My collection of Padres team cards covering the 1969/1970 through 1980/1981 seasons. I’ve always been a big fan of these cards with the full team photo on the front, especially the ones that include season and team stats on the back—it’s a nice little piece of history.
From what I can tell, 1981 was the last season that Topps featured a team card/team checklist with a team picture. Starting in 1982, they switched to using the manager card as the checklist. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong—I’d love to track down a team card from every season of the Padres’ existence and the manager cards just aren't as exciting.
The team photo card trend seemed to return from about 2000 to about 2007, before shifting to cards that highlighted a specific moment or season highlight on the front.
So far, I’ve added team cards for 25 of the Padres’ 57 seasons to my collection.
