Scoring a triple in 1995

Three cards from the same manufacturer released in the same year today! 1995 was right in the middle of Tony's mid-90s peak. 

Card Number 997: Score, 1995; #28

Let's start with the base card from the Score set that year.

Tony is wearing a batting practice top but has a dirt stain on his knee so has obviously been taking practice seriously. The 'ragged' edges of the photo and the blue box with Tony's name on are the kind of framing that I associate with the nineties, especially combined with the 'drop shadow' at the bottom. The green colouring on the borders adds a dash of colour without being overpowering. 

There is a full height portrait on the back. Tony looks relaxed in the outfield. Notice the batting gloves stuffed into his back pocket. I'm glad the designer found space for that factoid next to the giant stats box. I didn't know that Tony had never finished lower than sixth in the batting table up to this point. Even his less productive seasons were top ten material. 

Card Number 998: Score Hall of Gold, 1995; #HG14

This insert series was really just an excuse for Score to produce really shiny cards! The photo is a almost Toppsian masterclass in showing a player without showing any of their identifying features!

27 years after this card was released, it annoys me that Score didn't choose to use a photo where Tony's face was visible. If they were going to bother including him in the insert set it seems sensible to actually use such a photo. We know they had those photos available - because they used one on the back of the card!

As insert cards go, I don't mind shiny. But there are several design mistakes here on the back. Firstly they dropped his name onto the photo with an odd placement. Tony's name isn't placed centrally, making the whole thing slightly off-kilter.  Then they put white text on over Tony's white uniform, making it unreadable. Even the drop shadows on the font (so nineties!) can't make the letters legible. The borders are unequal too, and the black line chops off Tony's body on either side. Overall it's a poorly executed mess.

Card Number 999: Score Dream Team Gold, 1995; #DG8

And just to round off the post, an almost-unscannable hologram card. 

Holograms aren't particularly interesting to me. And they are impossible to reproduce in blog-friendly form. Although this scan does show some of the detail hidden in the hologram.

The back has a pure nineties colour scheme with it's gradated hot pink, teal and orange. This card is so nineties, I feel like staring at it for any length of time might give me time travelling powers so I can go back 30 years!

It's not really possible to understand nineties baseball card design without understanding how computers revolutionised the way baseball cards were laid out. Why else would you have one green letter in Tony's name? Or different kerning for his first name and his surname? Even the stars have a 3D effect drop shadow going on.

Although it seems like I am mocking the way cards were designed in the nineties, these are actually beautiful mementos of a long-gone decade. It was a time of hope and optimism - a new century was only a few years away, and who knew what wonders lay just over that millennial horizon? It maybe hasn't turned out as planned, which makes me feel wistful for the short window of history encapsulated in cards released in the 1990s.

Total: 999 cards