Scanning Nightmares - Pinnacle holofoil horrors

Pinnacle are one of the 90s card brands that are no longer with us, although it sort of lives on as one of the many 'zombie brands' owned by Panini now. Pinnacle was a company that loved shininess back when it was alive. That means lots of gold foil and then holofoil printing. 

Hence Pinnacle cards are lovely to look at, and horrid to scan.

Card Number 591: Pinnacle Zenith All-Star Salute, 1995; #6

This is the scan off the flatbed scanner. 

And this is the scan using the overhead scanner. I tried illuminating this from the side. The dark bar under Tony's bat is the reflection of the overhead scanner in the card. 

At least on this second scan the Pinnacle set name and Tony's name are legible. This scan almost captures the actual colour of the card as well. 

I had another go using daylight. It got a bit washed out. 

On the back we get a close up 'hero pose' photo and a little write up about Tony's All-Star appearance in 1994, even though this card was commemorating the 1995 All-Star game. In fairness to Pinnacle, they didn't have much to say about Tony's All-Star performance in 1995 - he was hitless in two plate appearances and then replaced by Reggie Sanders.

1995 was the middle year of a hat-trick of All Star victories for the National League. So even though Tony didn't contribute much to the game, he was on the winning side.

Zenith was Pinnacle's last release of the year, which is why they had cards about that season's All-Star Game in it. I have blogged a couple of other cards from Zenith. There's one in this post about cards from 1995. Interestingly, when Playoff bought the assets of Pinnacle, it also included the Zenith brand name, which Playoff used as part of a DonRuss release. I've blogged about the name Zenith being used by two different manufacturers here.

Pinnacle's love affair with holofoil continued right up until their abrupt demise in 1998, as can be seen by this card.

Card Number 592: Pinnacle Plus Lasting Memories, 1998; #29

Lasting Memories was a 30-card shiny insert series.

Holofoil and die-cut, but dark on the flatbed scanner!

The ripple edges of the die-cut don't really show on the black background of the overhead scan (below), but this picture shows the holofoil effect in terms of shininess. The card doesn't look anything like this in normal light.

I had another go. Although this third attempt is darker, this is more colour-accurate capturing the silver and blue colours of the card. The black bar on the right is the reflection of the overhead camera. 

So, I waited and had a go in daylight and the results were tons better. (This scan was straight too!)

The blue on the front is repeated on the back with a faint image that makes Tony look like a Jedi Force Ghost in the sky.

I think this is one of the earliest references to the looming 3000-hit mark, given this was issued some time before the end of the 1998 season. Tony didn't reach the 3000 mark that year - he recorded 148 hits, 72 short of the amount Pinnacle said he needed.

Total: 592 cards