Modern Monday - crowned a Diamond King again

Another 2022 release, this time from Ryan in the UK collectors group on Facebook. Cheers, Ryan!

Card Number 1027: Panini Diamond Kings, 2022; #12

The painted effect on the card is pretty standard fare from Diamond Kings, with less blue in the design than last year.  

The back is a bit dull, but it has a baseball diamond in the background. Nice touch!

There's a quote from Tony on the back with a nugget of wisdom for aspiring hitters. I'm not convinced it's actually helpful!

Panini's use of these zombie brands is under threat from new licensing deals, and it's unlikely Diamond Kings will continue for many more seasons. So enjoy them while you can!

Total: 1027 cards.

Feeling Invincible in 2022

I realise it has been several weeks since I last blogged some cards. I have had my evenings occupied with other things so have neglected this a little. However, here we are in 2022. I have added a few cards to the collection while the blog has been on hiatus, so the number of cards waiting to be blogged has increased. (And I feel the pressure!)

I hope to get back to blogging regularly before the month is out. Meanwhile, here are some "Invincible" cards because we want to feel positive about the new year and invincibility is just positivity set to maximum!

Card Number 901: Pacific Invincible, 1998; #139

I like these cards with their little acetate windows of clarity. This one is really shiny, so this is an overhead scan of the front. 

And a bilingual back! Because it's printed on acetate, the image of Tony is reversed out. 

Card Number 902: Pacific Invincible Reyes del Diamante, 2000; #25

A variant on the phrase 'Diamond King'. I'm surprised DonRuss let Pacific get away with that!

There were 30 Kings of the Diamond in this insert series, and a further 20 Diamond Aces who were all pitchers. Although they look like playing cards, they all have the same value so would be rubbish for actually playing card games. 

The back is done to look like a playing card. Apart from the tell-tale player name!

And that's the first post of 2022 done. I will be back blogging regularly soon!

Total: 902 cards

Diamond Kings - from insert series to standalone set

I thought Panini had started releasing Diamond Kings as a range in itself in the years after the company acquired the rights to various DonRuss ranges. I've now discovered that DonRuss started doing it at the start of the millennium before being swallowed by the Panini empire.

However, the first card in today's post comes from the 90s, when the Diamond King cards were an insert series in the DonRuss flagship set.

Card Number 780: DonRuss, 1994; #DK-11

This is a very bold artwork with Diamond Kings emblazoned in red foil above it. The painting is by Dick Perez, who also painted Tony for the 1985, 1989 and 1996 Diamond Kings cards. It's to Dick's credit that his paintings looked quite different to each other. This is a very effective portrait.

The back is a little bit dull in comparison. It also gets dinged for gratuitous use of justified text. That's just one of my personal dislikes, but my justification for not liking justified text can be seen at the end of the second line where 'arthroscopic' is split over the two lines and the last two letters appear on the line below. 

For the record, Andres Galarraga won the batting title that year with .370. Tony's total of .358 would have won him the title in 1990, 1991 and 1992, so being runner up in 1993 showed how he was coming into form. He won four in a row from the following season. 

Card Number 781: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 2002; #145

In 2002, DonRuss released a 200-card Diamond Kings set. It was the first time Diamond Kings had been used as a standalone brand.

This is printed on a high quality, canvas-effect board. The way Tony's name is arranged it looks like 'Tony Gwynn of Padres', but the 'of' is actually OF, denoting his position as an 'outfielder'. 

DonRuss had moved on from commissioning art from Dick Perez. The cardback credits this to Mark Turnes. A Google search turns up several examples of his sports artwork, but he doesn't seem to have a website.

The cardback also has a handy line up of Tony's Diamond King appearances, which acts like a mini checklist. I will round out the set when I add his 2001 card to my collection!

Total: 781 cards

Modern Monday - still a Diamond King

I recently bought a small lot of Padres cards on eBay. It was an assortment of parallels from a number of sets and it included some base cards from the Panini Diamond Kings set released this year. I already had a 2021 Diamond Kings insert featuring Tony, but I didn't have his base card. I do now.

Card Number 708: Panini Diamond Kings, 2021; #30

It's a fairly normal Diamond Kings card front. Nothing too complicated. It has a nice finish on the card front; a sort of matt canvassy effect.

The cardback is a bit plain, with some purple prose in the write up. I grew up in a religious family and am used to the phrase "The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away". It's amusing to see the same thing said about Tony.

We established last time I reviewed a Diamond Kings card that the characters next to the copyright notice are Chinese. I'm waiting for the day when Tony appears on a card written in one of the Asian languages. Topps have done some Japanese cards before but Tony wasn't included. I'd love to be able to add that to the French and Spanish language cards I've got already.

Total: 708 cards

Modern Monday - The Art of Hitting

I mentioned yesterday how two fellow collectors contacted me on the same day last week to ask if I wanted a Tony Gwynn card they had available. Russell was a bit hesitant in his offer because the card in question was unlicensed. However, that isn't an issue for me, and when an unlicensed card looks as good as this one, who cares about logos?

Card Number 676: Panini Diamond Kings Art of Hitting insert, 2021; #AOH6

There are 10 cards in this insert series. It's especially relevant to Tony who wrote a book called The Art of Hitting. I remember reading a comment that Tony should have called his book the Science of Hitting instead of the Art, because he took a very methodical approach to the game and applied trial and error to everything. However, Ted Williams had already used that title for his book about hitting, which Tony read and re-read multiple times.

Diamond Kings cards are all 'illustrated' in a similar style now and no artist is credited with designs like these. I like the way the image has been replicated on the cards in this insert series, although in this case it does look a little bit like a chorus line. (My wife, Cathy, said "Ooh, he's dancing!" when she saw it.)

The image features on the back as well.

Now I'm known as someone who reads cardbacks and has a passing interest in cardbacks that feature other languages besides English. Have a close look at the copyright notice and it looks like there are some hanzi or kanji letters there.

I would like to know if that is Chinese or Japanese, or neither. I'd be very happy to add that tiny bit of non-English to my list of languages that feature on Tony's baseball cards.

A big thank you to Russell for sending me this card. It takes me up to 6 cards issued in 2021 in my collection.

Total: 676 cards

The beginning of the new era of Diamond Kings

After writing yesterday about how Panini have sort of kept the DonRuss brand going, today's post features cards from the Diamond Kings range. Panini now issue this as a brand in its own right, but "Diamond Kings" started out in the DonRuss base sets of the 1980s. The first 26 cards in the DonRuss flagship sets were illustrated portraits of baseball stars - one from each team. I have previously blogged several of these that feature Tony.

When Panini were trying to find a winning formula for their unlicensed baseball cards, they gave the Pinnacle brand a go in 2013, but that seemed to fall a bit flat. Panini released cards under the DonRuss brand in 2014 and that must have worked well enough for Panini to continue releasing "DonRuss" cards. In 2015, they built on the cachet of DonRuss and launched Diamond Kings as a standalone set. It has been released every year since.

Card Number 646: Panini Diamond Kings, 2015; #133

This is from the first year of the Diamond Kings. There isn't an artist credited with this picture, so I imagine it's been done by a Panini staff designer using photoshop rather than creating art from scratch.

The back has a great entry for my collection of descriptions off cardbacks: "San Diego's beloved batting wizard."

The uncredited broadcaster quoted on the back as saying that Tony "could hit .320 with a broom" is Sean Salisbury, the former NFL quarterback turned journalist who was working for Yahoo Sports at the time of Tony's death. (He is quoted in this article on the NBC San Diego website.) It seems strange that the cardback compiler would use the quote with such a vague accreditation. 

Like Gwynn, Sean Salisbury was born in Long Beach, although he grew up in Escondido near San Diego. He is three years younger than Tony, having been born in 1963, and played for the San Diego Chargers among other teams. His career would have overlapped with Tony's quite a bit and he obviously knew Tony as in the rest of that quote he says Tony made an impact on his family. 

Another interesting fact about Sean Salisbury is that he was an advisor on Adam Sandler's remake of the movie Mean Machine, and taught Sandler what he needed to do to portray a quarterback. However, despite all that, Sean missed out his chance to have his name appear on the back of this baseball card, which would have added to the very small number of trading cards he appeared on during his career. Trading Card Database only lists 37 cards for him.

Card Number 647: Panini Diamond Kings DK Originals, 2017; #DO-24

What's more fun than an unlicensed base card? An unlicensed insert card.

The portrait photo on this has scary eyes!

There isn't really much to say about this card. It's one of those ones to have in the collection because it's a Tony Gwynn card, rather than because it had any particularly exciting features. 

Tony's scary eyes are on the back too, along with a quote from Tony where he credits Ted Williams with helping him improve his batting. The flowery description is reserved for Ted who is described as "another sweet-swinging Californian." 

Otherwise, this card is almost the pictorial definition of unremarkable. 

Total: 647 cards

Tony's first crowning

Tony has made several appearances as a DonRuss Diamond King. This was his first.

Card Number 619: DonRuss, 1985; #25

The Diamond Kings cards were the first 26 cards in the DonRuss set. There was one player depicted for each team (this was before the two expansions in 1993 and 1998). 

The artist was Dick Perez, who ended up painting four Diamond Kings portraits of Tony between 1985 and 1996. Here's another link to his gallery.

There is a fairly big write up on the back. I enjoyed the way DonRuss equated being selected for a Diamond King card with being voted onto the All Star team!

There is a reference to Tony's time at Las Vegas, where he started the 1983 season after his Major League debut in 1982, and subsequent wrist injury. He only played 17 games for Las Vegas, recording a .342 batting average from 73 at bats. After being called up he then had over 300 at bats for the Padres that season.

Reading these early cards is quite informative. A lot of this detail quickly got lost as Tony racked up batting titles, All Star appearances, and so on. It's a reminder that after his hot debut, Tony still had work to do to establish himself as a Major League player. 

This is the final card Tim sent me that was new to the collection. However, Tim also included a 1984 Fleer card that was an upgrade on the one I already had in my binder - so thanks for that Tim!

Total: 619 cards

A duo of mid-90s Diamond Kings

Here are two DonRuss Diamond Kings cards from the 90s. They are both numbered out of 10,000. When people complain about overproduction in the current hobby, ask them if any card companies bother serial numbering cards into five digits! How many regular cards were printed that 10,000 was regarded as low?

Card Number 586: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 1996; #DK-9

There's a little bit of damage on the gold border of this card.The 'gold' seems to be overprinted on the card rather than embossed foil. 

The artist is Dick Perez, who painted the portraits for DonRuss's Diamond Kings range from 1982 to 1996. There is a full gallery of his Diamond Kings portraits on his website. He had produced portraits of Tony before, in 1985, 1989, and 1994. It's to his credit that they are all look quite different.

The write-up on the back is a contender for most words squeezed onto a cardback ever. I counted 113 words (not including numbers) in this paragraph.

This was the 8,950th card in the sequence. I can't think of a statistical tie-in to that number. The copyright year is 1995, but this was definitely part of the DonRuss 1996 set.

Card Number 587: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 1998; #4

This card had a very different look, with a silver foil edging to the frame. There isn't an indication who the artist is, apart from what looks like the initials 'BG' or 'DG' - it's hard to tell.

I've googled it, but am none the wiser. The DonRuss brand was changing hands with frightening regularity around this point. In 1998, it was owned by Pinnacle but they went bust that year. Unlike Dick Perez, whoever drew this card hasn't got an easily findable online gallery of their work. If Pinnacle ever put the details online that would be long-gone now.

The back is more restrained in terms of word volume. It's still one of the bigger blurbs on a card back.

At 1,927, the serial number is 7,023 lower than the card from 1996. Again this is a card with a copyright date a year out from when the set was released.

And as a little bonus, here's a timeline of Tony's Diamond Kings appearances from 1989 to 2005. (I have yet to acquire his 1985 and 1994 cards!)

Total: 587 cards

All Time Diamond King

Dean sent me this card alongside the Gypsy Queen card I blogged about yesterday. My wife, Cathy, remarked that the combination of green background and Tony's pose made him look more like a golfer.

Card Number 580: Panini All-Time Diamond Kings, 2020; #ATDK-1

Tony was given the first card in this 25-card insert series.

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It's a very green card, but I like green so I'm not complaining. I can't find any reference to an actual artist on this card, or online, so I'm guessing the 'art' has been done by a Panini staffer.

The back is understated. But it's also turquoise, which is a happy colour and reminiscent of the early 90s. I'm going to add the description of Tony as a "sweet-swinging lefty" to my selection of cardback descriptions. There's a bonus phrase as well - "the San Diego standout".

I know Panini cards aren't to everybody's taste, given they don't carry team logos, but this card isn't bad at all. I now have 3 Diamond Kings cards from 2020 in my collection, and the overall total of cards from 2020 is now 32!

Here are the 3 Diamond Kings cards from 2020 together. They are all regular versions of the insert cards. Parallels exist, but I don't have any. (Yet!)

A big thank you to Dean for sending me this and completing my triptych of Diamond Kings cards.

Total: 580 cards

Modern Monday - Panini (yes, Panini) Diamond Kings

Since 2009, Panini have owned all the DonRuss-associated brands. I've seen these referenced as "Zombie brands" because they are issued as DonRuss or Leaf or Pinnacle, with a small Panini logo on the back. Panini have issued their own cards as well and this year I noticed they have taken one of the most well-known DonRuss spin-off sub-brands - the Diamond Kings - and branded them as a Panini range. 

So, after almost 40 years of DonRuss Diamond Kings, today's cards are ultra-modern. I present to you two Panini Diamond Kings cards. I'd like to thank Andrew S and Drew O from the UK Facebook collectors group, for sending me these cards.

Card Number 438: Panini Diamond Kings In the Zone Insert, 2020; #INT-1

A #1 card, albeit in an insert series.

Panini don't have a Major League Baseball license, but having illustrated cards rather gets round the logo issue. They just don't draw them in! The guy sitting on the bench in the background has a suggestive smudge that looks like a Padres shirt-front, though!

The write-up on the back explains why Tony was "In the Zone", in his case, the strike zone, and talks about his career batting average and his .394 season.

This card is as colourful on the back as it is on the front. My one criticism would be that they don't name the artist, although I suspect this artistic look has been created by the Panini design team putting photographs through a computer program.

Card Number 439: Panini Diamond Kings The 3000 Insert, 2020; #3000-14

If I ever built a "frankenset" (cards arranged in numerical order taken from numerous other sets) I don't know how I would count this number. 3000 is probably the highest numbered Tony Gwynn card that I've got. But really it's number 14.

The 3000 insert series honours 15 players who have reached 3000 hits.

It's another colourful card-front.

The same image of Tony is replicated on the back, combined with an amusing account of Tony scoring his 3000th hit.

That's a new metaphor to me - "golfed a single". I've never heard a hit in baseball being described as "golfed" before. The choice to paint him in a brown uniform is slightly odd, considering he was wearing the grey road uniform when he golfed that single, but it doesn't really detract from the impact of the card. And at least they got the date right! (Unlike Topps!)

Total: 439 cards

Saturday shout out - Hello Laura!

I want to give a shout out to Laura, who I've met through the Baseball Cards UK Facebook Group. Laura has her own YouTube channel, LJ's Clubhouse. She's also run some box breaks for group members.

Laura is a keen Yankees fan, and really likes Derek Jeter. (Who doesn't, really? When all is said and done, the man is a legend.) She is also the person who screenprinted me my .394 t-shirt, as worn on 9 May to commemorate Tony's birthday.

This photo was taken next to a park in Grangetown in Cardiff. Baseball was historically a really important game in Cardiff, as can be seen in this photo from 1953, when Grange Albion played Penylan at Roath Park Recreation Ground at the bottom of Penylan Hill.

The Roath Local History Society estimates a crowd of about 6,000 people turned up to watch the game.

Anyway, Laura is the person who made me the t-shirt as a bespoke print (See her other work here.) She is also the person who sent me the two Tony Gwynn Cards I'm going to profile today.

Card Number 98: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 2019, #37
I have a few Diamond Kings cards in my collection. I like this as a photorealistic painting, rather than a portrait.

Unlike other Diamond Kings releases, I can't see an artist's name on this. There's no information about the artist on the back, either.

There is an interesting factoid though, about how, as a kid, the Gwynn brothers practised their hitting using figs instead of a baseball.

Card Number 99: DonRuss Diamond Kings Flashback, 2019, #DKF-TG
This insert is from the same set.

It's a similar photorealistic painting with a nice border. This is a handsome card and shows that Panini era DonRuss cards can actually be very attractive.

The back is similarly clean and classy. The definition of a 'Crowning Moment' seems to be Tony's call up to the Bigs. What this misses out is that Tony wasn't the first choice call up from Hawaii that season. Alan Wiggins was called up a month before Tony because his batting average was quite a bit higher. Then Tony went on a streak and a month later, when another gap opened up in the roster because of injury, he had improved his average to .328.

So, a big shout out and thank you to Laura for these cards. Tomorrow we hit the century of cards on the blog!

Total: 99/394

Diamond Kings and Gypsy Queens

This is a post with a 'royal' theme.

Card Number 80: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 1989; #6

Diamond Kings were an insert series in DonRuss cards from the mid-80s onwards. They all feature drawn portraits of top stars in the game at the time. The illustrator of this card was Dick Perez, who drew the Diamond King portraits from 1982 - 1996. There is a gallery on his website.

I'm not a massive fan of these cards, but I can see how they were a bit different in the 1980s compared to what else was out there.

Tony appeared in several of the Diamond Kings sets. This is the only one of his I have from the classic run of DonRuss, so far. I have a few copies as it seems to always feature in joblots  - probably because 1989 was  one of the peak production years for DonRuss during the junk wax explosion.

On the back the write up predicts Tony's plaque will hang in Cooperstown one day. They were right about that, of course. I've seen it myself. This seems like a good place for a gratuitous photo of me with Tony's plaque in the Hall of Fame.

The cardback is also optimistic about an imminent rosy future for the Padres. In fact, it would be almost a decade before the club achieved any success.

Card Number 81: Topps Gypsy Queen, 2015; #164
Gawain from the Baseball Cards UK Facebook group sent me this card. Gypsy Queen is another Topps retro-looking product. I have got a few Padres cards in my collection but as a set it holds zero interest for me. This is from the 2015 series, which is the season after Tony passed away.

There is no mention of Tony's passing on the back of the card. It's a very plain cardback.

Card Number 82: DonRuss Diamond Kings, 2005; #434
This card was sent to me by Rodney. It's from the 'Legends' part of the set.

I really like this card. The illustrator is Dave Kramer. My only quibble was that he could have worked from a picture of Tony at any stage in his career and maybe captured him as a younger man.

The cardback includes a bio of the artist and also shows the number of Diamond Kings appearance for Tony Gwynn up to this point (9).

Card Number 83: Topps Gypsy Queen (mini), 2015; #164
In addition to their regular size cards, Topps reproduce all their cards in a 'mini' size. I say reproduce, they actually have more of Tony visible on this mini card than on the actual card because it includes his foot. I received this very recently from Matt J.

I feel that wall behind him ought to be recognisable as well. However, I'm not googling"ball park walls" to see if I can work out where it is.

The cardback has the same factoid. Topps sometimes play around with their Gypsy Queen cardbacks to produce unnecessary variations. But this is the regular cardback.

I hope you enjoyed these Diamond Kings and Gypsy Queens. If you want to see a more up-to-date Diamond Kings card (from 2018), then have a read of this post from last month.

Total: 83/394

The Hall of Fame - and the Panini Card Company's loophole

I've decided to mix it up as my first run of posts have all been about Topps cards. Today I'm going to show some much more recent cards that have been released by Panini, in conjunction with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

An ulterior motive for doing this is so that I can include this photo from outside the Hall of Fame when I visited Cooperstown in 2016.

I've blogged about visiting the Hall on my personal blog, but there are a couple of appropriate photos to include here.

I remember feeling quite emotional when I saw Tony's plaque in the Hall.

Tony was elected to the Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible, five years after he retired. He shared his induction with one other player, Cal Ripken Jr, with a record-breaking crowd of fans turning up to witness it.  The Padres posted a video last year of Tony getting the call from the head of the Museum in 2007 to welcome him to the Hall of Fame, and he is overcome with emotion. According to Tony's university team-mate, and longtime friend, Steve Sayles, Tony didn't think he would be a "first ballot selection"*.

Anyway, some baseball cards. Understanding the cards in this post means understanding a bit about licensing properties in modern card manufacture. Basically, Topps has an exclusive licence with Major League Baseball (MLB), so they are the only card manufacturer who can use the team logos and names. Panini's modern cards (which includes long-established brands like DonRuss, Score, Leaf and Pinnacle) are licensed from the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) so they show the player and usually give the city name, which isn't copyrighted. This works for San Diego or Boston, but isn't ideal for New York or Chicago where there are two baseball clubs.

Panini also airbrush the team names and logos off the players' shirts, helmets, caps and so on so they aren't infringing any copyright held by MLB. Some collectors don't value "no logo" / "logoless" cards as much, but sometimes the cards can be a bit creative.

Before Panini secured an agreement with the MLBPA they wanted to produce baseball cards. They found a licensing loophole and signed a contract with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and so could produce cards related to inductees in the Hall of Fame, which is where these cards come from. I don't know if the photos are from the Hall of Fame's massive images collection. If they were, this makes Panini's move even smarter.

Card Number 13: Panini Cooperstown Collection 2012, #110

I actually really like this card. I think the front design is aesthetically pleasing, while the back has a nice write up. I appreciate the description of Tony as a "baseball scientist". Although I query the use of the word "torrid" to describe his career batting average, and I'm not sure why they profiled his 1997 figures. But overall this is a solid card for a "no logo" print run.

Card Number 14: Panini Diamond Kings 2018, #P8

This is a much more recent card, from the 'Portraits' insert series in their 'Diamond Kings' product. 'Inserts' are special cards included in packs, usually at the rate of 1 or 2 per pack. There were only 15 'Portraits' produced in the series, all of players with similarly legendary status.

The card itself looks like a reproduction of an actual painting. The only slightly odd thing is the repetition of the portrait in the design on the back. By 2018, Panini had a contract with thd MLBPA, but this card carries the Hall of Fame logo on the back.

Card Number 15: Panini Diamond Kings 2018, #GS15

Another insert series in the same product - Panini Diamond Kings. This time it's the 'Gallery of Stars' and another attractive card where the image is repeated on the back. There were 18 cards in this insert series.

And finally in this post, the first in a small series I call "When is a Tony Gwynn card not really a Tony Gwynn card?"

Card Number 16: Panini Cooperstown Collection 2013, #7

That's right, when it's a card featuring his footwear and nothing else. The reverse of the card has a blurred photo of the Museum and Hall of Fame, which you may recognise from my photo at the top of the post.

In the grand tradition of odd factoids on the back of baseball cards, this one tells you all about Tony's basketball stats when he was playing for the Aztecs, the San Diego State University team, before a throwaway comment about swapping to baseball. There's also a nice bit about the Museum itself, including that it houses nearly 40,000 "three-dimensional items" by which I think it means things like game-used running spikes.

So, that was Panini's loophole for publishing cards when they didn't have a license. It provides a bit of variety in the collection at least.

Total: 16/394

*reference: He Left His Heart in San Diego, p.80