SMILE, IT'S CARD #1000

A double milestone today - the 1000th card on the blog in my 500th blog post.

Why did I pick this card to be the 1000th card on the blog? Well I just love it. I loved the original version. And this is the super-shiny parallel.

Card Number 1000: Pinnacle Summit (foil board parallel), 1996; #134

Although the overhead scan captures the almost impossible shininess of this card, the much duller flatbed scan below shows the set logo a bit more clearly. 

The back includes the nicely laid out representation of Tony' performance on a month by month basis. He was very hot at the end of the 1995 season.

Pinnacle and it's various sub-brands are being kept on life support by Panini now. But this card represents everything that was right with baseball cards in the 1990s. I love it and it feels like an exciting and special card to celebrate getting into triple figures on this blog.

As ever, a massive thank you to everyone who has helped me along the way. I am very grateful to you all!

Total: 1000 cards!

One card only - Swing-o like Van Gogh

Card Number 996: Pinnacle Museum Collection, 1995; #291

This is a parallel version of the base card from the 'Swingmen' subset. It has a 'dufex' finish. Because of the subset design this card takes on a really trippy painted effect with the finish.

I took another scan of this using the overhead scanner. The swirliness really comes alive with more intensity.

The blue and purple swirling really reminds me of some of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings. The 'bumpiness' (technical term) of the dufex finish adds to the feeling that it's painted on. 

On the back, the 'Museum Collection' logo has been added, in case someone didn't realise this card was different to the Pinnacle base cards! The kerning of "1995" above the word Museum is too stretched for my liking. The photo of Tony has him looking right down the camera lens. He doesn't look like he will take any messing about from the photographer.

Back in 1995, the Museum Collection would have been a reasonably tricky parallel set to complete. These cards were inserted 1 in every 4 packs. However, I acquired mine from Jason in Rhode Island - thanks Jason!

Total: 996 cards

Certified Selection

It's difficult keeping track of what went on at Pinnacle in the mid-90s, before the company collapsed in epic fashion. There were two main brands of cards - Pinnacle and Score - and both had several sub-brands. The company expanded further with the Select range almost becoming a third stand alone brand, even to the point where it was introducing its own sub-ranges. 

So it all gets confusing. They had some nice cards though.

Card Number 972: Pinnacle Select Certified Edition, 1996; #21

There were 144 cards in this high end shiny set.

The back is a dark red. One thing that Pinnacle did across several of their ranges is experiment with data representation. On this card, they have divided up Tony's stats from the previous season against all the opponents that he faced. This was all National League teams as it was before the current era of inter-league play every season. 

I was going to say Tony did well in his 13 games against the Dodgers until I saw his stats in 11 games against the Astros. Tony battered the Houston pitchers. He got a hit in over half of his at bats. They must have been sick of the sight of him!

Total: 972 cards

One Card Only - shiny Summit!

Card Number 897: Pinnacle Summit (foil parallel), 1996; #134

The regular version of this card has already been a "One Card Only" card. This is the super-shiny foil parallel. Under the overhead scanner it pops!

On the flatbed it comes our rather dark, although Tony's features are a bit clearer.

This is now probably one of my favourite cards; definitely in my top ten. It is a beautiful protrait photo of Tony. And so, so shiny!

I discussed the back when I blogged the regular version. Pinnacle cards give mid-90s Leaf cards a good run for their money in terms of having the best cardbacks. 

So front and back, this is an absolutely solid card. Which is why it was worthy of having a blogpost all to itself!

Total: 897 cards.

Canned cards

There is a fine line between "innovatove" and "gimmicky". Today's cards cross that line because unlike almost every other baseball card ever, they weren't sold in a packet. They were sold in a can. 

Card Number 874: Pinnacle Inside, 1997; #56

In 1997 Pinnacle Inside cards were sold in cans with 24 different designs on the outside. One of the cans had Tony printed on it. However this card would have been inside a can.

Tony is guffawing in the main photo. It really shows his fun-loving side. He has a more serious expression in the black and white photo to the side. The "TM" after the word Padres makes it look like he has a blue neck tattoo.

This could be a great cardback.  It has a nice lay-out with interesting info. The bullet points don't quite line up though. Also the factoid on the left about his 6-hit game is sort of marooned there. 

Pinnacle carried on canning cards the following year.

Card Number 875: Pinnacle Inside, 1998; #37

In 1998 there were 23 different cans, and again, one had a picture of Tony on the outside.

It feels like Pinnacle couldn't match the photo from the previous year, so they didn't try. The stats down the left hand side are from the previous season, but they don't explain that.

A slightly better photo on the back and a better lay-out for the tidbits of information.

There is some new information on the back including that Tony's hobby was playing sports video games. This seems to be a popular past-time among many professional sports players.

1998 was the last year that Pinnacle canned cards, because the company collapsed that year. Like Pinnacle Mint, this gimmick has yet to be resurrected by the current owners of the brand, Panini.

Total: 875 cards

Mint! (The cards with the hole)

The blog title is a riff on an old advertising slogan for Polo mints, which were described as "the mint with the hole". What happened to the holes? Nobody knew. Then the manufacturer started selling little tubs of tiny mints called Polo holes. 

This blog post is actually about Pinnacle Mint, cards that were sold with holes in. Well, some of them. Pinnacle Mint was a set that combined cards and metal coins. It wasn't a totally novel idea. Topps had made coins previously. But the combination, and the idea of using the cards to hold the coins was something different.

Card Number 854: Pinnacle Mint, 1997; #21

This is the base card. See the big hole? That was to fit a coin in. Each packet came with two cards and one coin.

Obviously punching a big hole in a card means there is less space on the card for factoids or stats. Pinnacle binned off the stats and kept the factoid to a concise three lines. 

There were four different coins to collect in the packs - bronze, nickel, silver plated and gold plated. There were also 'redemption' coins that could be claimed in either solid silver of solid gold. Richard included one of the bronze coins from this set in the recent parcel that he sent me. Here is what it looks like mounted in the card.

There were also three parallel versions of the cards with large foil coin-sized stamps on them, also in bronze, silver and gold. 

Card Number 855: Pinnacle Mint (Bronze), 1997; #21

The big foil stamp is only on the front. This means the back of the card is surprisingly clean.

Presumably this was a reasonably successful range for Pinnacle, as Mint made a reappearance in 1998, which would turn out to be Pinnacle's last year of trading.

Card Number 856: Pinnacle Mint, 1998; #8

This 'boxy' background design is similar to several other Pinnacle ranges in 1998.

On the back Pinnacle decided to opt for stats over multiple photos. There is a lovely portrait of Tony and a clever way of displaying his season stats as well.

Although this card gains bonus points for the way the stats are laid out, I'm going to ding it a point for splitting the factoid either side of the big hole. If they had gone for two sentences, one on each side, then it would have looked better.

I have yet to acquire the coin from 1998 to display in the hole. But I do have the bronze parallel of this card, as Pinnacle went all parallel-happy again. 

Card Number 857: Pinnacle Mint (Bronze), 1998; #8

This time the space on the back of the card that would have been the hole has been filled with the team logo.

This was the last year that Pinnacle Mint was produced. The company went belly up in the autumn. The Pinnacle brand has since been purchased and semi-revived as one of the zombie brands that Panini have reanimated. Of the many sub-brands that Pinnacle had, it seems very unlikely that the Mint concept of cards and coins will ever be brought back by Panini. But who knows what the future holds!

Total: 857 cards

Now & then & then & now

Two card companies. Same year. Pretty much the same name for an insert card series.

Card Number 810: Pinnacle, 1993; #289

This card marked Tony's tenth season in the Major Leagues. The photo from 1982 looks very familiar, but it obviously wouldn;t have appeared on a Pinnacle card. I think it might have been reused in a more recent release by a card company. I am absolutely certain the green background is a photoshop (or equivlent) job. The software debuted in 1990 and was adopted by the designers at card companies not long afterwards.

The back is relatively plain, just summing up Tony's career to date.

Did you notice the big trademark (TM) sign next to Now & Then? Having taken a project through the process to register tradmarks, I doubt that wording was ever a defendable trademark. Pinnacle's legal team could have tested it though, that very same year! Except Upper Deck switched the words around. 

Card Number 811: Upper Deck, 1993; #TN11

There were 18 cards in this insert series, which might have been the first time Upper Deck used holograms on their cards.

Trying to get a hologram to show on a scan is annoying. However, jiggle the card a bit and Tony appears!

Upper Deck were going through a phase of creating long blurbs to go on the backs of insert cards. There is another picture of Tony inserted as a watermark under the text. The write up includes how he just pipped Will Clark to a batting title - something I discussed when I blogged a card featuring both of them recently. 

Upper Deck didn't try to trademark the phrase 'Then & Now', even though they made much more of an effort with the logo for the insert series!

Total: 811 cards

Two more cards from 1996 and a blog milestone!

For the previous three days I have blogged three cards a day from 1996. I still have more cards from that year and I've picked two today that will take this blog up to 800 cards.

Card Number 799: Pinnacle Zenith, 1996; #91

This is the pinnacle of scanning nightmares - a black shiny card. In retrospect, scanning it on a black background wasn't the smartest move. The display of fanned out bats in the background makes this card distinct.

On the back there is a 'hit location chart'!

Pinnacle made a point of doing data differently on their cardbacks. This visualisation is very informative. Tony didn't score many homers but they almost all went out beyond right field. He used to spray the ball all over the outfield, so clearly he just didn't quite have the power to get it over the wall in left field. This cardback is definitely worth ten bonus points.

Also, I'm not sure if this is deliberate, but the card number is the reverse of 19. 

Card Number 800: Pinnacle Zenith, 1996 #150

Another black shiny card! The last 20 cards in the 150-card set were the 'Honor Roll'. Tony had card number 150, which was the last card in the base set.

The other names listed on the Honor Roll all had cards in this subset too.

This is a nice card to illustrate Tony's place in the game during his 90s peak - his zenith, if you will - and also to show some of the cards produced during the baseball card industry peak as well. Pinnacle went to the wall a couple of years later as the hobby contracted, although it lives on now as one of Panini's many acquired brands. 

This brings me up to 800 cards on the blog. When I reached 700 cards back in July, I wasn't expecting to complete another century so quickly. But I still have lots of cards waiting to be blogged and am back into the daily posting routine which I hope to keep up throughout the winter!

Total: 800 cards

Tuesday Twins - Pinnacle's sneaky variations

In a follow-up email, Richard also gave me some notes on the cards he sent me. He pointed out that two of the cards he had included were variations that perhaps weren't obvious. He was right, because I had totally missed them when I looked through the cards!

The cards in question were the #1 card in the Pinnacle set from 1998. They look like this.

I already had this card in the Pinnacle folder, so put it to one side in the little pile of cards that I knew were duplicates. (There was some crossover between Richard selecting cards to send me and the parcel with over 100 cards in arriving from France, so there was a small overlap in contents.) 

If I had thought about it, though, I would have realised that I blogged this card along with Tony's other Pinnacle base cards back in July last year. Richard had checked my list on Trading Card Database, so he would have known I had this card already. I should have realised he would have sent me these for a reason. (Lesson - never doubt a supercollector!)

The differences are in the cardbacks!

Card Number 749: Pinnacle, 1998 (Home Stats parallel); #1

Card Number 750: Pinnacle, 1998 (Away Stats parallel); #1

One card has Tony's stats in the games  played in San Diego and the other has his stats when on the road with the Padres. Pinnacle produced these parallel variations for all the players in the set.

Overall it didn't make much difference to Tony whether he was batting at home in the Jack Murphy Stadium or in ballparks all over the country. His career batting average differential at the end of the 1997 season was .002, from about the same number of games. He travelled well and hit well anywhere he faced a pitcher.

Thanks Richard for pointing this out and reminding me to always check the back of the card!

Total:750 cards

Hall of Famer - 14 years early

In 2007 Tony Gwynn was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in the first year he was eligible for the ballot. However, two card companies made an early case for his election, fourteen years previously.

Card Number 734: Leaf Heading for the Hall insert, 1993; #2

I really like the logo for this insert series with the little road heading towards a line drawing of the Hall of Fame. There are some sparkles under his name as well. 

The back is outstanding. Leaf had fantastic cardbacks in their 1993 set and this insert series is no different. The combination of the picture of the National Baseball Museum that houses the Hall of Fame, a map of the area and a mocked up plaque shows some exceptional care from the designers.

Here's what the actual plaque looks like, of course!

On that map you can see Lake Otsuga. Nobody ever really mentions Lake Otsuga when they talk about Cooperstown. This is a photo of it that is also my desktop background so I see it every time I write blog posts!

My wife Cathy and I spent two nights in Cooperstown on our road trip in 2016. I would happily say that the day in Museum and Hall of Fame was one of the best days of my life so far. It probably makes the top 3! 

There was an exhibit in the museum about the player's strike in 1994 that cut the season short. That was the season when Tony was tantalisingly close to breaking .400. (Which is why this blog is called .394!)  That exhibit has one of Tony's shirts from the 1994 season in it.

I also met another very famous celebrity from San Diego!

Anyway,. that's enough about the wonderful experience of going to the National Museum and Hall of Fame. Let's get back to baseball cards. Pinnacle were also considering future contenders for Cooperstown back in 1993...

Card Number 735: Pinnacle Cooperstown Card insert, 1993; #20

One day I am going to count up how many cards I have of Tony in this pose, preparing to sprint to first base, with his discarded bat disappearing off the edge of the card.

There's no map on the back, just another photo in his familiar anticipatory batting stance. 

Pinnacle felt Tony was "well on his way to Cooperstown". He added another four batting titles before he finally got there. 

It feels like both these card companies recognised Tony's greatness well before he retired and was officially inducted into the Hall of Fame. That is a genuine indication of his ability and attitude at the height of his career.

Total: 735 cards 

Aficionado

I did a small trade with Mark B recently. I sent him some Mariners cards and he sent me some random Padres and this magnificent example of a card from the 90s.

Card Number 612: Pinnacle Aficionado, 1996; #30

"Pinnacle what!?" "You heard me - Aficionado!"

The front of this card has a bizarre textured close up of Tony's face. I don't know what the surface print is made from. It feels very rough. The sepia photo screams 'card company aiming for classy'.

The set logo says 'Aficionado by Pinnacle'. Almost like a perfume range.

The back is black and shows every mark. The edges look chewed up in the scan but the card honestly does not look this bad in real life. But, ignore the edges, look at that stats box! That's new.

So this stats box compares Tony's average in 1995 and his career against the overall averages for outfielders in 1970, 1985 and 1995. My inner data nerd went Squeeee! when I saw this. 

Tony won his sixth batting title in 1995 with a batting average .082 above the average batting average! He outperformed all his peers except in two metrics - home runs and stolen bases. Well, fair play, he was 35 that year and his best basestealing days were behind him. And he was never a home run guy. 

He did pretty well on total bases, though. He would have hit a lot of singles in his 197 hits, given he only made 62 extra bases, and 36 of those would be from home runs.

Mark and I had a bit of a laugh about this card, which Mark described as "horrible". From a design perspective, that's a good description, but this cardback is something really special.

I have now blogged all my outstanding cards. I am now planning to take a little break until some new cards arrive, or until I start playing around with building a Tony Gwynn Frankenset. I may chronicle a bit more of my collection drift as I have a few odds and ends knocking about. And I've been thinking about my collection as a whole and my next target to aim at.

So I have some ruminating to do. For now, I leave you with this pinnacle of Pinnacle cardbacks!

Total: 612 cards

Scanning Nightmares - Pinnacle holofoil horrors

Pinnacle are one of the 90s card brands that are no longer with us, although it sort of lives on as one of the many 'zombie brands' owned by Panini now. Pinnacle was a company that loved shininess back when it was alive. That means lots of gold foil and then holofoil printing. 

Hence Pinnacle cards are lovely to look at, and horrid to scan.

Card Number 591: Pinnacle Zenith All-Star Salute, 1995; #6

This is the scan off the flatbed scanner. 

And this is the scan using the overhead scanner. I tried illuminating this from the side. The dark bar under Tony's bat is the reflection of the overhead scanner in the card. 

At least on this second scan the Pinnacle set name and Tony's name are legible. This scan almost captures the actual colour of the card as well. 

I had another go using daylight. It got a bit washed out. 

On the back we get a close up 'hero pose' photo and a little write up about Tony's All-Star appearance in 1994, even though this card was commemorating the 1995 All-Star game. In fairness to Pinnacle, they didn't have much to say about Tony's All-Star performance in 1995 - he was hitless in two plate appearances and then replaced by Reggie Sanders.

1995 was the middle year of a hat-trick of All Star victories for the National League. So even though Tony didn't contribute much to the game, he was on the winning side.

Zenith was Pinnacle's last release of the year, which is why they had cards about that season's All-Star Game in it. I have blogged a couple of other cards from Zenith. There's one in this post about cards from 1995. Interestingly, when Playoff bought the assets of Pinnacle, it also included the Zenith brand name, which Playoff used as part of a DonRuss release. I've blogged about the name Zenith being used by two different manufacturers here.

Pinnacle's love affair with holofoil continued right up until their abrupt demise in 1998, as can be seen by this card.

Card Number 592: Pinnacle Plus Lasting Memories, 1998; #29

Lasting Memories was a 30-card shiny insert series.

Holofoil and die-cut, but dark on the flatbed scanner!

The ripple edges of the die-cut don't really show on the black background of the overhead scan (below), but this picture shows the holofoil effect in terms of shininess. The card doesn't look anything like this in normal light.

I had another go. Although this third attempt is darker, this is more colour-accurate capturing the silver and blue colours of the card. The black bar on the right is the reflection of the overhead camera. 

So, I waited and had a go in daylight and the results were tons better. (This scan was straight too!)

The blue on the front is repeated on the back with a faint image that makes Tony look like a Jedi Force Ghost in the sky.

I think this is one of the earliest references to the looming 3000-hit mark, given this was issued some time before the end of the 1998 season. Tony didn't reach the 3000 mark that year - he recorded 148 hits, 72 short of the amount Pinnacle said he needed.

Total: 592 cards