Tuesday Twins - Pacific variations from 1999

Here are some cards that have already been on the blog. Sort of.

Card Number 775: Pacific, 1999 (batting photo); #368

In 1999, Pacific messed with the heads of collectors by having cards with the same number and different photos in their flagship set. I've previously blogged the portrait version of this card. 

Last time I blogged about this I noted the quirkiness of the factoid on the back - about Tony hitting his 2,900th hit in the preceding season. That would be eclipsed in 1999 by his 3000th hit!

I really like the shade of blue on that cardback.

Card Number 776: Pacific Aurora, 1999; #SAMPLE

This is a sample card given away to promote the Aurora range. The front looks like the regular card... at first glance.

But when they are next to each other in the binder they look quite different.

It's a bit like a spot the difference picture. The background colour has changed. Background Tony is bigger. Foreground Tony has moved further away. 

And in case of any doubt, the cardback has SAMPLE written across it.

And, now a bonus third Pacific card from 1999!

Card Number 777: Pacific Private Stock, 1999; #7

Different card companies have different 'giveaway' design tics. One of Pacific's giveaways was outlining players with a glowing aura. It's really evident on this card.

The free-floating logo behind Tony's knees feels like an on-screen graphic from a highlights show.

The cardback is committed to presenting all the detail of a particular game - Tony's eighth game where he recorded five hits.

In addition to the box score from the game in question, there is a well-arranged stats column that puts Tony's figures for 1998 into context against his career figures. I would award an extra bonus point for that if I was scoring this card. 

1999 was a busy year for Pacific. I have 21 Tony Gwynn cards issued by Pacific in 1999 and there are even more yet to be added to the collection!

Total: 777 cards

Eat cake by the ocean

Well, that's what the Padres hoped to be doing this year. It feels less and less likely to happen.

But talking of the ocean, here's a couple of Pacific cards from the last year the Padres got to the World Series.

Card Number 732: Pacific Crown Collection, 1998; #427

Somehow this card design manages to look both fancy and still very clean. The logo and player name are in gold foil. 

Pacific's USP was targeting Spanish-speaking collectors. They also included the English translation on the back. That didn't leave much room for any stats. Somehow they managed to fit everything in, including Tony posing with one of his bats. 

The orange background locates this firmly in the late 1990s. As ever, Pacific get a bonus point for putting the detail of the set name in the little circle with the card number. It's a great help to collectors like me over two decades later!

Card Number 733: Pacific Aurora, 1998; #191

Such a green card!

The 1990s was the decade when PhotoShop became a thing and this card design is almost Photoshopped to death. I appreciate the halo around Tony's head in the top right image. 

Also, you may have noticed this just says San Diego on the front. It repeats that on the back. The Aurora range was only licensed by the Player's Association so they didn't include franchise names. I presume Pacific had a license from MLB to print a limited number of sets, or perhaps there was a stipulation in their contract that they could only produce Spanish language sets - and this is just in English. 

There is a trivia question on the back about how many seasons Tony recorded more than 200 hits. To save readers from craning their necks, here's the answer.

Tony didn't record a 200-hit season after 1997 so that answer (5) is still the correct answer. 

The photo on the back is quite similar to the one on the back of the Topps Stars card I blogged about yesterday. Serious cardback photos must have been the fashion in 1998!

Total: 733 cards

Spotting sports in Spanish

Welcome to May! Time for a trip to the ocean!

Card Number 662: Pacific Crown Collection Hometown of the Players, 1996; #HP3

A slightly odd subject for an insert series as there are no pictures on the card of Long Beach or San Diego, both the places named on the cardback.

I suspect this insert series was mainly done to use up the excess amounts of gold foil that Pacific had lying around. 

The cardback is in English and Spanish, which was Pacific's USP at the time. O-Pee-Chee had French on their cards. Pacific had Spanish. One day I would like to find a Tony Gwynn card in another language again.

My Spanish isn't great. In fact it's bordering on nonexistent. But I spotted a mistake here in the Spanish text, unless "en futbol americano" was Spanish for basketball. A quick check confirmed it's a different sport entirely - can you guess what it is? (I was the first boring nerd who reads cardbacks to report this on Trading Card Database where it's now listed as an error!)

Card Number 663, Pacific Aurora Pennant Fever, 2000; #16

"Pennant fever" gives me an earworm of this song from The Muppet Treasure Island.

The Padres were nowhere near a pennant in 2000. Two years after reaching the World Series they finished 5th in the National League West with a losing average of .469 and 21 games behind the Giants who won the division with an 11 game margin.

In terms of winning games, that 5th place average was actually an improvement on 1999's performance when the Padres' final average was .457 and they were 26 games behind the winning team, the Diamondbacks. The Padres finished fourth in 1999 because the Rockies were monumentally poor and managed to be even worse than them. 

The cardback doesn't give any indication why Tony would have pennant fever and qualify as part of this insert set. My conclusion is that Pacific liked including cards of Tony Gwynn in all their sets and insert series whether the theme was relevant or not. Tony had links with the company and did some promotional work for them so they weren't going to leave him out.

Total: 663 cards 

Set lasers to cut!

 A theme post featuring two cards with holes in.

Card Number 650: Topps Stadium Club Prime Cuts, 1996; #PC-4

Topps used the same technology as in their Topps Laser set from the same year for this 8 card insert series in Stadium Club.

The photo shows Tony's brief mid-nineties flirtation with a beard.

The white lines around the solid gold 'CUTS' are all holes through the card.... as you can see from the back view.

Tony is cleanshaven in the photo on the back. I find it slightly amusing that this juxtaposition happens on a card along the theme of 'cuts'.

These cards are 'Prime Cuts' and the stats on the back are 'Prime Numbers', except none of them are actually prime numbers in the proper mathematical sense.

Yet again, the sheer paucity of strike outs in Tony's career is remarkable. I've not seen a strike out to at bat ratio on a cardback before, but card companies should have included it more often. In 1995, Tony struck out once every 35 at bats. If he had 5 at bats in a game that would be one strike out every seven games.

The only confusing stat on the back is the batting title one. They are trying to say that Tony won his sixth National League batting title, but it looks like they are saying he was sixth in the batting tables. However, I'm not going to quibble too much with that, given how good this stats box is overall. 

Card Number 651: Pacific Aurora On Deck Laser Cuts, 1998; #14

A couple of years after the Stadium Club Prime Cuts card, Pacific lasered bits out of these insert sets from their Aurora set.

The card front is a rather glorious mish-mash of photoshop elements and the cut out 'rings' in the centre of the card. There is some gold foil applied as well for good measure.

The back has a big picture of Tony and a tiny write up underneath the lasered out section.

I have grown to love Pacific cards. True, they are gaudy and the designers never seemed to know when to stop adding stuff, but that is part of the charm. Plus they were absolutely brilliant at including the years and set names in those little circles with the card number on. It makes them so easy to identify and for that reason alone, I could forgive any excess in the design.

Aurora cards were one of the sets Pacific produced without a licence initially, which is why it just says San Diego on the card. However, this was before companies with licences got really protective about the official MLB team logos and icons, which is why the logos on Tony's shirt and helmet haven't been airbrushed out of the photo on the front. Those dark days of airbrushed jerseys were coming. 

Total: 651 cards