FFF - 80s Wednesday

A couple of Fleer Star Stickers from the 80s for your enjoyment today... kicking off with a spot the difference challenge.

Card Number 933: Fleer Star Stickers, 1986; #50

"Wait, Jon, did Fleer use that picture of Tony on the Star Sticker from 1987 as well?

"Well, reader, it looks likes they did. That's very observant of you! However, if you look closely you will see there are some teeny tiny differences."

They fixed the over-exposure on the second picture and Tony's smile is a fraction different. There is a minute difference in the electronic scoreboard on the edge of the balcony to the right of Tony as we look at him here. But those are obviously the same fans in the seats. These photos must have come off the same roll of film.

The back has some stats and some factoids. As usual, I will highlight how interesting the factoids on these early cards are. They were soon eclipsed by other achievements as the awards piled up. This has interesting stats from Tony's batting title winning season in 1984 and showed how he was setting club records already.

Card Number 934: Fleer Star Stickers, 1988; #123

The year before Fleer used grey borders on their flagship set, they tried it out in the Star Stickers set. The little stars around the border are cool, though.

The back just had a stats box and no factoids. Fleer did add in a "stat breakdown" at the bottom of the card, dividing up the stats according to day and night games, and games at home in Jack Murphy Stadium compared to games out on the road. 

From the looks of that breakdown, home games at night suited Tony!

Total: 934 cards

Return to 80s Week - Sportflics Big 6

After yesterday's splurge on Fleer cards, there's just one card in today's post. It features six players, although you can't see them all at the same time. 

Card Number 891: Sportflics, 1986; #181

Sportflics cards were lenticular. That makes them horrible to scan.

There are three players stacked lenticularly on the top and bottom halves of the card. If you tilt the card, each player comes into focus. Here's Tony!

Catch it wrong and you can make a mash up of various players. Tilt this card back and forward just a fraction and Tony's gains, then loses, then gains, a magnificent moustache.

On the back, we find a reason these six players are grouped on one card - they are the six players posting active career batting averages over .300. Of the six, Tony is posting the highest average by some margin.

I have often pointed out how Tony's batting average improved towards the end of his career. He retired on a career average of .338. One day I will look through all his career averages and see if at any point he wasn't the player with the highest active batting average. I suspect he would have been.

But in the meantime, I have plenty of cards to blog about before embarking on a research project like that!

Total: 891 cards

Return to 80s Week - Topps trio

In November 2020 I ran my first "80s week". In the spirit of 80s movie sequels, here is the Return to 80s Week! Our week kicks off with some Topps cards. 

Card Number 881: Topps Baseball Champion Superstars, 1986; #13

This photo is from the same overly-lit photo-shoot that featured on Topps's Glossy All-Star Card in 1986. This card was sold in a complete set of 33 cards of "Baseball Champion Superstars", which sounds like one of those multiple word team names in pastiches of Japanese manga.

The back is a minimum effort job, even by Topps' standards.

I've seen stickers with better backs than this.

Card Number 882: Topps League Leaders Minis, 1988; #74

This card has a rare photo of Tony bare-headed. This is such an odd photo. Is he trudging back to the dug-out having failed to get on base?

The back is colourful with a little photo of Tony. He was the league leader for both batting average and hits in 1987, but only 4th in runs. Seems like he got marooned on base more often than some other players then. 

Card Number 883: Topps Big, 1989; #58

These cards are anoying because they don't fit in my binders. I mean, I could ram them in if I really wanted to have them in there. But it's not ideal. 

The front is a nice combo of action photos and close up. 

On the back we get cartoons. Is that chap with the letter meant to be Tony? Or the chap passing the basketball? Because, er, there's a slight tonal dissimilarity between those cartoon people and Tony.

Because this is such a big card, there is room for some fielding stats as well. Always a bonus!

Total: 883 cards

Tuesday Twins - lookalikey Leafs

In the 1980s Leaf was DonRuss's imprint for the Canadian market. Leaf cards were near-identical 'twins' of DonRuss cards.

Card Number 839: :Leaf, 1986; #41

Tony is watching his team-mates batting to try and suss out the pitcher's arsenal of throws. His look of concentration here would translate into a tendency to swing and make contact with the first pitch he faced when he went up to the plate. 

The back of the card also follows the DonRuss template, but with some French on there for the bilingual Canadian market.

There is mention of a wrist injury in 1985 that hampered Tony's attempt to defend his 1984 batting title. DonRuss / Leaf liked to mention this wider context to explain the figures. Tony had quite the list of injuries catalogued on their cardbacks. 

Card Number 840: Leaf, 1987; #235

The famous "tyre tread" design got reused North of the border.

This card illustrates something called "poor centering". This is very common in cards from the 80s.

The cardback doesn't have all the same information at the DonRuss cards because of the space needed for the French translation. Some of the career highlights carried over from one year's card to the next. It's always interesting to see what they dropped and what they felt was worth repeating.

Total: 840 cards

I am very busy at the moment so will be taking a short break from blogging. I hope to be back in action before the end of the month!

Miniaturised classic card designs

A few card companies have produced smaller sized baseball cards. These are often referred to as 'Minis'. But Fleer went fancy with their titles and called their smaller cards 'Classic Miniatures'. (Oooh, there's posh!)

Card Number 782: Fleer Classic Miniatures, 1986; #69

This 120-card set was sold as a complete box set. The design uses the same frame and colour scheme as the regular-sized flagship set. They use a different photo though.

The cardback has the same lay-out as the flagship set, including the factoids. 

That franchise record for a hitting streak didn't last long. Benito Santiago beat it in his debut season in 1987, when he recorded a hit in 34 consecutive games. 

Card Number 783: Fleer Classic Miniatures, 1987; #50

Again, this smaller card copies the design template of the flagship set. The photo is unusual because there are very few cards that show Tony without a helmet or a cap on. 

The cardback is the same as the flagship set, complete with a 'hitting guide' compiled by "pro scouts". (Or so they claimed.)

Still, it's a neat little graphic to see on a neat little card.

Total: 783 cards

Cereal freebies: Part 2

A sequel to yesterday's blog post about Post Cereal cards. Today we look at cards produced a few years earlier by a rival company - Quaker Oats. (I realise I have done these in the wrong chronological order. Oh well.)

I was surprised to learn that the Quaker Oats Company was not founded by Quakers. The founders just adopted the name because the Quaker sect had a good reputation for honesty and purity. The Quaker in their logo isn't based on a particular Quaker in the current design, but originally he was sort of based on William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. 

Like Post, Quaker gave baseball cards away in their cereal. Unlike, Post, they got Topps to print the cards.

Card Number 691: Quaker Chewy Granola Bars, 1986; #7

Wait, is a granola bar a breakfast cereal... ah, close enough.

Tony looks a bit downbeat in this photo. At least the Quaker mascot looks cheerful. Because this card was produced by Topps it was fully licensed, so the SD logo on Tony's had didn't need to be airbrushed off. 

On the back these were proclaimed as the 1st Annual Collectors' Edition. It was actually a one and done because a second series was not released.

You can almost tell this card is produced by Topps just by looking at the factoids. This card was in packs of chewy granola bars in 1986, but the factoids only run up to 1984 and the first two are from 1981! (And why lead with those when Tony had played in a World Series in 1984! Topps's approach to factoids in the 1980s was downright bizarre.)

Card Number 692: Cap'n Crunch, 1989; #5

Yes, the Quaker company also make Cap'n Crunch.

Cap'n Crunch's Wikipedia entry has a very entertaining section about the product's marketing, including the complex naval world of the Cap'n and his crew, which I think is mainly one dog. We never had this cereal in the UK, so it's not something that's part of my cultural landscape seascape. 

I'm disappointed that the Cap'n didn't appear on the front of this card with Tony. Or anywhere on this card. I'm also disappointed that the prominent #19 on the front is not actually the card number. (Booo, Capn'n Crunch! Booooooo!)

The factoids on the back are more up-to-date than the Granola Bars card, but that list looks like a cut, paste and change the numbers job. (Were people able to do cut'n'paste in 1989?)

A batting average of .313 is quite low to win a batting title (1988) and is 25 points lower than Tony's career average. He certainly scored a lot higher in other seasons and didn't win the title. 

I've put these cards in the same binder page as my five cards issued by the Post company as a mini set of cereal cards. There are also some more 'food issue' cards to share with you in future posts. But for now, I hope you had a good breakfast and have a great day.

Total: 692 cards

Friday French Lesson

Have you ever bought a job-lot of cards for just one card? I have. Dan put a little pile of cards up for sale on the UK Facebook group at a fair price and I spotted two Tony Gwynn cards in it. They were both fairly common cards that, no, wait a minute, that's an O-Pee-Chee card!

Card Number 673: O-Pee-Chee, 1986; #10

Apart from the O-Pee-Chee logo in a big white box on the front, there isn't really anything to distinguish it from the Topps card of the same year.

But when you turn it over, there's a lot of differences because most of the content is replicated in French.

"Parlons Baseball!"

"Premier coup de circuit!"

"Fiche complete comme frappeur dans les Majeures!"

I had an interesting discussion in work a couple of days ago about trying to produce genuinely bilingual resources and one thing we talked about was how pedestrian translated material becomes. The same thing happens on card backs. In English Tony "belted" his first major league home run on August 22nd 1982. The French just notes his first home run was on the 22nd August 1982. (Also, how weird is it that in French they put the dates the correct way round, instead of putting them the American way!)

This cardback is from the era where an unrelated factoid makes its appearance on the back as well. I noticed the French text is about 25 percent longer than the English. We have exactly the same issue in work when we have resources translated into Welsh. English is a language that is very easy to pare down and convey meaning with minimal words and grammar. Languages like French and Welsh have less forgiving syntax and are more precise. 

By the way, that premier coup de circuit was against the Chicago Cubs in an 8-7 defeat for the Padres at Wrigley Field. Tony hit it off Bill Campbell in the sixth inning. It was a solo home run, but Tony had already hit a triple in the second inning, batting in a run.

A big thanks to Dan for making this post possible.

Total: 673 cards

Glossy card, spotlight glare

Back in the 80s Topps produced All Star cards that were inserted into their cellophane wrapped multipacks of cards ('rackpacks') so that you could see the card in question. That was helpful if you had one particular favourite player, or were collecting the set. It also meant an extra Tony Gwynn card to collect in the seasons after he was an All Star.

Card Number 637: Topps Glossy All Stars, 1986; #17

This card has a varnish finish to make it glossy, however Tony's skin is noticeably shiny too! Although this looks like it was taken outdoors, I suspect that shine is caused by a lamp rather than the sun. It looks unnaturally lit. 

The back is as boring as any other of these cards. The quirk with these is that they commemorate the game the year before, so it says 1985 in big numerals but it was released to accompany the 1986 flagship set.

This card arrived in a joblot along with a couple of other All Star cards that I blogged previously. However one of them was the card from 1985. My previous copy had discoloured, so the new one is now in my binder as an upgrade! It also has better centering.

Weirdly, I think Tony looks yunger in the photo on the card from 1986 than on this one commemorating the 1984 All Star game that was released in 1985. That's partially because he has shaved off his moustache. I think the shiny complexion also makes him look younger. I'm fairly sure it is a later photo, though. His uniform on the card from 1985 is the 1984 uniform, but the card from 1986 shows Tony in the pinstripes that the Padres adopted in 1985, and the plain brown hat is another indicator.

I now have four of these cards, from 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1990. They look quite good together, so I have rearranged my binder to group them.

Looking at all four cards together, the card released in 1986 is different to the others. Tony's name is in a bigger font size and there is no National League logo. It reappeared the following year.

I'm also never sure whether to hyphenate 'All Star'. Topps do on these cards, but they don't always hyphenate it, even on cards released in the same year. Other card companies are just as inconsistent, and reviewing my previous posts about All Star cards, so am I!

Total: 637 cards

Lots of pics of Sportflics

In a previous post, I outlined the history of Sportflics, which became the Score and Pinnacle conglomerate. About 10 years after the first lenticular Sportflics cards were released, the brand was updated for the 90s as Sportflix, with an X. 

In the PWE from Tim, there were two of the original Sportflics cards from 1986. These do not scan very well, so I have tried to take some photos of them to capture the full Sportflics experience.

I'm also going to be a bit weird and show the cardbacks first.

Card Number 616: Sportflics, 1986; #13

At first I thought this was card #19 in the set, which would have earned it 10 bonus points. But it isn't They've just put '19' in a baseball to look like the card number. Bad Sportflics! No bonus points for you! Harrumph!

Here's the scan of the front.

There are three pictures revealed by moving the card. (Or holding the card still and moving your head!)

Tony at bat...

...Tony swinging...

...and a portrait photo.

Tony appeared on another card in the set.

Card Number 617: Sportflics, 1986; #140

The "Tri-Stars" had pictures of three different players. This leads to odd pictures of all three. Tony was on a card featuring players with high batting averages.

Notably, Al Oliver wore 0 (zero) on his uniform. 

The scan offers a bizarre mash up of all 3 faces.

Tony is youthful, with a shadow of Bill Buckner's eyebrows on his forehead.

On Bill's card you can really see his caterpillar eyebrows in all their glory. That's some 'tache too.

Al also has a 'tache, and escapes Bill's ghostly brows by virtue of having a cap on. You can just see Tony's cap logo behind the jay, like a bad airbrushing job on an old baseball card.

These are fun cards to hold and fiddle with to try and get photos of the images. 

Although these cards say 'First Series' on the back, no second series was issued that year. The company who developed them, Major League Marketing, launched the Score range in 1988. That first Score range included 'magic motion' trivia cards, which were lenticular. (According to BaseballCardPedia, these were included because at the time Topps had exclusive rights to sell packs of just baseball cards - this explains why Fleer included a logo sticker, and DonRuss included puzzle pieces in with their baseball cards!)

Thanks again to Tim for sending me these!

Total: 617 cards

80s week: Young Superstar, Big Hitter

Tony's cards from the 1980s, as he was breaking on to the scene, are a great resource for building a picture of him as a player before he became the legendary figure of "Mr Padre". It's weird to think that at one point he was a hot rising star. In a strange way the hitting machine of the 1990s with his powerful mature physique has eclipsed those early days. I find it hard to imagine him as a young man.

And yet here he is, heralded as a young superstar.

Card Number 495: Kay-Bee Young Superstars of Baseball, 1986; #17 

Like the Fleer cards I posted about yesterday, these cards were sold in self-contained sets of 33 cards. They were made by Topps and sold exclusively in K.B. Toy Shops. (The little toy soldier logo is really cute!) 

You can tell these were a high quality product for Topps at the time because there was a photo on the back and a write up that is actually about the player.

The way they describe Tony's college career is a bit misleading. He attended university on a basketball scholarship and was allowed to play baseball after one of his high school contemporaries with a baseball scholarship badgered the baseball team's coach into asking him to play, and even then initially the basketball coach said no.

Although this card was manufactured by Topps, I regard it as an 'oddball'. Our second card today is also a Topps card, but one they manufactured for a bakery.

Card Number 496: Drake's Big Hitters, 1985; #14

As the card says, this was the fifth series of Drake's cards. It was also the final one with Topps. The sets produced for Drake's after that were produced through Michael Schechter Associates (MSA), who created a lot of 'oddball' sets. 

There were 44 cards in this set, which were included in Drake's products.

The back just tweaks the cardback from the Topps regular sets, except with the addition of the Drake's logo by the upper right corner of the stats box and the addition of Drake's Bakeries to the boilerplate text underneath the box. However, compared to the regular Topps set this cardback is much more readable.

This is the regular Topps cardback from 1985 which must be a nightmare for people who are colourblind.

(I mean, red on green? Seriously?)

So, here we are, almost at the end of 80s week. I've decided it's going to be an 8-day week with a bonus card tomorrow as well.

Total: 496 cards

80s week: super Slugger cards

Back in the 80s Fleer used to sell little self-contained sets of 44 cards. I have blogged about a couple of them before. They aren't hugely expensive but they can be lovely cards, printed on glossier stock than regular cards of the time and featuring some nice photos. 

One of the annual sets was called Best Sluggers Versus Pitchers and featured 22 players who were renowned for their batting and 22 cards of top pitchers. The word 'slugger' to me conjures up images of players hitting the long-ball and powering home runs out of the ground, which wasn't Tony's game. Fleer included him in their sets anyway. And looking at Tony's ability to hit the ball means he was most definitely a 'slugger'. 

Card Number 493: Fleer Baseball's Best Sluggers vs. Pitchers, 1986; #15

This photo is so washed out with light, you can almost feel the San Diego sun on your skin.

The average on the front (.325) was his career average rather than from the previous season. 

The back isn't particularly exciting. No factoids or cartoons.

In 1986, the year this card was released, Tony led the National League in hits (211), runs (107 - the only time he led the league in runs) and had a batting average of .329. That wasn't high enough to win him a batting title that year. Tim Raines of the Montreal Expos was the National League leader that year with .334, while Wade Boggs was overall champion with .357 in the middle of his streak of five American League titles in six years.

This was before 'slugging percentage' became a thing, but that has since been calculated at .467 for 1986. That's lower than would be expected for his number of hits, but Tony always hit a lot of singles, which brings the slugging percentage down.

Card Number 494: Fleer Baseball's Best Sluggers vs. Pitchers, 1987; #17

The border design is more colourful giving this card more pop than the 1986 version.

Tony's successful 1986 season helped him move his career average up a percentage point. Keen observers will note that Tony's final career batting average was another 12 points higher at .338. He is one of very few players who actually batted at a higher average in the second half of his career.

The back is a bit jazzier too, if minimalist.

1987 was a superlative season for Tony. His batting average of .370 was a new post-war record at the time and brought him his second batting title. He also led the leagues in hits (218) and scored more runs than the previous year (119). He must have spent a good amount of the season on base.

It was also one of the few seasons where he broke .500 in slugging percentage, with .511. He wouldn't top .500 again until his famous .394 season in 1994.

In conclusion, I think Fleer were right. Tony was one of Baseball's Best Sluggers!

Total: 494 cards (100 cards over my original target!)