The most 1995 card ever

I've mentioned "Nineties Design" quite a few times on this blog. The 1990s were an interesting decade for design as just about everything swapped onto computers for good. All the old ways of laying out printing disappeared. Computer-aided design made it much easier to play around with fonts, manipulate photos, add colours and jazzy bits and bobs, and the trend was for card companies to mess around more and more, until they peaked and gradually retreated down into sensible territory. 

Today's card is from the absolute zenith of that peak. In it's own way it's beautiful. As an artifact of a decade that is so far removed from today's world it may as well have been in a different century, it's incomparable.

Card Number 368: Fleer, 1995; #560

The multiple repeating tinted images of Tony make a stained glass effect. What's odd about this set is that most of the cards looked nothing like it. This design template was reserved for the National League West teams - the Rockies, Dodgers, Padres and Giants. Other divisions had much more normal looking cards.

How much of an outlier is this card? Well here are 8 other base cards from 1995 for comparison.

Admittedly, we do have the three cards there that could well have been photographed at the same game, and the Pinnacle one bottom right is weird too, but it's quite clear that the Fleer '95 card is in a class of its own.

The back is also weird.

The stats box is spaced out to cover the whole card, but only shows the last 10 years' worth of stats. Meanwhile there is a close up of Tony's face cropped from an action shot. Half the logo is included. The legalese is printed in tiny font over the player name and the card number encroaches on the picture as well. 

There is something so pure about the aesthetic wrongness of this card it is literally breath-taking!

As I was compiling that 9-card comparison graphic, I decided to include a card that I hadn't yet blogged about. As a counterweight to the incredible nineties design from Fleer, here is Tony's Topps card from that year. 

Card Number 369: Topps, 1995; #431

It's an unremarkable card until you turn it over.

Topps teamed up with Mitsubishi Diamond Vision - the company that produce the huge screens at sports stadia - in 1995 and rendered player portraits on the back as if they were on the big screen. The way they have added a cut-out image of Tony underneath makes it look like he has a huge head on a tiny body, reminiscent of the memorable Score cartoon All-Star card. I find it amusing.

Total: 369/394

Pop Quiz answers - from yesterday's quiz

a) Fred McGriff went to San Diego in the trade that saw Joe Carter move to Toronto.

b) Joe hit a walk off home run to win the Blue Jays their second World Series in a row in the final game of the 1993 season.

c) Joe is older - born 7 March 1960.

Know the Score Part 2

This is a sequel of sorts to "Know the Score" which I published way back in May. In that first post I said that Score cards tended to have more interesting card backs than fronts, and I feel the same is true of the cards in this post. So I am going to show them back to front.

Card Number 365: Score Baseball's Hottest 100, 1989; #40

Even though he had spent 1988 dogged by injury, Tony Gwynn was included in the 100 players featured in this set from Score. It was sold as a complete set along with a book and some "magic motion trivia cards" that were about Hall of Famers rookie seasons. (Checklist)

There's a solid portrait photo on the cardback. The way the write up is phrased makes it sound like he had just two gold gloves and batting titles at this stage in his career, but in fact he had three batting titles by 1989 (and he earned his fourth in 1989).

The front is fairly run-of-the-mill. The red border is nice and there is a presage of 90s card design with the different font for the T in Tony compared to the rest of his name.

But red border apart, I think this is still one where the back is better than the front. 

Card Number 366: Score, 1990; 685

This is one of the "Dream Team" subsets within the Score base series. You may well be thinking there is no way that this cardback is more interesting than the front. 

But this is the front.

The photo on this card is bizarre. Recently I read a Facebook post from someone who busted a box of Score '90 and they raved about the Dream Team subset cards, which all looked like this. But I can't see the appeal. It's kind of fuzzy and washed out and has no context to it. If they were going for trying to capture waking up from a confusing dream, then they succeeded.

The write up on the back about Tony's scrutiny of video replay as a use of cutting edge technology feels amusingly quaint now. It doesn't mention how he bought the first VCR for the club to use because they wouldn't shell out for it. The descriptions of him compiling his own highlight reels against certain pitchers intrigues me. I wonder where those video tapes ended up.

Also, there's an amusing typo. Four lines from the bottom it talks about Tony winning his third straight "battling title". Now, I'm guilty of my own fair share of typos, but it is funny to see one on a card. And it's another reason why the cardback overcomes its plain-ness and is more interesting than the front.

Card Number 367: Score 100 Superstars, 1991; #94

Tony isn't quite looking down the lens in the photo on the back, but it's still a nice card. This is from another one of the sets that Score sold as a complete unit. 

I'm going to add the description by his team-mate Joe Carter to my list of unique descriptions on cardbacks: "He's on a cloud by himself!" Joe Carter, incidentally, was playing for the Blue Jays in 1991, having only been a team-mate of Tony's in San Diego for one year in 1989. Score didn't reference Joe being Tony's former team-mate, or give a date or context for that quote. How long were they sitting on it before they used it?

The front features Tony fielding. It almost looks like he's pitching in the photo. The whole pose is so ungainly and the composition of the photo, with a team mate behind him, is awkward. The designer didn't help by plopping the Padres logo in the corner up by his hand, when there is loads of dead space below it.

And now a pop quiz.

a) Which powerful hitter travelled the other way in the trade that took Joe Carter from San Diego to Toronto?

b) What did Joe Carter do in the last game he played in 1993 that contributed to his induction in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (despite not being Canadian)?

c) Both Joe Carter and Tony Gwynn were born in 1960, but who was older by two months and two days?

I'll pop the answers in tomorrow's post!

Total: 367/394