Score Summit

I am feeling a bit guilty at neglecting this blog, but life gets in the way sometimes. I had a very busy April, including working my notice before switching to a new job and various other activities that took up my time. I also haven't acquired many new cards - just one new one arrived in April. 

However, I do still have a little backlog of cards to work through. Today's post features a couple of cards from when Summit was a Score brand rather than a Pinnacle brand - although they were all the same company underneath anyway.

Card Number 1006: Score Summit Edition, 1995; #6

There were 200 cards in this 'hobby exclusive' set. 173 cards were 'base' cards like this. The foil team logos made them slightly fancier than regular Score cards that year. The Pinnacle companies love affair with foil on cards was only just starting. 

The back has a candid photo of Tony and a monthly breakdown of his 1994 season.The September / October column is full of zeroes because no games were played in those months due to the player strike that cut the season short.

I'm a fan of different ways of representing data on cardbacks, and so this card gets a bonus point for the way the back is laid out. 

In addition to cards like this there were two 'subsets' in the 200-card base set. The Bat Speed subset also featured Tony.

Card Number 1007: Score Summit Edition, 1995; #183

The white background blends into the card border on the front, which isn't particularly striking. However the way Bat Speed is written as if it's zooming in from the edge of the card is charming. 

On the back we get a photo of Tony swinging through.

Neither photo is particularly good, considering it's a subset about batting. The angle of both photos means Tony is looking down and his face is obscured by his batting helmet. 

In subsequent years Summit was the name of an actual set, rather than being linked to Score. So these cards come from an interesting evolutionary moment as the set emerged into the hobby.

Total: 1007 cards

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!

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

Holograms before the holidays (and 900 cards!)

A new milestone and a couple of fun holograms to help us get there.

Card Number 899: Upper Deck SP Special FX, 1996; #40

Holograms are fun to scan. And by fun, I mean, they never look like they do in real life... anyway, here is the flatbed scan.

And here is the overhead scan that captures a bit more of the foil sheen of the card front. But captures less of the hologram. 

And here is the back. For some reason the way the card blurb starts "As usual..." made me chuckle. Like, it was just so boring talking about how Tony kept winning batting titles, man.

There are a couple of unusual stats in there - including the date of Tony's first career grand slam on 22nd August 1995. He scored that relatively late in his career and added two more to his career total before he retired. Data visualisation tends to earn cards bonus points and the two little baseball park diagrams there defnitely count on that score!

Card Number 900: Upper Deck SPx Gold, 1996; #49

Die-cut, gold parallel and a hologram? A worthy milestone card!

Again, we start with the flatbed. The hologram scanned an eerie blue colour.

The overhead scan worked much better - even picking up the colours in the hologram. The gold really stands out on this scan as well.

The back is quite nicely set out as well. Although I would ding it a point for hyphenating "batting". There's another injury to add to the 'cardback injuries' list as well - a "nagging foot injury".

The cardback mentions a game-winning homer on 5th June. It was against the Cardinals. The Padres won 6-4. They then lost the next 8 games straight. They only had 9 wins from 28 games the entire month of June that year. They still won the NL West that season, before losing in the first series of the post-season... to the Cardinals!

I feel like 900 cards is a really good place to pause the blog for just a short while. Christmas is coming up and I will be spending time with family, so I will bid you adieu until the New Year. Blogging will resume in January, all being well. Until then, I hope everyone stays safe and has a lovely festive season.

Total: 900 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

One card only - Certified

The "certified" refers to Pinnacle Certified. I've picked this card for today's solo card blog post mainly because of the back!

Card Number 343: Pinnacle Certified, 1997; #45

There are high end card sets and then there are ones that the manufacturer decrees are so special they stick a film over the front to protect it from the ravages of the packaging process. This is one of those sets.

The problem with the film is that if you acquire the card 23 years later and the film is still on it, then you are taking a massive risk to try and remove the film. This being a premium product, I imagine most collectors left the film on to preserve the card forever. Maybe one day I will find one that has been peeled.

Meanwhile, the picture of Tony shows some dirt on his trousers. He's been sliding around after getting on base in a previous at bat!

And here's the back!

This breaks down Tony's performances against all the other National League teams in 1996, a season when his .353 average landed him a batting title at the end of the year. He batted .615 against the Rockies - what a shame he didn't play more than 4 games against them. He batted at least .300 against everyone else, except for the Dodgers. He managed .400 across 13 games against the Mets. Their pitchers must have been sick of the sight of him.

I'm increasingly attracted to unusual data representations on the back of baseball cards, and this one really stands out. It feels like this kind of innovation has been stifled out of the hobby since the end of the 90s. I would love to see at least one of Topps sets having something this interesting on the back. 

Total: 343/394