Beam Team: The Modern Evolution
Stadium Club is one of my favorite sets year after year. It's been that way since it's first release in 1991. Released to go against the higher end Upper Deck products, Stadium Club started out with Baseball, Hockey, and Football (you may remember the Favre and Emmitt Smith cards from the football set). They then followed up with Basketball in 1992. Nestled in most Stadium Club sets, you will find my favorite insert ever...Beam Team.
The first Beam Team card actually debuted in 1992 Topps Basketball as an insert. Featuring three players and the laser background that 80's children remember from picture day. They pulled it off better than my rat-tail and jacked up teeth.
Also in 1992, Topps took that Beam Team insert, redesigned it, and added to their debut of basketball Stadium Club. That's when everything changed. They went to single players on the cards and made the cards very modernized and sharp looking.
There's some background on where the Beam Team started. Basketball. However, after the last issue of The News Swap, I wanted to expand on our look of the current run of Beam Team sets from their baseball products. Debuting in 1991, it went strong until 2003 then not seen again until 2008 for one year. In 2014 Stadium Club was reintroduced, and has been released each year since. Even doing a Chrome version in 2020 & 2021.
Since 2014, there has been a Beam Team insert each year, aside from 2015. In 2020, the Beam Team was in the Stadium Club Chrome Products. While in 2021, the Beam Team appeared in both the Stadium Club and Chrome products, with the same design, just in chrome. Let's take a look at all the designs and vote on the best!
2014
2015
NO BEAM TEAM
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Let's put it to a vote! What's your favorite and least favorite designs??
Favorite Beam Team Design?
- 2014
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
Least Favorite Beam Team?
- 2014
- 2016
- 2017
- 2018
Thanks everyone for reading! If you wanna check out more stuff, I added more singles today. There is a Hits Mixer break tomorrow. And there is always my YouTube Channel. News Swap #12 should be up on Wednesday. - AB