Card Evolution 1990

It occurred to me while I was doing my series on card brand evolution in the 1990s, that I could have approached it in a different way by showing in each post, a card from each year from the 5 brands. So if you can stand to see some more 1990s cards, I'm going to do that. I'll try to pick a card of the same player from each brand if I can. Let's see how 1990 cards fall on the evolutionary scale.

Bowman - Stage 1

Donruss - Stage 2

Fleer - Stage 2

Score - Stage 3

Topps - Stage 1

Upper Deck - Stage 3

Capewood's Theory of Baseball Card Evolution

Over the past week, I've reviewed how Bowman, Donruss and Fleer evolved in the 1990s. I'll be getting to Score, Topps and Upper Deck next. Before that however, I want to present my theory of baseball card evolution.  A few disclaimers and caveats first.

First, there are a lot of card blogs out there and there have been a lot of posts since I started card blogging in 2008. I haven't read them all. If someone else has already espoused on this theme, I apologize in advance.

Second, we've seen a lot of card designs over the years. There are some things I don't consider to be evolutionary such as: holographic cards, cards with texture (think 1999 Metal), die cut cards, odd-sized cards, cards that open like a book, foil board or dufex printing, etc. I consider these to be gimmicks.

Third, I don't consider cards printed on something other than cardboard, such as plastic, cloth, metal, or wood to be evolutionary. They might be nice, but they're gimmicks as well.

Fourth, I'm not making any value judgements here. If I say a card is higher up the evolutionary scale than another, I'm not saying it is better. There are a lot of design decisions that go into a card. The technical level of the card may not even be the most important.

Stage 1
The first baseball cards were rectangle shaped pieces of cardboard with a player photo on the front and some information about the player on the back. Eventually we got to the current 'standard' size and 'standard' layout with a player photo on the front and player stats on the back. Card stock was generally grey or brown (occasionally white). The card borders (and at this stage, the cards always have borders) could be white, or some other color, or pattern. Pick any card from between 1951 and 1980.

Stage 2
White card stock. When Donruss and Fleer successfully fought the Topps monopoly in 1981, they both took this step, going to white card stock. This stage doesn't have much else to distinguish from Stage 1. Again, border colors may be white or colored.  The backs have stats and little more, although some Fleer cards from this era have tiny photos on the back. Think of any Donruss or Fleer card from 1981 through 1992 or so.

Stage 3
Take your Stage 2 card and add a color photo to the back. This is how both Score (in 1988) and Upper Deck (1989) started. Other brands would eventually follow.

Stage 4
Take your Stage 3 card and add gloss to it. There was nothing new about glossy baseball cards. All three main brands in the 1980s had produced either parallel sets (think Topps Tiffany), or specialty sets with gloss. Glossy main stream sets began appearing in the early 1990s. I think 1991 Stadium Club was the first main stream set with gloss but this set started several more stages up the evolutionary ladder. Of the 6 sets I'm tracking, Bowman was the first with gloss, front and back, in 1992.

Stage 5
Now add some foil embossing to the front. Again, Stadium Club was doing this in 1991. Topps started printing gold foil parallel sets in 1992 but by 1995, foil was an integral part of nearly every card design.

Stage 6
The next stage is full bleed printing. This is actually a big technological change in how cards are printed. There is a lot less leeway for printing errors, especially off-center cutting, with this technique. It is typical that Stage 5 cards will include the Stage 3 and 4 techniques as well (that is, these cards will be glossy and have foil). Originally, cards printed this way were considered premium cards but eventually, it became the norm (think Upper Deck from 1995 on).

Stage 7
I had originally planed to stop at Stage 6 but decided that there were two more stages in technological evolution. Stage 7 is very high gloss cards like Topps Finest or Topps Chrome. Another early example would be Flair, a Fleer product from the 1990s. This is 1995 Flair.

Stage 8
Autographed cards and cards with relics are so prevalent today, and there are sets where every card is autographed or has a relic, that I decided to include this as the top level of evolution. Autographed cards began appearing as early as 1994 with relic cards appearing in 2000. Below is a 1994 Phillies Ultra Autograph and a 2000 SP Top Prospects Game Used Bat.

By the discussion above, you might think that I don't believe that there's been any real technological evolution in baseball cards since 2000. That is what I think. There has been some movement toward digital cards, but I'm sorry, a baseball card that you can't actually hold in your hand isn't really a baseball card.

To finish, here is the most technologically evolved card I own. A 2003 Topps Chrome Refractor Record Breakers Relics card.

Baseball Card Evolution in the 1990s - Fleer

Fleer followed a similar evolution as Bowman and Donruss, at least in the early part of the decade. Then it started mutating and was gone before the end of the decade.

1990 Fleer #363 Larry Walker

1990 Fleer was not exciting, pretty much as Fleer had been for years. Fleer, like Donruss, started in 1981 and like Donruss sported white card stock from the beginning. While Donruss had mostly been about crazy borders in the 1980s, Fleer had mainly been about full or partial colored borders. Fleer had also been using team colors for some design elements for several years. The banner at the bottom of the 1990 card was based on the player's team colors. They went with white borders in 1990, but the card backs looked pretty much the same as they had for the past 7 years. So like Donruss and even the newcomer Bowman, change between card years was slow.

1991 Fleer #61 Eric Davis

Whether you like it or not (I like it) 1991 Fleer certainly made some sort of statement. But really, the only evolutionary change was the addition of a larger color photo on the back (beating Bowman, Donruss and Topps to this step). Fleer had been using colored borders on and off for years, this year just happened to be a bolder color. Notice also that the stats on the back are in the same style as 1990 with the use of team colors for accents.

1992 Fleer #6 Dwight Evans

The biggest evolutionary change in 1992 is the use of a larger photograph with on-field photos instead of just head shots like in 1993. They went with team colors front and back but the back stats are basically the same. I liked the color of the 1992 borders more than 1991, but I generally think that borders should be thinner. It is an interesting design element to have the player extend out into the right side border.

1993 Fleer #138 Tony Gwynn

1993 seems to have been a year of front design minimization for Bowman, Donruss and Fleer. The 1993 Fleer backs went off on their own however. A bit too much blank space in my opinion.

1994 Fleer #246 Lee Smith

The next evolutionary step is to add gold of silver foil, which Fleer did in 1994. While Bowman and Donruss jumped to gold foil and full bleed printing in 1994, Fleer chose to stay with white borders. 1994 Fleer is glossy for the first time as well. The backs moved forward with a larger photo, even if the photo is overprinted with stats.

1995 Fleer #388 Darren Daulton

Fleer made the jump to full bleed printing which they will stick with until the end, but in terms of front design, they seemed to jump the rails. This card represents just one of 5 abstract (some might say drug-fueled) designs. The back carried through from 1004 the full photo overprinted with stats with the addition of a large team logo. In most cases, the backs were hard to read.

1996 Fleer #13 Jeffrey Hammonds

Fleer stepped back from the insanity of 1995 with a simple design, more in keeping with main evolution, a full bleed printed front with gold foil and readable stats and an action photo on the back. But fleer added it's own twist to the concept, the cards are printed on a thin white card stock, with absolutely no finish front or back. This is one of very few card sets which have foil printing but no gloss. They offered a parallel glossy set (harking back to the 1980s). This set represents the peak of Fleer evolution in the 1990s.

1997 Fleer #176 Mariano Rivera

Fleer came back in 1997 with basically the same design as 1996 and then retired the brand name. They would issue cards under the "Fleer" brand a few times in the 2000s, but from here on, until their demise after 2007, the flagship brand would be called Fleer Tradition.

1993 O-Pee-Chee Phillies

You know how some events in your life always remain in your memory, in almost perfect detail, like the birth of your first child, or when you finally passed your driver's exam?  For some goofy reason, I can remember the first time I saw cards from the 1993 O-Pee-Chee set. I don't remember the date but I remember where. I was with my family at the Oxford Valley Mall in the Philadelphia suburbs. Out in front of the Woolworth's store they had a table of items for sale. Among them were packs of 1993 O-Pee-Chee. I'd seen O-Pee-Chee cards before this at flea markets and card shows but I don't think I'd seen an actual pack for sale. So naturally I had to buy a few packs and open them immediately. To my surprise, they had an original design! They didn't look like 1993 Topps cards in any way. I know, weird story.

Anyway, 1993 was the first year that O-Pee-Chee published their own designed baseball cards. They also had a second set that year, O-Pee-Chee Premier.

Recently I've been looking through my list of needed 1993 Phillies cards. I managed to find the 14-card Phillies set on eBay.  1993 was, of course, that the improbable Phillies made it to the World Series, only to be defeated by the Blue Jays in 6. Here are some of the cards from the O-Pee-Chee set.

Rookie Amaro only played 25 games for the 1993 Phillies and did not appear in any of the playoff games. He was traded to the Indians before the 1994 season. Today, of course, Amaro is the Phillies General Manager and is taking a lot of heat for the performance of the 2014 Phillies, a team he largely built.

Daulton was the Phillies leader in 1993. He had 2 home runs and 7 rbis in the playoffs.

Duncan had 10 hits (a .345 average) in the World Series.

Dykstra, as the lead off man, had a fabulous year in 1993, leading the league in hits, runs scored, at bats, and walks. In the World Series, he probably would have been the MVP if the Phillies had won.

Green had a 16-4 record for the 1993 Phillies but he got shelled in his only World Series start, 2.1 innings pitched, 7 earned runs.

Hollins was an All-Star in 1993 but didn't have much impact in the playoffs.

Kruk batted .316 in 1993 and was also an All-Star. He did pretty well in the playoffs as well, hitting .348 in the World Series.

Wild Thing had 43 saves in 1993 with an ERA of 3.34. What he's mostly remembered for is giving up the walk-off home run to Joe Carter which won the Series for the Blue Jays.

Schilling lost the first game of the World Series after giving up 6 earned runs in an 8-5 defeat. He came back to win the 5th game with a complete game, 5-hit shutout.