Upper Decks bits and bobbleheads

Upper Deck's fun range, known as 'Collector's Choice' had a few gimmicky things like bobbleheads and various competition giveaways. Let's start with the second 'bobblehead' to feature on this blog and then go back in time to see some other bits and bobs...

Card Number 1021: Upper Deck Collector's Choice "push out", 1998; #23

I have some of the little bobblehead cards from 1999 (including one that has been pushed out), but I didn't realise that Upper Deck made these inserts in 1998 as well until Glenn sent me this a couple of weeks back. 

Upper Deck made sure Tony had his game face on for this bobblehead. It was only when I realised that Tony's disembodied head was in a batting helmet, that I realised the 1999 version is meant to show Tony fielding!

On the back are the intructions on how to assemble the bobblehead for display. 

These bobbleheads were in Series 2 of the Collector's Choice set and only appeared in 1 in 3 packs.

Upper Deck sometimes included odd things in their regular sets as well. In 1996, collectors had the chance of winning a shiny foil card.

Card number 1022: Upper Deck Predictors Redemption, 1996; #R57

There were 60 cards that could be exchanged for instant win cards found inside Upper Deck packs. 

For some reason I haven't got an overhead scan of this card in my folders, so this dirty desktop scan will have to do. Some of the marks on this card are dust and fluff on the scanner surface.

The back is relatively plain, but neatly laid out. The write up begins with Tony's incredibly low strike out rate. 88 times in 5 years!

This card arrived in a small box of cards from Gawain way back in November 2021. Six months later - thank you, Gawain!

Card Number 1023: Upper Deck Collector's Choice You Crash the Deck game piece, 1994; #unnumbered

You Crash the Deck (later Game) was a scratch off and win redemption thing that ran in Collector's Choice (with some adpatations) for several years.

There were 15 different varieties of this "game piece" each featuring two players. Tony shared the spotlight on this with Andres Galarraga from the Rockies.

This card sized 'game piece' folds out to reveal a large number of scratch off areas. The most important one is the one saying whether it's a winning card. That is the only bit that has been scratched off. 

And on the back are the huge list of terms and conditions in a tiny font.

Why were Canadians set a relatively simple maths question? I presume there is some rule about giveaway competitions that meant there has to be a quiz question. Otherwise that's just weird!

Total: 1023 cards

Toppeechee cards from the 80s

I was surprised when I first researched O-Pee-Chee cards that the name came from an Ojibwa word meaning 'robin' . The Ojibwe are Canada's second largest First Nations tribal people and a large number live in the USA as well. In Canada they tend to live in a large area that stretches from Quebec to British Columbia. 

In my ignorance, I just assumed it was a way of phonetically spelling 'Oh, peachy!' But, no, it has a much deeper meaning, and in terms of languages on baseball cards, it has to count as another one along with English, French, Spanish and Chinese characters. Technically, the Ojibwe people speak one of the Algonquian languages, but for the purpose of this blog, I'm just going to count it as Ojibwe. 

For most of the 1980s, O-Pee-Chee had a licence to reprint Topps cards. They often released smaller sets, added their logo on the front and changed the cardbacks so they had information in English and French. The cards were sold in Canada but seem to have travelled reasonable quickly to collectors in the USA.

I've blogged a few of these "Toppeechee" cards before - here is Tony's rookie card, and also his card from the 1986 set. Richard included a few more in his recent parcel, which I mentioned in the box opening video, and here I am, blogging about them today.

Card Number 762: O-Pee-Chee, 1985; #383

As I noted when I blogged about the Topps release of this card, Tony has a visible wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. Tony started 'dipping' when he was in the minor leagues at Walla-Walla, and was never able to shake the habit although he apparently tried several times. This card foreshadows his early death from oral cancer. 

In terms of being bilingual, most stuff on the back is translated. However, this would not pass the requirements for translation in my workplace where everything has to be fully bilingual.

Card Number 763: O-Pee-Chee, 1987; #198

This is my favourite ever Topps set (for sentimental reasons!) and the Topps version of this card was the very first card on this blog.

Even though this is my favourite card set, this is one of the worst photos of Tony ever used by Topps on a card. And that is a very low bar to clear!

The back is very crisply printed. The 'On this Date' factoid is also in French as 'Une Date Memorable'.

Card Number 764: O-Pee-Chee, 1988; #360

There is something about the way Tony's stance perfectly frames whoever that person is sat in the dug out that makes me chuckle every time I see it. Tony's pinstripes look absolutely pristine in this photo as well.

The little baseballs in the background make the top of the cardback a bit hard to read, but it's a nice design. 

I am pretty sure I have pointed out Topps's obsession with recycling factoids about Tony's minor league achievements on their cardbacks. On this card they don't mention that Tony was batting champion the previous season, with an outstanding .370 batting average - the highest so far in his career. Instead, we learn about how Tony won the MVP in the Northwest League in 1981, in both English and French.

From 1989 O-Pee-Chee started releasing the full Topps sets complete with the Topps logo on the front and bilingual cardbacks. They did that for three years, then started releasing their own flagship sets. In 1994 they released their last set of Major League Baseball cards. Since then the brand has been through a few different owners and now is licensed out to other companies for use when releasing trading cards. 

Total: 764 cards

Tuesday Twins - is it DonRuss or not?

A couple of 'twins' to show today, that illustrate how the boundaries between DonRuss and Leaf were blurred.

DonRuss's 1988 set is ubiquitous in 'lots' of cards from the 80s. It is possibly the junkiest of 'junk wax' sets. But just in case you can't remember what it looks like, here is Tony's base card from 1988.

Recently another version of this card tipped up in a joblot.

Card Number 380: Leaf, 1988; #90

Exact same card, but with a different manufacturer's logo and the frame reversed. 

On the back, we have a bit more of a clue as to what is going on. The card is bilingual in English and French, meaning it was sold in Canada. (Well, it's sort of bilingual - this wouldn't pass muster in Wales in terms of meeting the legal requirements for bilingualism. And,yes, I know the main reason for that is that it's in English and French not English and Welsh!)

The main things to notice are the lower set number and the changes to the career highlights. For comparison, here is the DonRuss cardback.

They basically dropped the last highlight so they could fit in the French translation. There were 264 cards in the Leaf release, compared to 660 in the DonRuss version, hence the renumbering.

Fast-forward a few years and Leaf and DonRuss took turns in claiming the "Studio" brand. In 1997 when it was issued as DonRuss Studio. Tony's card looked like this:

(I blogged about this back in July) Well, as was often the case back in the 90s, cards like this had parallel version released as well. 

Card Number 381: DonRuss Studio Silver Press Proof, 1997; #124

There are shiny silver foil tramlines down either side of the card, and the other lettering is picked out in silver too.

The back is exactly the same as the regular release. 

As I noted previously about this card, his entire career in baseball to this point (6 batting titles, 1 world series, 5 gold gloves, the modern record for batting average) is summarised in one throwaway line at the end of the paragraph. I've also just noticed that this could be a recent Panini-era DonRuss card photo as there are no easily recognisable club logos anywhere.

This card looks nice sat next to the regular base card. There were also gold press proofs as well, but they were harder cards to find. The set of three would look pretty sweet.

Total: 381/394

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