Crown time

I'm starting yet another blog post apologising for an interruption in blogging. Everything here in the UK is dominated by the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week, and the installation of her first-born son as the new King. Plus I've been on holiday. 

However, with some new cards incoming, I feel I ought to blog some of the cards I have scanned and waiting! So here are some cards that roughly fit with the current big news story, as they have little crowns printed on them.

Card Number 1042: Pacific, 1994; #525

This was Pacific's second season producing cards and the first year they added the 'Crown Collection' logo to their cards. Later the company developed the Crown Collection idea into an actual set (one card included here). Unlike the 1993 set, this card didn't include Spanish field positions on the front of the card. 

It did, however, include Spanish on the back in the very limited text. This is one of the first regular base cards to include a photo on the back that was almost the same size as on the front. The information is minimal as a result. 

Card Number 1043: Pacific, 1996; #184

There are two crowns on the front of this card - one in the top right and one behind Tony's name. All are stamped in foil. Pacific really loved their foil in the mid 1990s, especially on their insert cards. (NB - the insert card I linked to had a crucial error in the Spanish text.)

There is also a crown on the back of the card, along with a fizzy-edged cameo portrait that looks like a flying saucer is hovering over Tony's right shoulder!

The bilingual write up on the back notes that Tony made just two errors in 135 games, which is as admirable a stat as his batting achievements. Although he didn't win a Gold Glove after 1991, his concentration in the outfield was as disciplined as his approach to batting. 

Total: 1043 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

Friday French Lesson

Have you ever bought a job-lot of cards for just one card? I have. Dan put a little pile of cards up for sale on the UK Facebook group at a fair price and I spotted two Tony Gwynn cards in it. They were both fairly common cards that, no, wait a minute, that's an O-Pee-Chee card!

Card Number 673: O-Pee-Chee, 1986; #10

Apart from the O-Pee-Chee logo in a big white box on the front, there isn't really anything to distinguish it from the Topps card of the same year.

But when you turn it over, there's a lot of differences because most of the content is replicated in French.

"Parlons Baseball!"

"Premier coup de circuit!"

"Fiche complete comme frappeur dans les Majeures!"

I had an interesting discussion in work a couple of days ago about trying to produce genuinely bilingual resources and one thing we talked about was how pedestrian translated material becomes. The same thing happens on card backs. In English Tony "belted" his first major league home run on August 22nd 1982. The French just notes his first home run was on the 22nd August 1982. (Also, how weird is it that in French they put the dates the correct way round, instead of putting them the American way!)

This cardback is from the era where an unrelated factoid makes its appearance on the back as well. I noticed the French text is about 25 percent longer than the English. We have exactly the same issue in work when we have resources translated into Welsh. English is a language that is very easy to pare down and convey meaning with minimal words and grammar. Languages like French and Welsh have less forgiving syntax and are more precise. 

By the way, that premier coup de circuit was against the Chicago Cubs in an 8-7 defeat for the Padres at Wrigley Field. Tony hit it off Bill Campbell in the sixth inning. It was a solo home run, but Tony had already hit a triple in the second inning, batting in a run.

A big thanks to Dan for making this post possible.

Total: 673 cards

Tuesday Twins - is it DonRuss or not?

A couple of 'twins' to show today, that illustrate how the boundaries between DonRuss and Leaf were blurred.

DonRuss's 1988 set is ubiquitous in 'lots' of cards from the 80s. It is possibly the junkiest of 'junk wax' sets. But just in case you can't remember what it looks like, here is Tony's base card from 1988.

Recently another version of this card tipped up in a joblot.

Card Number 380: Leaf, 1988; #90

Exact same card, but with a different manufacturer's logo and the frame reversed. 

On the back, we have a bit more of a clue as to what is going on. The card is bilingual in English and French, meaning it was sold in Canada. (Well, it's sort of bilingual - this wouldn't pass muster in Wales in terms of meeting the legal requirements for bilingualism. And,yes, I know the main reason for that is that it's in English and French not English and Welsh!)

The main things to notice are the lower set number and the changes to the career highlights. For comparison, here is the DonRuss cardback.

They basically dropped the last highlight so they could fit in the French translation. There were 264 cards in the Leaf release, compared to 660 in the DonRuss version, hence the renumbering.

Fast-forward a few years and Leaf and DonRuss took turns in claiming the "Studio" brand. In 1997 when it was issued as DonRuss Studio. Tony's card looked like this:

(I blogged about this back in July) Well, as was often the case back in the 90s, cards like this had parallel version released as well. 

Card Number 381: DonRuss Studio Silver Press Proof, 1997; #124

There are shiny silver foil tramlines down either side of the card, and the other lettering is picked out in silver too.

The back is exactly the same as the regular release. 

As I noted previously about this card, his entire career in baseball to this point (6 batting titles, 1 world series, 5 gold gloves, the modern record for batting average) is summarised in one throwaway line at the end of the paragraph. I've also just noticed that this could be a recent Panini-era DonRuss card photo as there are no easily recognisable club logos anywhere.

This card looks nice sat next to the regular base card. There were also gold press proofs as well, but they were harder cards to find. The set of three would look pretty sweet.

Total: 381/394

Voltigeur!

Soon after I started this blog I posted about a Pacific card that listed Tony as Jardinero! Literally this means a gardener in Spanish; in baseball terms it's an outfielder. Voltigeur is the French word used for outfielder, although its literal meaning is an acrobat or tumbler. (Fun fact: a voltiguer was also a member of a lightly armed skirmishing unit in the French army during the Napoleonic Wars. In Canada is also had a semi-military application meaning a ranger.)

Anyway, as you can probably guess, this is a prelude to my post today featuring cards that call Tony a voltigeur. That means, of course, Canadian cards, and if there is one card manufacturer that springs to mind when Canadian baseball cards are mentioned, it is O-Pee-Chee. 

Like a lot of card producers, O-Pee-Chee started out as a candy manufacturer. Candy and cards were a natural fit and soon the cards were just as important - perhaps more important - than the candy. For most of the 80s, O-Pee-Chee reprinted Topps cards, with the O-Pee-Chee logo and sometimes other minor variations. But in the  early 90s, they also produced a premium range called, fittingly, Premier. They then diverged from Topps and released their own flagship sets for a couple of seasons.

In 1996 O-Pee-Chee was bought by Nestle, and O-Pee-Chee became a card publishing brand with various licences that it could sell on to other card companies. After the Nestle takeover, Topps printed O-Pee-Chee cards under licence, but since 2007 O-Pee-Chee cards have been produced by Upper Deck. 

Card Number 233: O-Pee-Chee Premier, 1991; #59

The Premier range was designed to compete directly with Upper Deck. It was printed on a decent card stock and was full colour front and back, unlike the Topps flagship that O-Pee-Chee reprinted. 

There is a tokenistic amount of French on the back

Living in a country where it is a legal requirement to ensure published materials are fully bilingual, I find bilingual cards particularly interesting. This card would most definitely not meet the requirements of the legislation regarding linguistic representation to which I have to adhere in my day job.

It's a very cute little company logo on the back though.

Card Number 234: O-Pee-Chee Premier, 1992; #106

One thing that O-Pee-Chee inherited from Topps - they really didn't believe it was important to show much of the player's face. (Also, is Tony looking to bunt there?)

They make up for the poor photo on the front with a portrait shot on the back

In fairness, there is limited information on the back of the card, but again the commitment to two languages is the bare minimum.

Card Number 235: O-Pee-Chee, 1994; #100

This was the regular card set that O=Pee-Chee produced.

For a flagship product, this is high spec. Full bleed on good card stock and a ball-on-bat photo!

Tony is jogging on the back. Sadly the cute logo with the little kids has gone.

But the cardback has some blurb in both English and French. The columns on the stats box are single-language but this is a much better effort at providing bilingual information. 

This was actually the last home-grown baseball card set that O-Pee-Chee produced as the company began to struggle, and two years later it was acquired by the giant Nestle corporation for whom cards were not a priority. 

Total: 235/394

Jardinero!

Card Number 51: Pacific, 1993; #257
Trading Card Database lists this set as "Pacific Spanish". I don't know if there was a "Pacific English" set.

Jardinero means 'gardener' in Spanish. In the baseball context it means 'outfielder'.

Pacific was one of the companies that came into the packed early 90s card market and managed to bring something a little different with them. In this case, the Spanish language. After reading the same sort of factoids on the backs of so many cards, the description of Tony as "el mejor bateador de contacto" is a welcome break. All in all, it's a decent card too. Nice colours, good photos.

In my opening post I mentioned visiting the USA in 1987 with my family. We changed planes in New York, where I bought a musical badge with a picture of the 1986 Mets team on it, and then flew to Florida for a week. We did Walt Disney World and the Epcot Centre. We then went to Miami, where I remember getting very confused by the addition of sales tax when I tried to buy some baseball cards in a drugstore. Then we flew to Oklahoma where some friends of my parents lived. They had daughters about the same age as me and my brother.

I remember discovering that at school they were learning Spanish. I thought that was the daftest thing I had ever heard. At secondary school in the UK you learned French. You might get the chance to learn German. Nobody learned Spanish. What was the point of that? (Thinking about it, it's weird we didn't get taught Spanish given how popular Spain is as a holiday destination.)

That was my Eurocentrism at work there. French and German were the big languages on the continent. I didn't realise the USA had a large Hispanic population or that Spanish was the second most popular spoken language. (There was a lot I didn't know about the USA. I also had my mind blown when I lost a quiz question about the smallest state in the USA. I was adamant it must be Hawaii. Right up until they showed me an encyclopedia entry about Rhode Island.)

Pacific saw a gap in the market for Spanish cards and jumped into it with this licensed set. Prior to this they had produced a few other baseball collectibles. However, although it was an untapped market, it was also a limited market and the Spanish cards were a short-lived thing.

For the rest of the 90s, Pacific did some pretty jazzy cards. I have a few to show you in future posts.

Total: 51/394