Monday, January 5, 2009

1995 Topps Scott Servais

It has occurred to me that although I'm an Astros fan as well as I Phillies fan I hardly ever post any Astros cards. So lets do something about that. I want to look at the back of this card first. Topps, after having basically the same card backs for 40 years, started putting color photos on the backs of cards and playing around with the arrangement of stats and photo. 1995 was 3 years into that experiment. In 1995, they featured a head shot of the player done up to look like a Diamond Vision Screen. You may have seen these type screens in baseball parks. I think they were the first type of screens used to show replays and the like. In addition, there was also a small action shot of the player, partially superimposed on the main photo. The color bar behind the player name and at the bottom of the card matched the team colors. Scott Servais had an 11-year career, mostly as a back-up catcher. He was with the Astros from 1991 to 1995 when he was traded with Luis Gonzalez to the Cubs for Rick Wilkins. I had just moved to the Houston area and don't really remember this but it seems like a lopsided trade to me. Servais had a few good years with the Cubs before moving on to the Giants. Let's look at the front of this card.
The front features a white border with a rough edge around the photo. The player name and Topps logo is in gold foil, which had become a fixture on Topps cards in 1995. Previously, gold foil had only appeared on parallel cards. But look at the picture on the card. It reminds me a little of some Upper Deck cards from the early '90s where they have a multiexposure of the player with multiple images. This isn't quite like that. Does anyone know of another 1995 Topps card which features this effect? And I wonder why they chose a Scott Servais card to try this out? I got this card a couple of months ago from Dan over at Saints of the Cheap Seats. Thanks Dan.

1 comment:

night owl said...

I like the 1995 set a lot. It's one of the few sets from the 1990s that I'd like to collect. But I have so few of them, so I've never seen a card from the set that looks like that. It's kind of bizarre.