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! 

Saying goodbye to Upper Deck week

After lots of Upper Deck cards this week, what better way to sign off than some of the cards produced when Tony signed off his career?

Card Number 832: Upper Deck Tony Gwynn Celebration of 20 Seasons, 2001; #unnumbered

This one-sided 'thank you' note to the fans acts as a 'header card' for the five card set. Trading Card Database lists these cards as an insert series in Upper Deck's 2001 set, but Baseballcardpedia does not. These cards feel like they were given out as freebies somewhere, based on what this card looks like.

The back of the card is totally blank. I have made the rare decision not to show the cardback because there is literally nothing to show.

Card Number 833: Upper Deck Tony Gwynn Celebration of 20 Seasons, 2001; #1

This card has the same design template at the Upper Deck 2001 set. Tony's base card from that set was the 267th card that I blogged about. 

Considering this was a 'tribute' series, the massive stats box on the back feels a bit unnecessary, particularly when it was replicated across all the cards in the set (which it was!)

The factoid kicks off the series with the best known statistic about Tony Gwynn - his .394 batting average in 1994.

Card Number 834: Upper Deck Tony Gwynn Celebration of 20 Seasons, 2001; #2

While I would never want to underplay Tony's achievements, it feels a bit odd to read the claim on the cardback that Tony "flourished" in the post-season. Tony only played in the post-season three times, which amounted to a National League Championship defeat and two World Series defeats. 

The Padres lost both their World Series without taking the series to game 7. In 1998 they lost 0-4 to an absolutely dominant Yankees team. 

Tony's personal post-season records weren't particularly spectacular by his exceptional standards - with the exceptionof the 1998 World Series when he posted .500. He Posted .368 in the national League Championship season in 1984. but only .263 in the World Series - well below his career average. 

There was then a 12 year wait for Tony's next post-season appearances, in 1996. The Padres crashed out in the divisional series and Tony posted a .308 batting average. The three post-season series in 1998 saw him build up to that .500 World Series average. In the four games of the divisional series his batting average was a measly .200, and in the Championship series he posted .231.

In total, in 27 games in the post-season, Tony posted an overall batting average of .306, which is well below his career average. It's not really what I would describe as "flourishing". (Although, he still has more World Series appearances as a Padre than anyone else who has ever played for them!)

Card Number 835: Upper Deck Tony Gwynn Celebration of 20 Seasons, 2001; #5

I'm missing number 3 and 4 in this little set!

This is easily the best photo on the cards I've got from this set. Tony always seemed to take really good "candids".

I'm not sure on the timing of this card set release because this refers to Tony's retirement in the past tense.

As I remarked about the first card, having the massive stats boxes on all these cards seems daft. 

Total: 835 cards

Post-season prescience

Another Fleer card today. A foil Fleer card. So you know what that means... double scanning!

Card Number 670: Fleer Ultra Fall Classics insert, 1998; #13

This actually scanned reasonably well on the flatbed scanner.

But it pops a bit more on the overhead scan. I like the effect. Tony is haloed in light in front of a giant blue-tinged cosmic egg.

The back is about Tony's post-season appearances in 1984 and 1996.

Like the Diamond Tribute card that I blogged about yesterday, this is another prescient card from Fleer. This was issued in 1998, which was another season the Padres would make the post-season and through to the World Series, for the second, and to date most recent, time in their history. I wonder if the same staff member selected Tony for this insert series and the Diamond Tribute inserts. That person may have been clairvoyant. 

Total cards: 670