2002 Topps Baseball Team Stickers

Topps issued a second baseball team logo sticker set in 2002 (following their initial sticker set which was an insert in 2001 Topps Opening Day packs). The 2002 stickers were issued as inserts in the regular Topps Series 1 & Series 2 packs as part of a contest:


The contest was called the Topps Logo Race Baseball Cap Offer


where collectors tried to collect all the logo stickers from a particular division to win a MLB cap of their choice. If you'll notice on the Diamondbacks sticker above, there is a small round sticker of the Diamondback's logo in the bottom right hand corner of the sticker. If you wanted to enter the contest, you needed to take that small sticker in the corner and stick it in the circle next to the team's name on the contest card below:


Once you had all the teams from a particular division, you could submit the card for a cap.

Here is a look at the entire set with the smaller stickers still attached:



One thing that can be a challenge in putting this set together is that the 2002 set looks very similar to the 2001 set, and even has a 2001 copyright on the front. Since these were issued back in the days when the upcoming season's new set was released before Christmas, the initial 2002 stickers would have been printed in 2001 - hence the previous year's copyright.

For comparison, here is the 2001 Opening Day sticker:


vs the 2002 Topps Series 1 & 2 sticker:


Unless the seller is aware of the differences (2001 Opening Day has the Opening Day logo vs 2002 with the smaller logo sticker), if you are looking for a couple of teams to complete a set, make sure the seller has a picture to show you which version they have. It took me a while to complete both the 2001 & 2002 because the 2 sets are often mistaken for one another.

Also, its common to come across stickers where the smaller sticker was peeled off and stuck to the contest card, so if you want a full set with all the stickers fully intact - make sure you see a picture first. I've ended up with lots where some of the smaller stickers were missing which made completing the set a more difficult challenge.

Unfortunately after this short 2 year run of team logo stickers, Topps has not released any more baseball logo sticker sets since their 2002 Logo Race contest.