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

One card only - shiny DonRuss Zenith

This is another card that arrived in the eBay package that turned out to be one that I didn't already have. I blogged the regular base version of this card six months ago, and now here's the shiny version.

Card Number 632: DonRuss Zenith Silver Artist's Proof, 2005; #234

There were also gold Artist's Proof cards, which I presume were rarer.

This card really pops on the scan!

The back is the same as the regular released version. I didn't have much to say about it when I blogged the base version, and I don't have much to add now.

However, one thing I noticed when I filed this card is that the image of Tony had appeared previously on a DonRuss Fan Club card in 2002, so there's a little bit of photo reuse going on.

They've even been consistent in how they've cropped out his bat. That's amused me, I must admit.

Total: 632 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

At the Zenith

I thought I'd discovered two different companies using the same name for a card set until I delved a bit into the murky world of baseball cards companies and found out that actually what I had got was a brand resurfacing under new ownership.

Zenith is the brand. In 1997, it was a set produced by Pinnacle.

Card Number 341: Pinnacle Zenith, 1997; #2

OK, this goes against everything Fuji likes in a photo. Only half the player is in the shot, and a good  portion of the bat is cropped off. In fact, it also ticks the boxes for my chief gripe about Topps cards - it doesn't show Tony's face or his name on the shirt. But if someone is going to produce a card that upsets both my and Fuji's aesthetic principles, what a card to do it! 

That is a ball flying towards him! You can see the muscles in his arm tensing ready to hit it.

Also, I can't think of another card in my collection that shows the little #19 on the back of Tony's helmet. That's just cool!

Then flip it over, and what have we here?

That's a hit location chart. Want to know where to sit to catch a Tony Gwynn home run? The answer is out behind right field. 66% of his home runs landed there. That sounds like good odds, but you'd have to be lucky, because he only hit three home runs all season!

I'm feeling a bit tired of stats boxes. This is a nifty graphic, although it's not so joyously colourful as the one on the Zenith card in 1995. It conveys data in a fun, different way. Twenty bonus points!

Pinnacle went bust the season after this set came out and their assets were bought by the Playoff company, owners of DonRuss. So when a Zenith set appeared in 2005, it was a DonRuss product.

Card Number 342: DonRuss Zenith, 2005; #234

This came out 3 years after Tony retired. The last 20 cards in the set were notable retired players, including the late Tom Seaver as a Cincinatti Reds player. 

It's an attractive card, and meets the Fuji aesthetic as none of Tony has been cropped off by the picture editor.

The back is mainly a summary and a one line stats box. Sadly there are no nifty graphics. 

Overall, it's a nice looking card. The cards produced by DonRuss while they were operated by Playoff and before they were absorbed into the Panini conglomerate are underrated in my opinion. In terms of quality and design they more than hold their own. To date the Zenith brand hasn't reappeared since 2005. If it does, I hope they adopt the data representation approach of the original Pinnacle Zenith cardbacks.

Total: 342/394

5 from 95

Let's take a break from forgotten Fleer card ranges, and go back a quarter of a century to the heyday of the baseball card hobby - 1995. Here are five cards that reflect the choice and variety available to card collectors in the middle of the last decade of the twentieth century.

Card Number 187: Upper Deck Collector's Choice, 1995; #73

This card commemorates Tony's national league batting title in 1995, when he achieved a .367 average and was actually the overall batting champion across both leagues. It's a landscape card so it really shows the extension of Tony's swing.

The cardback has an unusual photo.

It also mentions how Tony only struck out 19 times in the 1994 season. That is exactly the same number of strike outs he recorded in 1991. I can't calculate the odds of a batter recording the same number of strike outs in two separate seasons, and that number being the same as his uniform number!

Also, Upper Deck really wanted to show how close he got to .400. They calculated his batting average from July 1993 through the whole 1994 season and worked it out at .399. A whisker away!

Card Number 188: Leaf, 1995; #299

Leaf was a premium product in 1995. Check out that handwriting style font for his name. This is a very green card, with the foliage in the background presumably being the ivy at Wrigley Field. It's nice to see a photo of Tony in the outfield. But just in case you were missing a photo of him at the plate, Leaf put one on the cardback.

Leaf tended to put some effort into their cardbacks from 1993 onwards. This one is a little bit cluttered. The stats are nice and contained though, and very easy on the eye.

Also with the portrait on the front and two pictures on the back, this is a four-photo card.

Card Number 189: Pinnacle Zenith, 1995; #104
This is a dark shiny card that didn't scan very well.

It's also that mid-90s style of a complete cut-out of the player dropped onto a random background.

I have no problem with card companies experimenting with different ways to show player stats. Which is just as well...

If you ever wondered where Tony placed his hits, this tells you. He scored 12 home runs and almost all of them went over the right field fence. His hitting is very consistent, with a large number going straight down the middle. More card companies should put relevant numbers on pretend scoreboards like Pinnacle do here. And Tony looms over all these graphics like a colossus.

(Yes. This is one of my favourite cardbacks ever.)

Card Number 190: DonRuss, 1995; #224

Not every card range can be a classic. DonRuss are trying hard here, but this is average. The inset photo is nicely done with the home plate outline looking like the shield on a coat of arms. But that's the best bit.

The back has Tony really winding that arm back ready to throw. He seems to have a large wad of tobacco in his cheek as well. The stats box only covers the previous five seasons. It's that sort of half-hearted attempt that really defines this card.

Card Number 191: Topps Traded and Rookies, 1995; #7
This set was released late in the year.

The 'At the Break', cards summarised how players had been playing before the All Star Break. Tony gets described as "totally torrid".

"Torrid" has a different connotation in America, where it seems to just mean 'hot'. In the UK, a 'torrid time' is difficult, usually because of successive misfortunes. It's not an adjective we would use to describe a person. So, it jars me reading it as a description here.

Anyway, he was on a hot streak. The same can't really be said for Topps with this card design. At first glance I thought this was a Pacific card with the ball exploding from the big logo like that. But it's not. It's most definitely Topps. Being charitable, it's something different and adds a bit of variety to the selection of cards from 1995.

Total: 191/394