A pair of Diamonds

Black Diamond was a premium card set released by Upper Deck for a few seasons at the tail end of the 90s and beginning of the new millennium. All the cards are shiny, making them difficult to scan.

Card Number 242: Upper Deck Black Diamond, 1999; #69

For a premium product, this looks alright. It's not the most exciting card. 

The back is incredibly dull. 

The factoid is reasonably impressive. It's not an everyday occurrence to score four runs in a game, particularly when you've only scored three hits! However, this card was released the season after Tony played in the World Series, so it's an unusual choice of factoid. Mind you, just about every other card of Tony released in 1999 mentioned him scoring a home run in Yankee Stadium during the World Series, so this is a refreshing change. 

Card Number 243: Upper Deck Black Diamond, 2000; #71

This honestly is an Upper Deck card from 20 years ago, rather than a Panini Prizm card from 3 years ago.

Again, it's shiny. Don't expect it to be interesting to look at as well!

That is an odd photo on the back. At first glance it looks like Tony is just standing legs akimbo or walking like a cowboy for some reason. Then it becomes apparent that he is running. 

Again the factoid editor missed the obvious thing to highlight, given Tony had connected for his 3000th hit during the 1999 season. Maybe they just thought every other card set would be mentioning that and they wanted to be different. 

Total: 243/394

Diamonds and Gold

A sort of theme today along the lines of 'treasure'.

Card Number 109: Upper Deck Black Diamond Rookie Edition, 2000; #76
Metallic red card front with a picture of Tony jogging. To be fair, with the knee injury he carried throughout that season it's pretty impressive he could get to even this level of speed. The card background is  turn-of-the-millennium cyber-noir glitchiness.

Although this is a set recorded on TCDb  as released in 2000, it includes Tony's stats for the 2000 season. It also notes that in 2000, Tony was the leading active player in hits, with over 3,100 hits by that point.

From Black Diamonds to Black Gold...

Card Number 110: Topps Black Gold, 1993; #8
Yes, that is shiny gold foil on the front and a very nineties card set logo!

He seems to be straddling the bar with his name on.

This is the card back.

It looks to me like some kind of 3D sword motif. Really odd. But I do like the photo of Tony on one knee leaning on his bat. Combined with the weird sword it looks like he's being knighted. Also that is a stunning shade of turquoise on the back there (much bolder than the shade Fleer used in 1992). I hope I'm not alone in saying the card hobby needs more turquoise!

It's interesting reading these snapshots of Tony's career "halfway through". He actually improved his career batting average in the second half of his career to finish with .338. At the start of the 1993 season he only had 4 batting titles and hadn't won one since 1989. It's doubtful anyone realised how much he would dominate the batting charts for the rest of the nineties.

Total: 110/394