Toughest Topps Baseball Issues 1981-2006

[toppcat]

Branching out a little in my collecting of Topps type cards and moving to the post 1980 baseball era. With the lack of centralized information and cessation of annual guides (which didn't always match listings or ID everything anyway), I'm trying to figure out the toughest obscurities of the post-Vintage, pre-Eisner era.

There's issued test sets, sets produced for third parties and then proofs/protoypes which never saw the retail light of day and I consider them vastly different things both in terms of untent and scarcity. I'm curious as to what folks think are the toughest 10-15 Topps cards or sets in each category (Test, Third Party and Prototype/Proof) during this period.

For this exercise I'm ignoring variations, parallels and intentional scarcities that are numbered (x of x, one of one's etc) and the like but including sub-brands like Bowman. I am aware of most of the 80's tougher issues but I'm sure I missed a few in my research.

As an example, 1989 Heads Up would be an issued test while 1992 Round Trippers would be a proof/protoype. A good third party example would be the early 90's Golden Spikes cards.

TIA and quite curious what you all may think!