The beginning of the new era of Diamond Kings

After writing yesterday about how Panini have sort of kept the DonRuss brand going, today's post features cards from the Diamond Kings range. Panini now issue this as a brand in its own right, but "Diamond Kings" started out in the DonRuss base sets of the 1980s. The first 26 cards in the DonRuss flagship sets were illustrated portraits of baseball stars - one from each team. I have previously blogged several of these that feature Tony.

When Panini were trying to find a winning formula for their unlicensed baseball cards, they gave the Pinnacle brand a go in 2013, but that seemed to fall a bit flat. Panini released cards under the DonRuss brand in 2014 and that must have worked well enough for Panini to continue releasing "DonRuss" cards. In 2015, they built on the cachet of DonRuss and launched Diamond Kings as a standalone set. It has been released every year since.

Card Number 646: Panini Diamond Kings, 2015; #133

This is from the first year of the Diamond Kings. There isn't an artist credited with this picture, so I imagine it's been done by a Panini staff designer using photoshop rather than creating art from scratch.

The back has a great entry for my collection of descriptions off cardbacks: "San Diego's beloved batting wizard."

The uncredited broadcaster quoted on the back as saying that Tony "could hit .320 with a broom" is Sean Salisbury, the former NFL quarterback turned journalist who was working for Yahoo Sports at the time of Tony's death. (He is quoted in this article on the NBC San Diego website.) It seems strange that the cardback compiler would use the quote with such a vague accreditation. 

Like Gwynn, Sean Salisbury was born in Long Beach, although he grew up in Escondido near San Diego. He is three years younger than Tony, having been born in 1963, and played for the San Diego Chargers among other teams. His career would have overlapped with Tony's quite a bit and he obviously knew Tony as in the rest of that quote he says Tony made an impact on his family. 

Another interesting fact about Sean Salisbury is that he was an advisor on Adam Sandler's remake of the movie Mean Machine, and taught Sandler what he needed to do to portray a quarterback. However, despite all that, Sean missed out his chance to have his name appear on the back of this baseball card, which would have added to the very small number of trading cards he appeared on during his career. Trading Card Database only lists 37 cards for him.

Card Number 647: Panini Diamond Kings DK Originals, 2017; #DO-24

What's more fun than an unlicensed base card? An unlicensed insert card.

The portrait photo on this has scary eyes!

There isn't really much to say about this card. It's one of those ones to have in the collection because it's a Tony Gwynn card, rather than because it had any particularly exciting features. 

Tony's scary eyes are on the back too, along with a quote from Tony where he credits Ted Williams with helping him improve his batting. The flowery description is reserved for Ted who is described as "another sweet-swinging Californian." 

Otherwise, this card is almost the pictorial definition of unremarkable. 

Total: 647 cards