Adventures in scanning - new hardware

Happy New Year's Eve!

I had a surprise at Christmas. Unbeknownst to me, my wife Cathy had arranged for my Mum to buy me a new scanner that I had idly added to my wishlist because I was curious to see if I could get better scans of foil cards than could be delivered by my trusty old flatbed scanner.

The new scanner is an 'overhead' scanner with built in LEDs. It looks like this:

I had a couple of foil Pinnacle cards, which really are the pinnacle of unscannable cards, lingering in my folders, so I decided to have a go with the new scanner to see if I could get better images of them.

Card Number 559: Pinnacle Naturals, 1998; #192

This was the flatbed scan. It's terrible.

This is the overhead scanner scan. Much better!

And this is the back, which I did on the flatbed.

The reference to a career power peak in 1997 is referring to Tony's career high for home runs (17) and RBI (119 - the only time he broke 100 ribbys).

Card Number 560: Pinnacle Plus, 1998; #83

Here's the flatbed scan.

Here's the (wonky) overhead scan.

And here's the cardback. The photo shows him fist-bumping another team-mate behind Steve Finley's back. It's an odd photo composition.

Overall I think the new scanner has worked for the foil cards. They still look a bit odd, and I need to work on my alignment for the scans. But they are heaps better than the flatbed versions - at least you can see the design even if the colouring is a bit off.

I  went back and had a go with a couple of other cards to see if the new scanner worked better with them. I chose some cards from the Fleer/Skybox binder. These were both cards that were an utter nightmare to scan.

First up, the Metal Universe card from 1998. The original flatbed scan is on the left.

And then the MLPD card from the Metal Universe range in 1999 (that merited it's own "scanning nightmares" post) - again the original scan is on the left.

The new scanner definitely captures more of the card, even if it's a little bit grainy. I can probably play around with the settings to improve the definition.

I also thought it would be fun to see how it captured an ordinary non-foiled card. I picked a DonRuss card at random.

It captured this card very well. Another feature with the scanner is that you can set it up on a timer to keep taking photos of the cards. This should make it easier to scan a stack of cards in one go because I don't have to keep opening the lid of the scanner, or even press any buttons to capture the image. 

The only thing I have found is that I underestimated how much time I needed to flip the card over and line it up so it was reasonably straight. Oops, finger scan!

But then all I had to do was wait a few more seconds and it scanned for me again.

All in all, I'm very happy with my Christmas present. I'd like to give a shout out to my Mum for buying it for me, and to Cathy for helping my Mum choose it!

Maybe when I run out of new cards to blog, I will go back through and try and get some better scans of the nightmare foil cards I've already featured.

Total: 560 cards

Happy Christmas!

I was going to take a break from blogging over Christmas, but Laura, the talented first lady of the UK baseball card collector's Facebook group, sent me a very special, unique Christmas card that I decided to share with you today.

That's an adapted Topps card from 1994 - the year Tony achieved his .394 batting average. It made me happy, I hope it makes you happy too.

Enjoy the rest of your Christmas Day!

Merry X-press

Instead of a Merry Xmas, I'd like to wish you a Merry X-Press... with a Pinnacle X-Press. (It's a terrible Christmas pun. You deserve better on Christmas Eve!)

Card Number 551: Pinnacle X-Press, 1997; #13

X-Press is one of Pinnacle's less well-known card ranges. This card features a plethora of batting photos.

The statistical breakdown on the back shows a month-by-month summary of Tony's statistics from the 1996 season.

Tony played just one game in July 1996 as he struggled with a foot injury, which is why his total number of plate appearances in the year was four short of the minimum requirement to be in contention for a batting title. He still won the batting title, however, because even with four hitless plate appearances added to his total, his average would have been higher than anyone else's. (More information in this blog post.)

Have a lovely Christmas. I'm expecting coal in my stocking as punning-shment for my attempts at wordplay.

Total: 551 cards

Hanging with the rookie class

It's the day before Christmas Eve and in our house we call that Christmas Eve Eve.

I've been thinking a bit about the future of this blog. It started back in May as a 'lockdown project' and I have posted every day since then. I wasn't anticipating it being a daily blog as I had less then 200 Tony Gwynn cards when I started. I imagined I would blog the cards I had and then blog more when I acquired them. However, I have been blessed by some great contacts who have supplied me literally hundreds of cards between them.

At this point in time, though, I am actually nearing the end of my unblogged cards, and so I think in January I will be heading into 'occasional blogging' mode, as and when I add new cards to the collection. I have a few other bits and pieces related to Tony Gwynn that could feature. And I have toyed with the idea of a virtual "Frankenset", which might be fun. 

However, as I said, I am finishing up the collection of unblogged cards, and have two cards here that have a similar theme.

Card Number 549: Upper Deck Pros & Prospects, 2000; #78

This card set had 192 cards in it, and 47 of them were serial numbered cards of rookies. It was released at the end of the season.

On the back, Upper Deck opted for the confusing 'put the player's uniform number where you would expect to see the card number' design choice. There are also some issues with the kerning in some lines - ah, the wonders of justified text!

Other companies released sets that covered similar ground to Pros and Prospects. Including, Leaf...

Card Number 550: Leaf Rookies and Stars, 2001; #19

Leaf were a bit more obvious about what the set was about than Upper Deck. Again, the setlist was heavy on rookies - 148 out of the 300 base cards were rookie cards.

The airbrushing effect at the bottom of the card makes Tony look like he is skipping.

There's an orange tone on the cardback. And another entry in my collection of cardback descriptions of Tony: "A field general at the plate". It also decribes Tony as being "on deck" for the Hall of Fame.

Leaf also get 19 bonus points for having this as card #19 in their set!

Total: 550 cards