Limited Leafs

A couple of mid-90s shiny cards to brighten up your Thursday!

Card Number 916: Leaf Limited, 1994; #152

You can tell this is a high end card because Tony's name is written in fancy cursive script!

This is so shiny is scans a different colour depending how much light is getting into the room. (I'm using the overhead scanner for this and, seriously, the cards change colour if the sun goes behind a cloud while I'm scanning!) So, sometimes the card looks like this. 

On the back we get a quote from Ozzie Smith, which is superb hyperbole. (Superbole?) 

"Tonys mechanicals are so good they enable him to get hits when he's not hitting. There's no stopping him, you just try to slow him down."

No, I don't know what 'getting hits when he's not hitting' means either. The cameo portrait has a classy surround with that feathered pattern. I'll award a bonus point for including the set name, although it is prominent on the front as well. The one year stats line includes the years he had been active up to this point. That feels like an unusual inclusion in a one-line stats box.

Card Number 917: Leaf Limited Gold, 1995; #20

There were 192 cards in this high end set, and 24 further cards in the 'Gold' insert series, which looked a lot like the regular cards (as can be seen here). They used different photos and the card had a gold back instead of the usual silver. The Gold cards were included at a rate of 1 per pack. 

This time it's the team name in the fancy cursive script.

For some reason they decided to crop off Tony's feet. The converging shiny lines combined with the Leaf Limited logo make it look like he is stading in front of a giant badminton shuttlecock. 

Here's the gold back - with the cursive script used for Tony's name. There's no quote this time, meaning there is space for a breakdown of Tony's monthly stats across his entire career. I was surprised to see July was the month Tony recorded his lowest batting averages. (At least, up to the end of the 1994 season!)

All the cards in Leaf Limited - base and inserts - were limited to a print run of 37,500 cards, apart from the 'Lumberjacks' insert series that were numbered in a print run of 5,000. Tony didn't have a Lumberjack card, but he did have a 'Bat Patrol' insert card (previously blogged here), giving him three cards in quite a small set.

Total: 917 cards