Andy M, who sent me the DonRuss card packet featuring Tony recently, got back in touch to ask if I had the 2020 Stadium Club card. (At that point I didn't, although I've subsequently been offered it by several people.)
Card Number 402: Topps Stadium Club, 2020; #160
That's an attractive photo, although Topps seems to be doing their darnedest to make it look like a logoless card. However, it's a great pose and always fun to see a batting doughnut on the bat.
As an aside, I've noticed that Tony has had a card in all of Topps's main releases this year. This includes in Topps Archives, where it makes sense for Tony to have a card, but it also includes a short print card in the flagship set along with some inserts and retro cards, a faux rookie card, cards in Allen & Ginter and the Topps 206 sets, and so on. There have also been more than a few put out by Panini under various brands like DonRuss.
Out of curiosity I went to Trading Card Database to see how many Tony Gwynn cards have been released recently. I was astounded really to see that since Tony passed away, almost 1,800 cards have been produced and listed on the database.
In 2015, the year after he passed away, 313 cards were produced. That's understandable given the cicumstances. DonRuss produced a set of 5 tribute cards for example. There were 155 cards released in 2016, 153 in 2017 and 159 in 2018. A lot of these are parallels and short print versions of the same card, so in reality there aren't that many cards to collect to have an example of each type.
150 cards a year for a player who stopped playing over a decade beforehand is a lot. But things went slightly bonkers in 2019. TCDb lists 514 Tony Gwynn cards released last year. That level of production has continued into this year. As of the 2nd October when I was looking these numbers up, TCDb had 426 cards listed. That's more than were released in 2001, the season Tony retired.
The peak year of releases during Tony's career was 1998 when 812 cards are listed. However, at least 200 of these are variant patterns in the plastic on "Topps Tek" cards. While that is a ridiculous volume, it was at the height of the mad card boom in the 1990s, and, more importantly, Tony was still playing!
Just to show the 'bloat' in production, at the end of the 80s Tony's card totals rose from 66 in 1987 to 108 in 1990. in 1995, the season after he recorded his .394 modern day batting record, he featured on 173 cards. Then there is a huge peak at the end of the 90s, before the bell curve drops back down to more sensible levels. In 2002, the year after he retired, he featured on 232 cards. It peaks back up for a few years to an ultimate high (1,297 cards in 2005 after 648 in 2004 and before 485 in 2006), mainly because card companies started doing lots of very short print memorabilia cards, and then drops again (189 in 2010). So this is definitely a third surge in sheer numbers of cards.
There are probably lots of reasons why Tony is such a popular choice for the card companies in the last year or two. I get a sense from reading card blogs that a lot of collectors are a bit older and nostalgia plays a factor in their collecting. Cards of retired heroes, particularly the cards designed to look like cards from the 70s and 80s, or referencing events in the 80s and 90s, are targeting that demographic of collector who isn't interested in the latest hot rookie. And because absolutely every card in a set released this year will have multiple parallels as a matter of course, the number of cards will be inflated even more.
And that's why I'm blogging about a Stadium Club card released this year on a blog dedicated to a player who stopped playing 18 years ago and passed away six years ago.
Total cards: 402
As much as I enjoy collecting Gwynn cards 514 different cards of him in 2019 is a bit excessive. But card companies are focused on quantity over quality these days. That being said... I like this SC card. Don't remember seeing that photo with him holding the bat w/doughnut before.
ReplyDeleteIt's an unusual photo which sets it apart from most modern releases.
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