the guys that played a couple of years in minor league ball, got to Double-A in Binghamton, and I remember them playing there. Maybe they never made it to the big leagues or even Triple-A, but there is that connection of being around those guys and experiences with that.”

Before the Twins opened their spring training camp, Topa signed a few autographs on the minor league side when another collector asked him if he wanted to trade for one of his “Green Crackle Foilboard” cards.

“It’s been really cool,” he said. “My dad has been chipping away. He’s built his own little rainbow as much as he can. We just call each other and he’ll be like, ‘I picked up this one. I picked up that one.’”