Toy designer Quiccs to work on Topps baseball cards

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MANILA -- Ichiro Suzuki. Ernie Banks. Aaron Judge. And Filipino-American Tim Lincecum.

Filipino toy designer Quiccs Maiquez is getting his opportunity to illustrate in his own inimitable style these baseball greats and more when Topps rolls out its 70th anniversary line of baseball cards this entire 2021.

Quiccs’ first card -– featuring former Chicago Cubs star Ernie Banks –- drops Thursday, March 11 (Manila time), and will be available for sale on the Topps website.

Topps is the official baseball card manufacturer of Major League Baseball.

Quiccs is among the 51 artists and celebrities who are taking part in Topps’ Project 70. It is a distinguished and talented list that includes rap artist Snoop Dog, UNDEFEATED (Kadir Nelson), King Saladeen, and painter Greg “Craola” Simkins, among others.

Quiccs is the first Filipino artist to work on these famous and collectible line of baseball cards.

“Topps approached us last year for a possible collaboration,” related Quiccs. “Previously, they had Project 2020 where they invited select artists to reimagine select baseball cards. And it did really well as fans of baseball and artists dug the work.”

Baseball card collector Ryan Watkins, who owns ERA Collectibles, wrote of the popularity of the cards in his website: “Just when you think the hobby could not get any hotter, Topps 2020 completely blew everyone’s expectations out of the water. While the sustainability of the process is hot debate, what is not debatable is if you got early on this trend, you’re likely reaping the benefits of the price surge.”

Each card, including this year’s line, fetch for $20. However, from Project 2020, Jacob Rochester’s design of the Ken Griffey Jr. card and Matt Taylor’s Derek Jeter interpretation now go for $175 to $200.

This year, Topps upped the ante as they are celebrating 70 years of MLB cards and it is bigger with more artists.

“It is an honor to be a part of that list,” quipped Quiccs.

Added Quiccs’ business partner Carlo Mendoza: “We wanted to represent our brand well by choosing the best Asians like former Seattle Mariners’ star Ichiro Suzuki, and those with Filipino blood – like Tim Lincecum initially (they cannot reveal the rest of the line just yet) and also Americans so we have a good mix. It is easy to go overboard by getting the popular players from the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers but the overriding factor was to be fair and make sure our line is well represented.”

Regarding the collaboration, Quiccs was stoked. “It helps to have a good base of followers and collectors from the United States and Asia. Both Carlo and I are more of basketball fans. As far as baseball is concerned, we’re casual fans. My father though is a massive baseball fan so doing this makes it more meaningful.”

Also coming up from Quiccs is an exciting new collaboration with Adidas that will be unveiled in a few months.

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