Sunday, January 31, 2021

One card only - leading the league

The second card in the couple that Brian sent me was an insert card from the Topps flagship set in 1995. It's definitely a contender for cards with backs more interesting than fronts.

Card Number 578: Topps (League Leaders), 1995; #LL4

The front has a dark background and the Topps logo and Tony's name are in hard-to-scan foil.


However, on the back we have a colourful list of names and a graph!


Cardback graphs are usually poorly annotated. This one looks like it might actually be in proportion. 

Another odd quirk on this cardback is showing the batting leaders for the National League and the National League West. The other players in the NL West top 5 in 1994 were Bip Roberts, who was back in San Diego after two seasons with the Reds, Andres Galarraga who played for the Rockies that year, and Mike Piazza and Brett Butler who were both playing for the Dodgers. (As an aside, I always smile when I see a Bip Roberts card. It wasn't his given name though. His given name was Leon.)

None of those four players featured in the top 5 for the National League, where only Jeff Bagwell of the Astros came anywhere near Tony's post-war record batting average score, and even Jeff was some way behind.

A final note is the consistency of the font used for Tony's name on the back and the caption to the left of the graph. This is the font used for player names on the front of the base cards in the 1995 set. 


I appreciate the consistency in font use - bonus point for this card!

Another thank you to Brian for sending me these cards. Keep busting those wax boxes!

Total: 578 cards



1 comment:

  1. Cool card. Not sure I've seen this insert before. I feel like I would have recognized that colorful bar graph.

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