Card Number 612: Pinnacle Aficionado, 1996; #30
"Pinnacle what!?" "You heard me - Aficionado!"
The front of this card has a bizarre textured close up of Tony's face. I don't know what the surface print is made from. It feels very rough. The sepia photo screams 'card company aiming for classy'.
The set logo says 'Aficionado by Pinnacle'. Almost like a perfume range.
The back is black and shows every mark. The edges look chewed up in the scan but the card honestly does not look this bad in real life. But, ignore the edges, look at that stats box! That's new.
So this stats box compares Tony's average in 1995 and his career against the overall averages for outfielders in 1970, 1985 and 1995. My inner data nerd went Squeeee! when I saw this.
Tony won his sixth batting title in 1995 with a batting average .082 above the average batting average! He outperformed all his peers except in two metrics - home runs and stolen bases. Well, fair play, he was 35 that year and his best basestealing days were behind him. And he was never a home run guy.
He did pretty well on total bases, though. He would have hit a lot of singles in his 197 hits, given he only made 62 extra bases, and 36 of those would be from home runs.
Mark and I had a bit of a laugh about this card, which Mark described as "horrible". From a design perspective, that's a good description, but this cardback is something really special.
I have now blogged all my outstanding cards. I am now planning to take a little break until some new cards arrive, or until I start playing around with building a Tony Gwynn Frankenset. I may chronicle a bit more of my collection drift as I have a few odds and ends knocking about. And I've been thinking about my collection as a whole and my next target to aim at.
So I have some ruminating to do. For now, I leave you with this pinnacle of Pinnacle cardbacks!
Total: 612 cards
Enjoy your break! I've been thinking about building a frankenset too.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping the break won't be too long!
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