During the first 40 years of manufacturing baseball cards, Topps made its name with classic looking card designs that featured aesthetically pleasing borders.
Though borders seem to be a thing of the past for recent Topps releases, they only created eight card designs over that first 40 years that didn’t have that classic baseball card look. Those years were 1962, ’68, ’70, ’71, ’75, ’86, ’87, and ’90.
While some of those designs are absolute icons (like ’68, ’75, and ’87), one of the features that always set Topps apart from other manufacturers was the classic baseball card stock border look. Other companies turned to flash as a way to compete.