Legendary oddball

An oddball treat today - a card that doesn't appear on Baseballcardpedia. These cards were apparently issued with a magazine called Legends Sporting Memorabilia, supplied in uncut sheets of 9 cards inserted in the magazine. Stars from several different sports were represented. (Info source)

Card Number 1034: Legends Sporting Memorabilia, 1991; #53

Even in the free-for-all frontierland that was the peak junk wax era in 1991, I'm surprised a magazine would produce cards without any kind of licensing. As a media outlet they could well have owned the rights to the photograph, but the copyright claim on the back is unusual even among oddball cards.

From the write up on the back, it would be reasonable to expect Tony to have won the batting title in 1991. He didn't. He won his fifth batting title in 1993. Although 1991 was a pivotal year as he met Ted Williams and switched to a heavier bat after talking to his personal batting hero. 

Total: 1034 cards

Reusing photos raises questions...

No new cards today, but something that's stood out to me. As I've acquired more cards I have started noticing the same photos being reused. Recently I was hunting for a blog post to check something, and I found the post with the Fleer Tony Gwynn Commemorative cards from 1991. I noticed something I hadn't picked up on before.

This is one of the cards - #5 in the insert set.

It wasn't the front that caught my eye. It was the back.

I had just been flicking through my Topps binder looking at cards from 2021, which I why I noticed this connection.

That is the Topps Archives insert from 2021 Series One. And that is the exact same photo that was used on the back of the Fleer card in 1991 - except it's not close-cropped.

So, what does this mean? Have Topps acquired the photos that Fleer used in the past? This may explain why so many cards that give me a feeling of deja vu give me a feeling of deja vu! Except, I've only ever been looking at Topps cards to find where the photos are originally used. I will need to be looking in my Fleer binder from now on.

I doubt this is a ground-breaking revelation, but I felt a bit stunned when I discovered it. Maybe other bloggers would be able to shed some more light on the situation?

Another addition to the family card binder

The other card from Brian, that I mentioned yesterday, was from the 1991 Topps set. If it looks pack fresh, that's because it is. Brian opened a box of packs to try and build the set.

Topps, 1991; #99 - Chris Gwynn

This was Chris's second Topps card. His Topps rookie card was the previous year. However he appeared in both the Fleer and Upper Deck sets in 1989, and in the Score Major League Baseball set in 1988. He shared a rookie card in the Fleer 1988 set with Peter Smith of the Braves. He also had some minor league cards around the same time, as he moved up and down from AAA to the Major Leagues for a couple of seasons. 

As can be seen from the stats on the back, 1990 was his breakthrough year and he played 101 games for the Dodgers, the team that he and his brothers went to watch when they were growing up.

This is the first card of Chris in Dodgers uniform that I have acquired. He soon moved to the Royals, and then finished his career with the Padres. His final season was in 1996, so his major league career was relatively brief. 

You'll see that Tony gets a mention on the cardback. This is several years after Chris first got a mention on the back of one of Tony's cards, back in 1985. 

Nine years in the Major Leagues is a decent career, even though Chris is eclipsed by his brother's achievements. Chris did have one honour that Tony never won - an Olympic silver medal. He represented Team USA at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. I imagine there are a very short list of sportsmen who competed at an Olympics in their home city and then went on to play professional support for their home city team as well.

Know the Score Part 2

This is a sequel of sorts to "Know the Score" which I published way back in May. In that first post I said that Score cards tended to have more interesting card backs than fronts, and I feel the same is true of the cards in this post. So I am going to show them back to front.

Card Number 365: Score Baseball's Hottest 100, 1989; #40

Even though he had spent 1988 dogged by injury, Tony Gwynn was included in the 100 players featured in this set from Score. It was sold as a complete set along with a book and some "magic motion trivia cards" that were about Hall of Famers rookie seasons. (Checklist)

There's a solid portrait photo on the cardback. The way the write up is phrased makes it sound like he had just two gold gloves and batting titles at this stage in his career, but in fact he had three batting titles by 1989 (and he earned his fourth in 1989).

The front is fairly run-of-the-mill. The red border is nice and there is a presage of 90s card design with the different font for the T in Tony compared to the rest of his name.

But red border apart, I think this is still one where the back is better than the front. 

Card Number 366: Score, 1990; 685

This is one of the "Dream Team" subsets within the Score base series. You may well be thinking there is no way that this cardback is more interesting than the front. 

But this is the front.

The photo on this card is bizarre. Recently I read a Facebook post from someone who busted a box of Score '90 and they raved about the Dream Team subset cards, which all looked like this. But I can't see the appeal. It's kind of fuzzy and washed out and has no context to it. If they were going for trying to capture waking up from a confusing dream, then they succeeded.

The write up on the back about Tony's scrutiny of video replay as a use of cutting edge technology feels amusingly quaint now. It doesn't mention how he bought the first VCR for the club to use because they wouldn't shell out for it. The descriptions of him compiling his own highlight reels against certain pitchers intrigues me. I wonder where those video tapes ended up.

Also, there's an amusing typo. Four lines from the bottom it talks about Tony winning his third straight "battling title". Now, I'm guilty of my own fair share of typos, but it is funny to see one on a card. And it's another reason why the cardback overcomes its plain-ness and is more interesting than the front.

Card Number 367: Score 100 Superstars, 1991; #94

Tony isn't quite looking down the lens in the photo on the back, but it's still a nice card. This is from another one of the sets that Score sold as a complete unit. 

I'm going to add the description by his team-mate Joe Carter to my list of unique descriptions on cardbacks: "He's on a cloud by himself!" Joe Carter, incidentally, was playing for the Blue Jays in 1991, having only been a team-mate of Tony's in San Diego for one year in 1989. Score didn't reference Joe being Tony's former team-mate, or give a date or context for that quote. How long were they sitting on it before they used it?

The front features Tony fielding. It almost looks like he's pitching in the photo. The whole pose is so ungainly and the composition of the photo, with a team mate behind him, is awkward. The designer didn't help by plopping the Padres logo in the corner up by his hand, when there is loads of dead space below it.

And now a pop quiz.

a) Which powerful hitter travelled the other way in the trade that took Joe Carter from San Diego to Toronto?

b) What did Joe Carter do in the last game he played in 1993 that contributed to his induction in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (despite not being Canadian)?

c) Both Joe Carter and Tony Gwynn were born in 1960, but who was older by two months and two days?

I'll pop the answers in tomorrow's post!

Total: 367/394

Back to Base - Fleer Ultra 91-94

Fleer Ultra was Fleer's other big card range for just over a decade, surviving the transition of ownership to Marvel, the merger with Skybox, Marvel's bankruptcy fire sale, and the restoration of the company in the late 90s. It was a range that competed in the Upper Deck / Stadium Club market, although all flagship products were soon featuring the fancy elements that set those ranges apart, like photos on the back and foil embellishments. 

Card Number 302: Fleer Ultra, 1991; #303

I was tempted to put this selection out of chronological order so that this card number matched up to my numbering system.

Fleer had quite a thing for grey at one time, and considering this was their exciting "Ultra" range, it's a dull framing colour.

The back makes up for it.

That colour scheme right there? That is 1991! I am getting flashbacks to Global Hypercolor t-shirts, alcopops and cassette singles just looking at it. 

I've mentioned awarding points to cards. This would get a bonus point for having the year in the set name on the front. I'd also give it four bonus points for having four photos, and for them all showing a different action - batting, base-running, throwing from the outfield, and posing all cool like. 

Card Number 303: Fleer Ultra, 1992; #277

Fleer upped their game in 1992 and Ultra aped Stadium Club's borderless look.

I often wonder about the crowd in the background in early 90s baseball cards - there must be someone somewhere who gets this card out to show people how they were on a baseball card once. That guy in the red hat really stands out. 

I'm not sure what's going on with the graph paper background on the cardback. Although it is a card from 1992 and that does look like turquoise, the trend colour from 1992!

I'd also award points, if I awarded points, for sensible statting. This is a slimmed down stats box, which is OK by me. I have an all-or-just-last-season attitude to stats boxes. The bio data text is printed way too small though. That's the size font that should only be used for boilerplate text. about copyright. 

Card Number 304: Fleer Ultra, 1993; #472

Another Stadium Club-esque card. The baseball in the logo is on fire!

This looks like Tony is jogging either to or from the outfield at the end of an innings. 

They ditched the graph paper on the back and there is a drawing of a baseball diamond instead. It's less futuristic and that makes it look less dated 27 years on.

Card Number 305: Fleer Ultra, 1994; #280

There's a bit of foil on this card to make it a bit more flashy.

The fronts of Fleer Ultra cards are a bit samey between 1992 and 1994. Thankfully the backs are all really different. This year they went back to bright orange!

The smaller cut out photo is a bit unusal, showing Tony poised and alert on fielding duty.

If you want to see another Fleer Ultra card, you can see one in last Friday's post. Otherwise, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow!

Total: 305/394

Voltigeur!

Soon after I started this blog I posted about a Pacific card that listed Tony as Jardinero! Literally this means a gardener in Spanish; in baseball terms it's an outfielder. Voltigeur is the French word used for outfielder, although its literal meaning is an acrobat or tumbler. (Fun fact: a voltiguer was also a member of a lightly armed skirmishing unit in the French army during the Napoleonic Wars. In Canada is also had a semi-military application meaning a ranger.)

Anyway, as you can probably guess, this is a prelude to my post today featuring cards that call Tony a voltigeur. That means, of course, Canadian cards, and if there is one card manufacturer that springs to mind when Canadian baseball cards are mentioned, it is O-Pee-Chee. 

Like a lot of card producers, O-Pee-Chee started out as a candy manufacturer. Candy and cards were a natural fit and soon the cards were just as important - perhaps more important - than the candy. For most of the 80s, O-Pee-Chee reprinted Topps cards, with the O-Pee-Chee logo and sometimes other minor variations. But in the  early 90s, they also produced a premium range called, fittingly, Premier. They then diverged from Topps and released their own flagship sets for a couple of seasons.

In 1996 O-Pee-Chee was bought by Nestle, and O-Pee-Chee became a card publishing brand with various licences that it could sell on to other card companies. After the Nestle takeover, Topps printed O-Pee-Chee cards under licence, but since 2007 O-Pee-Chee cards have been produced by Upper Deck. 

Card Number 233: O-Pee-Chee Premier, 1991; #59

The Premier range was designed to compete directly with Upper Deck. It was printed on a decent card stock and was full colour front and back, unlike the Topps flagship that O-Pee-Chee reprinted. 

There is a tokenistic amount of French on the back

Living in a country where it is a legal requirement to ensure published materials are fully bilingual, I find bilingual cards particularly interesting. This card would most definitely not meet the requirements of the legislation regarding linguistic representation to which I have to adhere in my day job.

It's a very cute little company logo on the back though.

Card Number 234: O-Pee-Chee Premier, 1992; #106

One thing that O-Pee-Chee inherited from Topps - they really didn't believe it was important to show much of the player's face. (Also, is Tony looking to bunt there?)

They make up for the poor photo on the front with a portrait shot on the back

In fairness, there is limited information on the back of the card, but again the commitment to two languages is the bare minimum.

Card Number 235: O-Pee-Chee, 1994; #100

This was the regular card set that O=Pee-Chee produced.

For a flagship product, this is high spec. Full bleed on good card stock and a ball-on-bat photo!

Tony is jogging on the back. Sadly the cute logo with the little kids has gone.

But the cardback has some blurb in both English and French. The columns on the stats box are single-language but this is a much better effort at providing bilingual information. 

This was actually the last home-grown baseball card set that O-Pee-Chee produced as the company began to struggle, and two years later it was acquired by the giant Nestle corporation for whom cards were not a priority. 

Total: 235/394

Back to Base - Bowman

Some cards today that cross the UD Boundary in baseball card history.

Card Number 219: Bowman, 1990; #217

This is a Bowman baseball card in 1990. A goofy photo, fuzzy print, drab colouring, matt card stock. It looked and felt like a cheap and dated product.

Bowman went all out on the stat box on the back though.

It looks like someone has tried to print an Excel sheet on the back of the card (and that's not an anachronism - Excel 3.0 launched in 1990!). It's Tony's stats against all the different teams in the National League. He got 31 hits against the Astros, and 30 hits against the Giants, who won the League pennant and lost in the World Series. The black on blue print is horrible to read and the figures are tiny.

Card Number 220: Bowman, 1991; #647

It's a much better photo this year!

The back is a lot easier to read. They are still loving the giant statistical breakdown though.

Card Number 221: Bowman, 1992; #50
Tony is looking up as if there is an approaching asteroid...

The transformation wrought by the Upper Deck asteroid is no more evident than the difference between the 1991 Bowman cardback and the 1992 cardback. It is so stark you'd almost think this was a different hobby!

Cool shades! Even the stat box with the breakdown against all the other teams has been livened up a bit with colour and a watermark Bowman logo. The cardback is glossy and a much higher quality. It's also portrait orientation just to shake things up further.

Card Number 222: Bowman, 1993; #630
A return to action shots this year...

Tony is dispensing with his bat after clocking another hit.

The photo on the back is less flattering. Tony is squinting. Perhaps he should have put his shades on!

The stats box has dropped a lot of extraneous detail, like, er, hits. The home run column doesn't look impressive. Tony was never a power slugger. He had a particularly good batting average against the Braves the previous season.

Card Number 223: Bowman 1994; #120
Wowzers!

This is the pick of the bunch of the Bowman base cards and shows another step up in quality for the Bowman brand. It's a full bleed photo that captures Tony preparing for his stint at bat. There's foil edging as well.

The back retains the truncated stats box.

Card Number 224: Bowman, 1995; #304
This card shows Bowman catching up with gimmicky mid-Nineties design. It's the first card to mess about with the photo on the front.

It looks like Tony is smashing a mirror there. The design has also brought back borders, which feels like a retrograde step after the smashing borderless cards in 1994.

The cardback is a bit awkward to read. Compared to a lot of cards issued around this time it's not completely hideous. Chocolate brown is an odd colour for a cardback though!

That's it for this Back to Base post!

Total:224/394

Join the (Stadium) Club

A few posts back I included a couple of cards from Topps's Stadium Club range and realised I hadn't yet blogged about any Stadium Club cards. So to rectify that, I'm going to post some over the next few posts.

Stadium Club was Topps's premium product in the early 90s, produced to compete with Upper Deck. From the outset the cards featured 'full bleed' imagery, in other words, they didn't have borders. They also tried to use better, more innovative photography, and had jazzier card backs.

Card Number 151: Topps Stadium Club, 1991; #308
This shows off the best of Stadium Club's very first set. A close up, high resolution, photo that is in focus and captures the subject in a way that makes them look good. In other words, it's the opposite of the kind of photos Topps used on their regular flagship products at the time.

Perhaps to highlight my point about Topps photography they used a picture of Tony's rookie card on the reverse, where the main focus of the picture is Tony's bottom.

I have a theory Topps included rookie cards to remind everyone that they were the company with the history in the baseball card world, unlike those upstarts Upper Deck. (I've only just noticed he's not wearing number 19 on that uniform. Whoah!)

Topps also tried to provide some more in depth 'analysis' on the back, dividing up Tony's hitting averages on fastball pitches and identifying strengths and weaknesses. I don't think that would be much use to the average baseball card collector, but it may have informed some discussion among pitching staff. "Pitch it at waist height on the inside!"

Card Number 152: Topps Stadium Club, 1992; #825
Another iconic photo. I particularly like how the photographer is reflected in Tony's Oakleys.

The cardback is very similar to the previous year, including the rookie card.

Again, the analysis is about how well Tony fared against fastballs, although they have limited this to batting against left-handed pitchers. The square for right-handed pictures is confusingly left blank. I'm certain he hit a few.

There was a special issue of Stadium Club in 1992 called Stadium Club Dome. It was mainly rookie cards, draft picks and the players selected for the All Star Game in 1991, which was held in Toronto.

Card Number 153: Topps Stadium Club Dome, 1992; #73
The first Stadium Club card to feature Tony at the plate.

The back includes the logo for the All Star Game in Toronto. There was a fashion in the early 90s for cards devoted to the All Star Games - Tony had an Upper Deck card from the Toronto game as well, but they had stolen a march on Topps and released it at the tail end of the 1991 season.

The statistics on the back explain why Tony was selected for his seventh consecutive All Star squad in 1991. His good form continued as he got two hits in the game, although he ended up on the losing side.

Card Number 154: Topps Stadium Club, 1993; #538
This photo looks like it's from the same day as the 1992 card photo.

This was the last year of the oval Stadium club logo. Nineties design was starting to creep in, with the little ball element whizzing in from behind Tony on the card.

The cardback includes a photo with very crisp Padres pinstripes. The rookie card makes its final appearance on a Stadium Club cardback.

The stats on the back have grown more eclectic. Tony's hitting average when playing on artificial turf was high. His percentage of missed swings was incredibly low, getting down towards 1 in 20. (That's actually quite incredible, almost 19 times in 20 swings he connected with the ball.)

Card Number 155: Topps Stadium Club, 1994; #151 (Gold Parallel)
The foil bit under 'Gwynn' marks this out as a parallel. I actually didn't realise this until I came to write this blog post. That's another ordinary base card to chase down.

I think this is a great photo, reminiscent of the best of the Studio cards. Tony has a no nonsense expression. He looks serious, but not stern. Also, that's his name on the bat he's holding. Product placement!

To be a proper Nineties cardback, a card needs a mix of fonts, all in different colours, odd kerning, design elements dropped all over each other, and as many licensing logos as possible. There are at least six fonts crammed onto the cardboard rectangle here.

The little batting graphic is supposed to illustrate which areas of the field Tony was most likely to hit the ball towards. He was remarkably consistent, according to this, as he sprayed the ball in every direction about equal amounts of time.

Card Number 156: Topps Stadium Club, 1994; #537
A second card for Tony in the set, part of the "Quick Start" insert series.

The blur effect makes this card look cool. And a bit like the overly airbrushed monstrosities being issued today.

From what I can work out, the players in the Quick Start series all had a tendency to start the season well and then tail off. In Tony's case that usually because his injuries started to mount up. One of the contributors to He Left His Heart in San Diego reckoned that if Tony hadn't played the final few weeks of the season for most of the seasons his overall batting average would have been higher and he would have won more titles. But Tony wasn't that kind of player. He wanted to go out and play even if his form was tailing off.

There are more cards from the Stadium Club to come over the next few days.

Total: 156/394