Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Tuesday Twins - Shiny Leafs

I have started scanning the shiny cards that arrived in the parcel from France, using my overhead scanner. It's slow work because ideally I need daylight to scan the cards in, and I don't have much daylight left after finishing work. However, here are two shiny cards that got scanned last night.

Card Number 738: Leaf Limited, 1996; #53


Even with the overhead scanner the full shininess of the card isn't quite captured. This is lovely in hand. Unfortunately it also suffers from the common affliction of 90s shiny sports cards - there's a slight warp to it now, a quarter of a century later.

I like cards that have Tony's number (19) as their number in the set. But this comes close, with number 53, which is the number Tony wore in Spring Training with the Padres in 1982 and features on his Topps rookie card.

Apart from the set number, the back isn't particularly noteworthy although it does feature a stat I'd not seen before, about Tony's run of seasons posting over .350. That means he was hitting at a rate of more than 1 in 3 at bats, reaching base 7 times for every 20 times he went up to the plate. For all the hitting power in the current Padres line-up, they could really use some consistency like that.


Card Number 739: Leaf Limited Gold, 1996; #53


The gold parallel version of the Leaf Limited is incredibly shiny!

Leaf changed the colour on the cardback to gold as well. This is what I would call a proper parallel, with the card looking different front and back.


These high end cards may be rascals to scan, but they are lovely to look at. I have quite a pile of shiny cards to work through if I can catch some daylight hours over the next week. This may affect my blogging schedule but I promise I will post them all - and they will brighten up some gloomy winter days in the coming months!

Total: 739 cards


3 comments:

  1. Have you ever stopped to wonder where the trading card industry might be today with out the technology of shiny cards?
    The Leaf Limited series was always one that I really liked when the product was released. I believe it was the total amount of boxes or cases that was released as well. It was truly considered limited.

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    1. The innovation throughout the 90s was incredible. (I've mentioned before how the 90s started with cardboard and ended with CD-Roms.) I don't think there has been that level of innovation since (although maybe NFTs? If Topps can ever get them to work)

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  2. Very nice looking cards. I remember the product, but don't remember opening up too much of this stuff. Pretty sure it was too high=end for my budget.

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