Naturel, aka Lawrence Atoigue, has already made a big splash in Topps Project 2020 card set. His Jackie Robinson card (you can see it at the bottom) was one of the earliest cards available, so its print run was a significantly low 1,302 copies. Several weeks have passed bye since then, and the popularity of Project 2020 cards has seemingly increased exponentially. As a result, his Robinson base card (which originally sold for about $20) has just sold for a lofty $1,600 -- which quite frankly is outrageous.There are all kind of theories as to why values have been skyrocketing. Is it a strange "pump & dump" scheme? Has Topps actually been successful at expanding the collector base -- by appealing to a subculture that has always had a tertiary interest in the hobby (street culture/sneakerheads)? And will this new collector base remain, or are they a flash in the pan? Has the recent pandemic finally caused American minds to go crazy -- to the point of latching on to our newest fad with reckless economic abandon?
Frankly, I have no idea what is causing these cards to ramp-up in value, but I do know I enjoy the art -- and apparently there are a lot of folks outside of the hobby who are saying the same thing. Whether these high values remain, who knows? And to be honest, I'm not going to waste my time speculating any more than I already have. The handful of cards I've purchased so far was not for investment purposes, so whatever these cards do on the secondary market mean nothing to me.As I said, what does interest me is the art, and what we have today is the fifth Sandy Koufax card released in the Project 2020 set. It was created by Naturel. Check it out at the very top. Go here to check it out and order from Topps online. A complete checklist of all the cards in the set can be found here. The reverse of the card is on the right. BTW, you can check out some of Naturels work on his Instagram here: @Naturel. You can find his website here: AllBurgundy.com.
Naturel's style is often referred to as postmordern illustrations using a cubist and surrealist vision that is often called “vector” art.
Above is a look at the Jackie Robinson Naturel card created for Topps. Below is a current Sandy Koufax checklist of Topps Project 2020 cards with their corresponding artist and print runs. This is both the fifth Koufax card and Naturel creation to be released so far:
- #2 -- Jacob Rochester -- (link here) 1,135 print run
- #36 -- Oldmanalan -- (link here) 2,488 print run
- #49 -- Andrew Thiel -- (link here) 2,149 print run
- #79 -- Fucci -- (link here) 6,607 print run
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