Jackson Holliday's 2024 rookie card features tribute to NSFW Billy Ripken prank

Baseball card collecting has changed a lot over the last couple of decades. Gone are the days of grossly overproduced base cards that have little to no value, even for the best players. Collectors now are treated to a cornucopia of short prints, parallels, inserts, and variations to chase after. For the first time in long time, the modern Baltimore Orioles have found themselves firmly in the middle of what is a booming card market.

Just last year, both Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman had rookie cards throughout the release calendar that were highly sought after, with some worth big dollars. Rookie cards still command the best premium in the hobby, and many collectors were wondering if Topps/Fanatics was going to print Jackson Holliday rookie cards this year, given Holliday's call-up earlier this season, or wait until next year's sets.

Well, we have our answer, as not only will Holliday have rookie cards in 2024 Topps Series 2 (which was released on Wednesday), but they will be both short-printed and highly sought after, thanks to their reference to an infamous Orioles player's card from the 1980s.

Jackson Holliday's Orioles rookie card pays homage to famous Billy Ripken card

We'll ignore the fact that this isn't exactly the most flattering picture of Holliday for his first big league rookie card. However, what many younger fans may not be aware of is that this picture is a specific call back to Billy Ripken's famous card from 1989 Fleer. On the knob of Holliday's bat, you will notice that it says "fun face," which may sound like gibberish to the lay person. However, it makes more sense when you find out that on Ripken's card, the early prints featured a certain four-letter word that starts with an "f" in the place of the word "fun" on his bat.

Fleer clearly didn't catch Ripken's bat prank in time to keep printed copies of the card from being released into the wild. However, the drama ended up making that version even more collectable, as subsequent printings (wow, did they print a lot of copies of cards back then) had the bat knob blacked out. That made the other Ripken's card a favorite to chase after among collectors even to this day.

Aside from the nostalgia reference, Holliday's rookie card was also a late inclusion in 2024 Series Two and is going to be a short-print. Topps has done things like this in the past, such as with Ronald Acuna Jr.'s "Bat Down" rookie back in 2018, as well as some rookie cards in 2022. If history is any indication, that means that copies of this Holliday rookie card are going to go for big money, especially early on, even though he isn't in the big leagues right now.

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