This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.
She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work. Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.
For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.
The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.
She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.
For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.
They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.
I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?
Here is the top.
Here is the front.
Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.
Let's talk about the cards.
Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.
Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.
I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background.
My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.
That's actually not a bad idea.
I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.
My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.
My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.
The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.
My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises". It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.
My favorite Cardinals card in the set......
is Bernard Gilkey.
Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.
My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.
Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.
One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.
I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product. Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.
If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.
Moving on.
Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.
The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.
Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.
Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.
Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.
There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post. The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph.
Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.
My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.
She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.
That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.
I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set. I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.
Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.
How does it rank on my list?
It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards.
Narrow it down. Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood. I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.
16. 2000 Topps
15. 2012 Bowman Platinum
11. 1988 Donruss
7. 1995 Select Certified