Questing for gemstones

A couple of Upper Deck cards from my recent eBay trove today. First up, another Starquest card to add to my sub-collection.

Card Number 602: Upper Deck Collector's Choice Starquest, 1998; #65

I present what is becoming the usual double-scan of a foil-heavy card. First the flatbed scan.

Then the overhead scan.

It's rare that a foil-tastic card like this has readable text on it when scanned on the flatbed, but this one does. I initially thought I had this Starquest card and was quite surprised when it arrived and I checked my collection and found I didn't have it.

On the back we have some uniquely curated stats relating to Tony's batting performance in specific scenarios. A bit of work has gone into this cardback factoid. I'd give it some bonus points but the hyphenation of short words triggers me slightly, so points would be dinged for that and that means the card comes out honours even.

There's only one year in the stats box, but that's OK. 1997 was the last year that Tony won a batting title - so it's perhaps not surprising he led the league in batting averages when runners were in scoring position and when the bases were loaded. His 119 RBI was a career high, by some margin. It was the only time he topped 100 ribbies, and 1997 accounted for just over ten per cent of the runs he batted in over his entire career.

And just because it's fun to see cards in context, here are the three Starquest cards from 1998.

Card Number 603: Upper Deck Gold Reserve 24 Karat Gems, 2000; #K14

That's not how you spell carat.

Another shiny card. Another brace of scans.

Gold Reserve was a set with 300 base cards that were versions of the regular Upper Deck flagship set, with the words 'Gold Reserve' printed on them. This caused me some considerable confusion back in June 2020.

However, the insert cards were different to the flagship set, so this card was only available in Gold Reserve. Although the players depicted were "24-Karat Gems", there were only 15 cards in the set. (This annoys me. It's a set called 24-Karat Gems - why not pick 24 players?)

The write up on the back is succinct, refreshingly free of hyperbole, and printed in one of the worst faux-handwriting fonts ever used on the back of a baseball card. 

Upper Deck have also stuck a #19 on the front and back of the card, with no context or explanation. It's on Tony's armband on the front, but otherwise it looks like they just decided to add it because they felt they had to add something. On the back it balances the tiny Padres logo, so I suppose that's something. 

Total: 603 cards