(images courtesy of Cardboard Junkie, click for larger versions)

National Chicle is one of a bunch of different sets that Topps is producing this year. As you can deduce from above, the cards are all painted. They also have varying backgrounds, some of which are abstract designs such as on Bumgarner's card. Others are more realistic depictions of baseball stadiums and fields, such as on the Duke Snider card. Overall the set contains many of today's players as well as many stars from the past.

This set has created a lot of buzz and controversy. The buzz is over the fantastic colors and players in the set, as well as the vat majority of the excellent art. The controversy has come over some of the art as well as a Chipper Jones card that looks suspiciously like Babe Ruth.

Cardboard Junkie, written by dayf, has posted a lot of cards from this set as well as a lot of the original art and some discussions with one of the artists. Check out his back catalog of 2010 National Chicle posts to learn all about this set.

If you ask me, this set is incredible. Here are a few more cards from the set, all taken from Carboard Junkie's posts:

These are Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, Derrek Lee, and Thurman Munson. To see the full-size images, click on that link to Cardboard Junkie's catalog of posts on 2010 National Chicle.

So what about Madison Bumgarner? He was the youngest player to appear in the majors last year. (The second youngest guy, Fernando Martinez, is almost a year older.)

Bumgarner came up last year to make a spot start in place of Tim Lincecum and he pitched well. In AAA this year, his numbers haven't been great so far, but certainly not bad. It seems likely that he will join the Giants' rotation at some point in 2010 or 2011.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Card of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.