Trade with The Angels, In Order

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Tom over at The Angels, In Order requesting access to my 1990's Phillies Google docs spreadsheet. The result? 23 Phillies cards for me, and, for Tom, some cards off his want list.  Here are the highlights (thanks Tom).

1990 Fleer League Leaders #21 Ricky Jordan

Fleer produced a lot of these 44-card boxed sets in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were mostly distributed in chain drugstores and the like. I don't remember ever seeing them for sale. Ricky Jordan was one of a number of projected great Phillies from that period who never amounted to much.

1992 Stadium Club Dome #100 John Kruk

The last Phillie I needed from this set.

1992 Upper Deck Minors #68 Tyler Green

There were a lot of Phillies in this set. Even with the 4 that Tom sent, I still need 6 more.

1993 Toys R Us #18 Dave Hollins

Another set I've never seen before. It's a 100-card set I presume was sold as a boxed set. I'd have bought it if I'd ever seen it. My kids were little in 1993 and I spent enough time in the store.

1994 Fleer Excel #246 Scott Rolen

A very nice, very early Scott Rolen card. A nice looking minor league set. Glossy front and back with a little gold foil on the front.

1996 Collector's Choice Silver 

1996 Ultra #519 Lenny Dykstra

Tom set 3 cards from this set. I actually had the Gold Medallion version of this card where the background is all gold. Without the background it wasn't clear what Dykstra was doing in this photo.

1998 Pinnacle Mint #30 Scott Rolen

The only Phillie in this set. I only had a couple of card and coins from 1998 Pinnacle Mint but I didn't have any of the matched coins and card. In an earlier trade with Tom (in 2011) he had sent me this:

1998 Pinnacle Mint Bronze #30 Scott Rolen

The 1990s Baseball Card Face-off - 1997 Zenith vs. 1995 Bowman

Check this post to see my methodology.

The last matchup wasn't much of a contest but this one will be more difficult because both are nice cards whose design goals are way different.

Today we've got:

1997 Zenith vs. 1995 Bowman

1997 Zenith #8  Greg Maddux

1997 Zenith #49 Scott Rolen

I only own one card from this 50-card set. That would be the Rolen card above. The Maddux card I got from tradingcarddb.com. They appear to have the whole set. The card fronts are simplicity itself, a full bleed photo and the set name. That's it. The cards have a nice glossy feel. The photos are a mix of action and posed shots. The Z in Zenith is in a circle matching the player's team colors. Pretty subtle. The backs have a visual representative of the player stats. The rookie cards have a large script R on the front which is the one jarring note in this set.

1995 Bowman #276 Albert Belle

1995 Bowman #108 Kevin Jordan

This is a set that is just trying too hard. The left side of the card is squashed b/w mirror image of the card photo. The bottom of the card is a sepia mirror image of the photo. They allow the photo to overlap the side border but not the bottom. This makes the card look a little off-centered. The player's first name is in small white letters while his last name is in silver foil letters that are about 4 times the height. A mismatch between the presentation of the player's first and last name is common in card design but is usually a detriment to the design. Veteran cards are red (more like a dried blood color) on the back while rookies are a sky blue. Bowman will use this color coding for over 10 years but this was the first time they did it.

The Result: I don't hate 1995 Bowman although it's got it's problems. And I don't really love 1997 Zenith, but I have to go with it due to the simplicity of the design and the good photography.

1998 Topps Gold Label

The other day, 1998 Topps Gold Label defeated 1998 Pinnacle in my contest to determine the best set from the 1990s. This was despite the fact that I didn't own a single card from the set. Since I got a few good comments about the set I decided I better own some in case the set goes far in the contest. Single cards from the set are going on eBay for $1 and up. But I found one auction offering 89 cards from the 100-card set for $13.35 (including shipping). That works out to about 15 cents a card. I'm guessing that these cards cost more than a dollar apiece in packs in 1998.

The cards scan very nicely but are better looking in person. Each card has a chrome refractor look to them except that the finish is harder. The cards appear to have 3 plies. I think that the front and back are actually reverse printed acetate. This is a complicated set. This is the Class 1 variation and should be considered the base set. The pitcher cards feature 2 photos, the foreground shows the pitcher in his delivery while the background photo shows the pitcher in his windup.

The batter cards have the batter at bat in the foreground photo and the player on defense in the background. All the cards feature the player name in gold foil on the front. The abbreviated stats on the back are in a team-color coordinated box.

The Class 2 cards have sparkling silver foil with 2 photos, the same foreground photo as the Class 1. The hitters background shows the player on the base paths. The pitcher cards have the pitcher before his windup in the background.

The Class 3 cards have a sparkling gold foil and also two front photos. I haven't seen enough of them to tell what photo variations are used.

There is also a Red, a Black, and a one-of-one variation for each class.

Here are a few more.

By this selection of cards you can see that Topps varied the ratio of the foreground and background photo sizes. This leads to some unfortunate juxtapositions like the Finley card and especially the I-Rod card where it looks like Ivan is battling an 8-foot clone of himself. This is really my only complaint about the set which may impact a future head-to-head matchup.

Another issue, which could be considered a design flaw is that some of the cards (5 or 6) had a residue on the surface of the cards. This was easily removable with a soft cloth. I've seen similar, and worse, examples of this in Topps Chrome cards from the era. 

With only 100 cards, the set is mostly star players of the day. There are some, in retrospect, errors in some rookie cards, but all in all a solid player selection. Of the 11 cards I'm missing, the only two I would have wanted are Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken, which happen to be the first and last cards of the set.

There were 5 Astros cards in the set but only 2 Phillies cards.

Baseball Card Evolution in the 1990s - Topps

Topps started the decade with basically the same design they'd had for the past 49 years. By the end of the decade they would go through more design changes than any other set produced in the 1990s. Check here for my theory of baseball card evolution.

1990 Topps #150 Kirk Gibson

Topps was still a Stage 1 set in 1990, as it had been since 1951. The color borders were kind of startling at the time, but Topps had used colored or patterned borders before, most recently in 1987. The color highlights had nothing to do with the players team. The cards borders rotated randomly among red, blue, green, and purple. This is a set I always used to hate but maybe I'm getting soft in my old age but it's starting to grow on me.

1991 Topps #155 Dwight Evans

1991 found Topps still at Stage 1, but I think this is an exceptional set. The photos are well framed and the 40th anniversary logo is great. The highlight colors match the team colors. I like how on some cards, the player figure extends beyond the inner border, and on some cards, like this one, all the way into the white border. This is also the first set, I believe, where Topps mixed horizontal and vertical cards. It may be Stage 1 but it's a beautiful set.

1992 Topps #78 Ivan Rodriguez

In 1992 Topps goes all the way to Stage 3 with white card stock and a color photo on the back. Instead of using a player photo on the back they went with what almost looks like a 360 degree view of the player's home stadium. It was different but I always thought it a waste of back of the card space.  The front features another nice border busting design with highlight colors matching the team colors.

1993 Topps #14 Greg Briley

Topps solidified it's Stage 3 design with a player photo on the back. They also used a better card stock. The big news is the complete redesign of the back. It's like nothing Topps had ever done before. It's also a rare vertical back for Topps.

1994 Topps #100 Kirby Puckett

With a glossy front and back, Topps reaches Stage 4. Topps redesigned the backs again, with a larger player photo.

1995 Topps #454 Tony Eusebio

Stage 5 is reached by adding gold foil for the players name and the Topps logo. This is the height of Topps evolution to the present day. Topps went with a deckle edges border with a shadow. The back features a player head shot in Diamond Vision style along with a full view insert shot. I always liked the Diamond Vision use here.

1996 Topps #40 Orel Hershiser

Not my favorite Topps set of the 1990s. I never liked the weird little distorted photo inset on the front and I think the stat box on the back is a bit crowded. This is the first year since 1987 that Topps put a team logo on the front of the card. As has been the case since 1991, the set consisted of a mix of horizontal and vertical cards.

1997 Topps #37 Mark Grace

Topps did something different this year that I've seen since but this is, I think, the first time. The card front is only partially glossy. The area within the thin green inner border is glossy. Outside that the card is not glossy. The backs feature another big design change. The other interesting thing this year is that Topps only used two border colors. National League teams had green borders, while American League teams had red borders.

1997 Topps #40 Jay Buhner

1998 Topps #5 Vladimir Guerrero

This is the first of several years in a row that Topps will go with solid color borders. The set features several humorous photos like this Guerrero. Team logos were dropped from the front but are ghosted all over the back.

1999 Topps #125 Scott Rolen

 This is another 1990s Topps set I really like. The front has a classic minimal design, even if the borders are gold. The backs are bright and easy to read. Note that there are no team logos anywhere. Logos will reappear in 2000 and be the norm until the present.

Just a quick note for Topps going on to the present. They will continue with colored borders until the 2004 set, and with the exception of the black bordered 2008 set, will employ white borders from now on. They also started to de-emphasize photos on the back of the cards.