Another royal title

DonRuss repeatedly honoured Tony as a Diamond King during the 80s and 90s but Fleer crowned him as a different kind of king in 1999.

Card Number 1033: Fleer Ultra, 1999; #13RK

The spectacular design on the front of this insert card masks the complete lack of logos or identifying features on the picture. Like the Leaf Legacy card I blogged yesterday, this could be a card from the era of unlicensed cards if it wasn't for the full team name included at the bottom. 

The photo of Tony on the back was taken in that brief window when he experimented with a beard in the late 90s. 

The shadow that has been added to the photo is weird and unnecessary - nobody would think Tony is actually standing in front of a big swirly mandala thing.

As noted in the write up, Tony had taken the lead in the Padres all-time franchise stats for RBI by the end of the 1998 season. He is still the Padres all time RBI leader with a career total of 1,138. (He is also the all-time Padres leader in walks with 790, which I didn't know until I looked up the RBI stat!)

Additional bonus point for this card doing what Fleer always did on their late 20th / early 21st century cards and include the year of issue under the logo. 

Total: 1033 cards

Happy birthday Mr Padre (redux)

Two years ago I started this blog on what would have been Tony Gwynn's 60th birthday. My plan then was to collect and blog about 394 different Tony Gwynn baseball cards. Now, two years and over 500 blog posts later, there are over 1,000 different Tony Gwynn cards chronicled on this blog. 

The first card I posted was from the Topps set in 1987. I chose that card because the first baseball cards I ever bought, while on a childhood holiday to America in 1987, were from that set. The card has a terrible photo of Tony on it where he has no visible distinguishing features.

Two years later, and I have a chance to revisit those cards from 1987 with the most recent card to arrive in my collection. Marc sent me the card (thanks, Marc!) and it arrived towards the end of April. The card is from the most recent Topps flagship set where the company are marking the 35th anniversary of the release of the set in 1987. That makes me feel a bit old, thinking that me buying those cards in Florida was 35 years ago!

Card Number 1009: Topps 1987 Throwback, 2022; #T87-57

Unlike the card from the 1987 set, at least Tony's face is visible in this photo. It would have looked better with the 1987 style logo. The photo is also from the 90s rather than from 1987. It's all setting off the anachronism klaxon!

Topps really bodged the back as well. It looks like the back of a card from 1987, but the designer only included a selection of years on the back. Given that Tony was active in 1987, they only needed to include the years from 1982 to 1986. They would have had space for a factoid then!

Even though the card has limitations, it felt like a nice way of marking the anniversary of my blog, and, of course, celebrating what would have been Tony's 62nd birthday!

Total: 1009 cards

1990 randomness

Today's post features three cards from 1990 that are completely unrelated to each other. Just for fun, like. 

Card Number 1003: Topps Batting Leaders, 1990; #2

These cards were inserted into blister packs of 100 cards from Topps flagship set that were exclusive to K-Mart. 

The cartooney drawn baseball bat makes this look quaint, even considering it's from way back in 1990.

The politest way to describe the cardback is that it doesn't look like the designer made too much of an effort but did just enough to earn their paycheck.

Tony's final career batting average went up from this point. In terms of hitting baseballs, he was an absolute monster in the decade after this card was released.

Card Number 1004: Sport's Collector Digest, 1990; #37

This isn't a baseball card, it's a pocket price guide! (Oh, okay, sure thing, Sport's Collector Digest.)

This is the second 'pocket price guide' to feature on this blog (here's the other one). It's fair to say that if more price guides looked as good as the front of this card, more people would collect price guides!

These guides provide an insight into the expansion of the collecting bubble in the early 1990s. Comparing these prices to the valuations SCD put on cards in 1993, shows how much a collector could have made by investing in rookie cards in 1990.

SCD reckoned that mint Topps rookie cards had doubled in price from $20 in 1990 to $40 in 1993, while the five hundred per cent growth in value for a mint 1984 Fleer card (from $2 to $12) was a huge jump for a second year card.

All this is a casual reminder that card values are always inflated by the companies doing the valuations. The real value of a card is not what a company claims it to be - the real value is the price it actually sells for. This is true regardless of whether the price is listed on a magazine or on a nice baseball-card sized 'pocket price guide'. 

Card Number 1005: Sportflics, 1990; #98

Sportflics are lenticular cards that show player in three different poses. I am not keen on them for a number of reasons. They don't scan well. They are thick plastic and the plastic yellows with age. And they warp because of the plastic coating. 

But apart from that, they're OK.

Sporflics are reasonably important in the history of baseball cards because they were the entry product for the Pinnacle company who then produced Score cards before releasing sets under the Pinnacle brand name. The back of this card shares a lot of design aesthetics with contemporary Score cards, particularly the use of a colour photo, the lettering and presentation.

On top of all the other issues with Sportflics cards, I'm going to ding this a point for having Tony's squad number more obvious than the card set number, and ding it another point for having a set number that looks like a different number. It's not #88, it's #98! However, I will give it a point back for the quirky photo showing Tony with his glove half-on, half-off. 

Total: 1005 cards

Limited Leafs

A couple of mid-90s shiny cards to brighten up your Thursday!

Card Number 916: Leaf Limited, 1994; #152

You can tell this is a high end card because Tony's name is written in fancy cursive script!

This is so shiny is scans a different colour depending how much light is getting into the room. (I'm using the overhead scanner for this and, seriously, the cards change colour if the sun goes behind a cloud while I'm scanning!) So, sometimes the card looks like this. 

On the back we get a quote from Ozzie Smith, which is superb hyperbole. (Superbole?) 

"Tonys mechanicals are so good they enable him to get hits when he's not hitting. There's no stopping him, you just try to slow him down."

No, I don't know what 'getting hits when he's not hitting' means either. The cameo portrait has a classy surround with that feathered pattern. I'll award a bonus point for including the set name, although it is prominent on the front as well. The one year stats line includes the years he had been active up to this point. That feels like an unusual inclusion in a one-line stats box.

Card Number 917: Leaf Limited Gold, 1995; #20

There were 192 cards in this high end set, and 24 further cards in the 'Gold' insert series, which looked a lot like the regular cards (as can be seen here). They used different photos and the card had a gold back instead of the usual silver. The Gold cards were included at a rate of 1 per pack. 

This time it's the team name in the fancy cursive script.

For some reason they decided to crop off Tony's feet. The converging shiny lines combined with the Leaf Limited logo make it look like he is stading in front of a giant badminton shuttlecock. 

Here's the gold back - with the cursive script used for Tony's name. There's no quote this time, meaning there is space for a breakdown of Tony's monthly stats across his entire career. I was surprised to see July was the month Tony recorded his lowest batting averages. (At least, up to the end of the 1994 season!)

All the cards in Leaf Limited - base and inserts - were limited to a print run of 37,500 cards, apart from the 'Lumberjacks' insert series that were numbered in a print run of 5,000. Tony didn't have a Lumberjack card, but he did have a 'Bat Patrol' insert card (previously blogged here), giving him three cards in quite a small set.

Total: 917 cards 

Running through the 1988 Star set part 2

On with the oddball set that I started blogging about yesterday.

Card Number 847: Star Tony Gwynn "Padre Hitman", 1988; #5

So far this set has had minor league stats, major league stats, post-season stats... it's time for All-Star stats!

Definite bonus point for including where the All-Star games took place in the stats box on the back. That's extra data often isn't included. 

Card Number 848: Star Tony Gwynn "Padre Hitman", 1988; #6

A slightly different approach to stats - basically Tony's best stats in a season and in an individual game up to this point. This is always a more interesting set of stats and rarely done by card companies.

At this point in his career, Tony had yet to record a five-hit game. He had stolen five bases in one game, though, at the end of September 1985 in Houston.

Card Number 849: Star Tony Gwynn "Padre Hitman", 1988; #7

And abruptly, the cardbacks shift from stats boxes to mammoth blocks of text. Weirdly, these go back in time, starting with Tony's break out season in 1983 and going backwards to his minor league season in 1981.

There is a huge amount of information to unpack on this cardback. It serves as a very useful reminder of Tony's early career with details that have since been marginalised by all of Tony's achievements. (The story that he went off to Puerto Rico to play winter baseball and broke his wrist at the end of the 1982 season isn't usually talked about.)

Card Number 850: Star Tony Gwynn "Padre Hitman", 1988; #8

Although all the photos in this set seem to be from the same game, it doesn't seem to have been well attended judging by the empty seats in the background here. 

On the back we have another chunk of biography. This is all about Tony's achievements in 1984, including becoming the first Padres player to record 200 hits in a season.

Part 3 of this run-through tomorrow!

Total: 850 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

Back to Base: Allen & Ginter

Allen & Ginter World's Champions baseball cards have been issued by Topps for several years now. In addition to baseball players there are usually a number of random quirky cards included in the sets as well, along with "Rip" cards that contain another image under the photo and ask the holder if they will 'keep it or rip it?' and a variety of other inserts, mini cards, relics, autographs and so on.

The original Allen & Ginter was a tobacco company in the 19th Century. The link between baseball cards and tobacco companies predates the link with bubblegum, and a surprising number of very old tobacco brands have been resurrected by the card companies in this century. Upper Deck have their Goodwin's Champions, and Topps release their very high end "206" product and the Gypsy Queen range. 

I am ambivalent about the use of long-gone tobacco company names by card companies. While they aren't recognisable brands and the association with packets of cigarettes or tobacco are purely historical, there is an anachronism that tobacco advertising has disappeared from sports grounds within the last 30 years or so, and yet card companies are still preserving the link between tobacco and the sport, albeit in a very obscure way. (Cigarette advertising has sometimes inadvertently appeared on cards. There's a Marlboro ad in the background of a card from 1994, which was shortly before advertising was banned altogether.)

However, as a fan and chronicler of Tony Gwynn's career, I can't escape the fact his life was cut incredibly short because of chewing tobacco and I am supportive of efforts to ban tobacco entirely from the sport. So, that's another reason why I have mixed feelings about these particular card sets.

And, being honest, the cards themselves aren't particularly interesting to warrant the fuss that is made over them by some collectors. The insert series can sometimes be quite nice -  I really liked the Star Signs card featured on this blog in one of my first posts - but the sets tend to blend into each other and the cards all feel very samey. I have similar feelings towards Gypsy Queen and Panini Prizm cards. Still, at least they put the set years on the front so it's easy to tell them apart.

Card Number 385: Topps Allen & Ginter, 2013; #97

The enforced quirkiness of the Allen & Ginter brand is shown on the front where they just have the player's surname and don't mention the team. In the photo, Tony is wearing a batting practice jersey - Mitchell & Ness have produced a replica of this top complete with the number 19 on the back.

If the front is quirky, the back is similarly trying to be eccentric in its disdain for numerals, instead writing the key numbers out in full words. (Except for the card number.)

At least it's a different way of summarising and displaying career stats. For a known contact hitter, Tony was afforded very few walks in his career. That's probably because he wasn't a home run slugger like the all-time record holder Barry Bonds. But even Ted Williams, Tony's hitting hero, received over 2,000 walks in his career.

As I noted when I reviewed this year's Topps Archives card on Monday, they have decided to print Tony's weight at the end of his career, which seems rather mean-spirited. He didn't weigh 225lbs when he stole most of those 319 Stolen Bases!

Card Number 386: Topps Allen & Ginter, 2014; #223

This year the team name was on the front of the card. It's a photo of Tony in his batting stance - a classic pose for a hitting champion.

The back was very similar to the previous year's card, except it was printed in blue ink rather than black.

As the cardback is to all intents and purposes the same as the previous year, there is very little else to say about it.

Total: 386/394