Going Elite!

Shiny cards that don't scan as good as they look in hand! Welcome to the world of Elite cards by DonRuss...

Card Number 980: DonRuss Elite, 1996; #72

There were 12 of these inserts in the DonRuss flagship set numbered from 60 to 72. These numbers followed on from previous 12-card sets since the first set of Elite cards in the 1991 set. Elite were reasonably rare, with 1 card in every 75 packs in series 1 and 1 in every 40 packs in series 2 of DonRuss cards. But card #72 only appeared in series 2. 

It's not very visible on the scan, but this card has a shiny border all around the card. Tony is jogging the bases in the photo with an apocalyptic mid-90s sky behind him.

A couple of things of note on the card back. Firstly, the card number is written out in full, 15 years before Topps started doing that sort of nonsense on Allen & Ginter cards. (But even Topps don't write out the card number in full!)

Secondly, these cards were numbered out of 10,000. There's always something a bit special about a numbered card, even when it's a five digit limited run. This particular one is #509 - I can't think of anything particularly special about that number. 

Card Number 981: DonRuss Elite, 1998; #9

by 1998, DonRuss was issuing 'Elite' as a standalone high end set of 150 shiny cards. This card is so shiny it was a real rascal to scan. 

Despite the shininess, and the price tag on packs to match, this is quite a boring card. The back isn't much better. I ding points for partial stats boxes. Ding!

Card Number 982: DonRuss Elite, 2001; #24

Another shiny card that doesn't scan to it's full potential.

The font for Tony's name and the title on the stats box has to be one of the schmanciest serif fonts ever used on a baseball card. It's pure font luxury.

This was from Tony's final season where he was probably an onlooker from the bench more often than he would have liked - so that's a fitting photo on the cardback there. 

Total: 982 cards

Some older Gold Label cards

I selected today's cards with Fuji and YoRicha in  mind, because they said they liked the Gold Label cards that I posted at the beginning of the week. All these cards are slightly pearlescent so I used the overhead scanner on them. The results are a bit flakey, but at least the design is visible. 

Card Number 968: Topps Gold label, 1998; #14

Awkward photo juxtaposition ahoy!

Seriously, that photo arrangement makes it look like Tony is kneecapping his larger self.

These 'cards' are printed on quite thick plasticky card - much thicker than usual card stock. The material they are printed on contributes to the sheen on the card. It also warps slightly. 

The candid photo on the back should have a thought bubble saying "Huh!?" next to it. 

Right, okay, back on Tuesday I questioned what Topps was doing by discounting the 1994 season and the .394 batting average that everyone associates with Tony on their modern Gold Label cards. Back in 1998, Topps didn't have an issue with Tony hitting .394 in a season that was shortened by strike action. Here they have it as his career best batting average. They also explain how they calculated the 'average season' using 'at bats' rather than the number of games. That makes more sense and just adds to my suspicion that the company's employees knew what they were doing back in the late 90s compared to the people working there now. 

I have one of the books mentioned in the factoid - Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player. One day I hope to get hold of The Art of Hitting as well. 

Card Number 969: Topps Gold Label Class 1, 1999; #6

Topps introduced the class system to the range in 1999 and the shine on the cards was even more iridescent.

That fielding photo looks really familiar, but I don't think it was on a Topps card.

On the back there is another cameo portrait of Tony with a quizzical expression. 

The factoid about Tony's loyalty doesn't mention that apparently other top players were annoyed with him for staying with the Padres because it was dragging down the market value of all the other players. (Did that really happen? Now it's all part of the mythos.)

For those taking notes, the career best batting average on this card is .394. Also, a bonus point for this card having the class number on the back (by the team logo) - which makes it a lot easier for people like me trying to work out which cardback is which!

Card Number 970: Topps Gold Label Class 2, 1999; #6

One of the photos has been changed on the front, along with the team logo behind Tony.

The cardback is virtually identical apart from the class number.

Card Number 971: Topps Gold Label Class 2, 2000; #11

In this year's set the class is printed on the front of the card, etched into the foil.

That photo on the back is from the photoshoot that Topps used on some of their tribute cards in the 2000 flagship set, except this time, Tony isn't looking straight down the camera lens.

So a couple of things about this cardback. Firstly, the important career batting average high point stat is correct! Secondly, a factoid about walks! This is a really rare topic for factoids, because although Tony drew a fair few walks (as is obvious by the factoid!), generally he made contact at the plate. Except when opponents opted not to pitch at all! 

I always love learning something new from a card - so kudos to Topps for this!

Total: 971 cards

One Card Only - Silver Spx

Today's card kicks off an entire week of Upper Deck cards with a die-cut shiny card from one of Upper Deck's spin-off ranges. SPx was a follow-on from Upper Deck's SP range. When I opened the big box of cards that Richard sent me, I saw this card and mentally filed it as a dupe. But then I realised, it looked a bit different to the one I had already.

Card Number 814: Upper Deck SPx Silver, 1997; #SPX42

These cards are a nightmare to scan, even with the overhead scanner.

I had a few goes at different exposures!

What marks this as a silver parallel is the use of silver foil on the X. The card I blogged previously was blue.

The back is also a shiny scanning nightmare. The back is all silver, even the photo has been colourised to match.

You may have noticed a slight ripple across the bottom of the hologram on the front of the card. This is actually a minor blip on the card. However, when I looked it up on Trading Card Database, I noticed the picture on there also has a ripple in the same place. The person who sent me this card - Richard - also submitted the scan to TCDb! So I think this could be the very same card, or this weird effect happened on more than one card. 

Richard's scans are better than mine. I need to get some scanning tips off him!

Total: 814 cards

Tuesday Twins - 90s chrome

Rather than blogging two cards that look the same today, I'm going to blog the chrome versions of cards that have been on before.

Card Number 803: Topps Chrome, 1996; #97

I used the overhead scanner on this as Chrome cards don't come out very well on my flatbed scanner. The way the light caught it means the frame seems to fade away. But at least you can see Tony. Although, as I said when I blogged the ordinary version of this card, this is probably one of the worst cards of Tony produced by Topps in the 90s. I dislike the distorted cameo portrait along the bottom and it looks no better in shiny chrome.

The cardback has a different number but is otherwise the same as the normal cards. There were only 165 cards from the flagship set given the chrome treatment in 1996.

Card Number 804: Topps Chrome. 1997; #145

This is actually the fourth version of this card I now have in the collection. The other three were blogged as a trio last year. Again, the overhead scan has affected the shiny silver border.

Tony made the cut again in this 165-card set. Topps haven't always shown such restraint - some years they have chromatised the entire set!

As cardbacks go, it's not very exciting. The stats box is so big there is barely any room for a factoid.

Total: 804 cards

Two more cards from 1996 and a blog milestone!

For the previous three days I have blogged three cards a day from 1996. I still have more cards from that year and I've picked two today that will take this blog up to 800 cards.

Card Number 799: Pinnacle Zenith, 1996; #91

This is the pinnacle of scanning nightmares - a black shiny card. In retrospect, scanning it on a black background wasn't the smartest move. The display of fanned out bats in the background makes this card distinct.

On the back there is a 'hit location chart'!

Pinnacle made a point of doing data differently on their cardbacks. This visualisation is very informative. Tony didn't score many homers but they almost all went out beyond right field. He used to spray the ball all over the outfield, so clearly he just didn't quite have the power to get it over the wall in left field. This cardback is definitely worth ten bonus points.

Also, I'm not sure if this is deliberate, but the card number is the reverse of 19. 

Card Number 800: Pinnacle Zenith, 1996 #150

Another black shiny card! The last 20 cards in the 150-card set were the 'Honor Roll'. Tony had card number 150, which was the last card in the base set.

The other names listed on the Honor Roll all had cards in this subset too.

This is a nice card to illustrate Tony's place in the game during his 90s peak - his zenith, if you will - and also to show some of the cards produced during the baseball card industry peak as well. Pinnacle went to the wall a couple of years later as the hobby contracted, although it lives on now as one of Panini's many acquired brands. 

This brings me up to 800 cards on the blog. When I reached 700 cards back in July, I wasn't expecting to complete another century so quickly. But I still have lots of cards waiting to be blogged and am back into the daily posting routine which I hope to keep up throughout the winter!

Total: 800 cards

Modern Monday - High Tek

Remember Topps Tek? Topps kind of revisited that 90s madness with a six year run of sets called High Tek from 2014-2019. Like the original Tek sets, these 'cards' were printed on acetate. In 2019, there were 112 cards in the set and 9 parallel versions of each card.

Card Number 787: Topps High Tek, 2019; #105

The blue outlining on this is a relic of it being scanned on my flatbed scanner. This is not a blue parallel - in real life it looks like the image on Trading Card Database, with a shimmery foil effect where the blue lines are on this. (That image on TCDB was uploaded by Richard - Hi Richard! - who also sent me this card.)

The scannerific blue effect is also visible on the back. The blue parallel card images on TCDb don't have the blue effect on the back, which is why I can say for certain this isn't the blue parallel version. (That image on TCDB was also uploaded by Richard - Hi Richard! - as you might expect from a supercollector.)

There isn't much else on that cardback. 

I don't know how popular acetate cards are. Topps seems to have pulled back from producing them the past couple of years. One advantage they have is that they don't curl like a lot of shiny regular 'chrome' cards curl over time. They also stay in place on the scanner even if the scans come out a bit odd.

Total: 787 cards

One Card Only - Focus Pocus

This card arrived in the mail from Jeff at Wax Pack Wonders. It combines a lot of things I appreciate about baseball cards on the cusp of the new millennium. A long-forgotten set range, a name for an insert set that feels borne out of creative deaperation, and shininess! So much shininess!

Card Number 773: Fleer Focus, 2000; # FP2

Somebody was tasked with thinking up a name for a shiny insert series and really struggled. The best they could imagine up was Focus Pocus. Like the magic words Hocus Pocus but with an F. Maybe the Fleer employee in question was a fan of the film from 1993 starring Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker.  

Anyway, here is the card, which got focuspocussed up on my flatbed scanner.

My flatbed scanner (a Brother DCP-L25000 for reference) really likes picking up the blue part of the spectrum in shiny cards. Because the card looks nothing like that scan.

My overhead scanner (made by Kinghun and bought off Amazon) captured it more accurately.

The back isn't shiny. It's very colourful though. And so is the write-up, which references Tony using his baseball bat like a "magic wand" and hexing opposing pitchers. (Which I'm pretty sure would contravene some rules!)

As I've collected several cards produced by Fleer towards the end of the 90s, I've noticed some very florid descriptions on cardbacks. Mainly they appear on Fleer cards released under Skybox branding, but sometimes the copywriting staff were let loose on cards in other ranges too, especially after Fleer was bought by the owners of the Rite Aid chain of pharmacies in 1999. (Fleer had a turbulent time at the end of the decade. They were owned by Marvel before being sold off when Marvel went bankrupt!)

I just want to say thanks again to Jeff for sending me this little bit of magic from the beginning of the millennium. 

Total: 773 cards (and 400 blog posts!)

Adventures in scanning - new hardware

Happy New Year's Eve!

I had a surprise at Christmas. Unbeknownst to me, my wife Cathy had arranged for my Mum to buy me a new scanner that I had idly added to my wishlist because I was curious to see if I could get better scans of foil cards than could be delivered by my trusty old flatbed scanner.

The new scanner is an 'overhead' scanner with built in LEDs. It looks like this:

I had a couple of foil Pinnacle cards, which really are the pinnacle of unscannable cards, lingering in my folders, so I decided to have a go with the new scanner to see if I could get better images of them.

Card Number 559: Pinnacle Naturals, 1998; #192

This was the flatbed scan. It's terrible.

This is the overhead scanner scan. Much better!

And this is the back, which I did on the flatbed.

The reference to a career power peak in 1997 is referring to Tony's career high for home runs (17) and RBI (119 - the only time he broke 100 ribbys).

Card Number 560: Pinnacle Plus, 1998; #83

Here's the flatbed scan.

Here's the (wonky) overhead scan.

And here's the cardback. The photo shows him fist-bumping another team-mate behind Steve Finley's back. It's an odd photo composition.

Overall I think the new scanner has worked for the foil cards. They still look a bit odd, and I need to work on my alignment for the scans. But they are heaps better than the flatbed versions - at least you can see the design even if the colouring is a bit off.

I  went back and had a go with a couple of other cards to see if the new scanner worked better with them. I chose some cards from the Fleer/Skybox binder. These were both cards that were an utter nightmare to scan.

First up, the Metal Universe card from 1998. The original flatbed scan is on the left.

And then the MLPD card from the Metal Universe range in 1999 (that merited it's own "scanning nightmares" post) - again the original scan is on the left.

The new scanner definitely captures more of the card, even if it's a little bit grainy. I can probably play around with the settings to improve the definition.

I also thought it would be fun to see how it captured an ordinary non-foiled card. I picked a DonRuss card at random.

It captured this card very well. Another feature with the scanner is that you can set it up on a timer to keep taking photos of the cards. This should make it easier to scan a stack of cards in one go because I don't have to keep opening the lid of the scanner, or even press any buttons to capture the image. 

The only thing I have found is that I underestimated how much time I needed to flip the card over and line it up so it was reasonably straight. Oops, finger scan!

But then all I had to do was wait a few more seconds and it scanned for me again.

All in all, I'm very happy with my Christmas present. I'd like to give a shout out to my Mum for buying it for me, and to Cathy for helping my Mum choose it!

Maybe when I run out of new cards to blog, I will go back through and try and get some better scans of the nightmare foil cards I've already featured.

Total: 560 cards

Scanning Nightmares - MLPD

Of all the cards I would dub a 'scanning nightmare', this is the most nightmarish of all. Perhaps I should have posted it on Halloween a few days ago, but I went for treats instead of tricks!

So, what makes this such a nightmare? Well, it's foil. Not only that, it's bronze foil (looks brown in most lights). It's quite an ugly card in hand as well. 

Card Number 460: Skybox Metal Universe, 1999; #283

There were actually three Tony Gwynn cards in this set as Tony featured in two themes within the set as well. MLPD stood for Major League Prominent and Dominant, apparently. 

This is how is scans

I've taken a photo so show what it looks like in unscanned form. 

And if that's not enough, there's a write-up on the back that is downright whacky.

Whoever wrote the cardback copy for Skybox has a bit of a bro-dude attitude going on. (Also in evidence on the Spring Training card). I'm going to add "pure-n-easy hitter" to my list of unique ways that Tony is described on the back of a baseball card. But the way it starts sets my teeth on edge.

This might seem mean, but when people list the card companies they would like to see make a return to the baseball hobby, they never seem to mention Skybox. Cards like this are part of the reason why.

Total: 460 cards 

Scanning Nightmares: Sportflix (with an X)

In the mid-80s a company called Pinnacle issued lenticular cards called Sportflics. These haven't aged well based on the examples in my collection (none of which are of Tony!) as the lenticular plastic has fogged up a bit and they are prone to cracking. 

Shortly afterwards, Pinnacle made their first foray into regular baseball cards with the launch of Score cards, followed by Pinnacle branded cards, and then in 1995 decided to update Sportflics for the overproduction era and put an X on the end of the set name, as Sportflix. Nowadays, the whole Pinnacle family of brands are owned by Panini, who sometimes release cards under the "zombie brand names". I don't think Sportflics or Sportflix have reappeared yet.

Lenticular cards are hard to scan because they rely on movement to reveal all aspects of the design.

Card Number 428: Pinnacle Sportflix, 1995; #16

This card shows Tony from behind at the plate stepping into a hit, or side on at the extreme end of his follow through.

The scan shows the rear view:

Here's a photo of the card angled to show the other picture:

The back of the card has a comment about Tony's .394 batting average in the previous season, and a weird reflection in his Oakleys.

For stats, Pinnacle just chose some career totals to date. He had batted in almost ten times as many runs as he had hit homers at this point.

Incidentally, this cardback was quite hard to scan as well - the plastic on the front makes the card warp and the sides curve upwards, making it difficult to line up on the scanner. I had a few scans with an edge trimmed off but eventually I got an acceptable scan.

In addition to the lenticular cards, Pinnacle also released a set of 3D cards in 1995 as well.

Card Number 429: Pinnacle Sportflix UC3, 1995; #69

I feel embarrassed by how bad that scan is, but I haven't bothered with a photo, sorry.

The back has a photo that is nicely centred on the Padres 25th anniversary sleeve patch.

Pinnacle used the same set of career stats on the back but they didn't explain that they were career stats. It's fairly obvious they are as the season record for RBI is a lot lower - 191 set in 1930 by Hack Wilson. (Almost all the RBI season records were set in the 1930s, many of them by Lou Gehrig! 1930 was a good year for batting in runs, with 4 players recording 165 RBI or more.)

If anyone has any tips on the best way to scan lenticular cards, please share them in the comments!

Total:429 cards