The Junk Wax Dilemma Part 2

At some point two months ago I made a post about trying to finish up my 1990 Upper Deck set which was missing about 100 cards.  After some sorting and quick math the total was actually at 107 cards.  I acquired two boxes of 1990 Upper Deck, which seems like overkill for roughly 100 cards.  It was definitely way more cards than I really needed to finish the set, but ripping open junk wax can be underrated fun.

Just looking at the names on the cards makes me happy.

After opening 72 packs of 1990 Upper Deck I sorted the 107 cards I needed to complete my set into my box and then sat down to flip through the rest looking for cool players I liked watching as a middle school kid back when these were brand new.

First, I had done some dabbling in the 1989 Upper Deck set, but never really ripped a ton of packs from that set.  The 1990 set was the first year that I really worked on an Upper Deck set.  Of course the best card in the 1989 Upper Deck set was the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.  It was the most popular card from the moment that the set was first released.  The 1990 Upper Deck set also had a really popular Griffey card.  There were other popular rookie cards in the set, but the 1990 Griffey second year card was my favorite card in this set at the time.....

One of the other really popular rookies in the set was Yankees first baseman Kevin Maas who hit 21 home runs while only playing half of a season.  Everyone was sure that he was going to be awesome. Pretty card to have in 1990.......

Maas played a few more years with the Yankees and a year with the Twins, but never really lived up to the half season he played in 1990.  The junk wax era cards always get the bad rap of not having any really stand out rookie cards, but there are plenty of good name rookie cards in the 1990 Upper Deck set like Sammy Sosa and Frank Thomas.  There are plenty of other players in this set too who turned out to have decent Major League careers......

like these two guys were pretty good players for most of the 1990s.  Sure these cards can be found for next to nothing, but one of these guys had more than 2000 hits and 400 stolen bases.  The other one had more than 350 home runs and 1000 RBIs.  Not a bad pair of players and there are others like this in the set.  

There are also the usual superstar cards like Bonds and Henderson....

but my real enjoyment came out looking at the Cardinals cards in the set.  Being a Cardinals fan living outside of St. Louis I really took time to find their cards in the set.  1990 was really the end of the WhiteyBall Era teams with Vince Coleman, Wille McGee, and Terry Pendleton.  Ozzie stuck around for awhile longer, but I loved those teams.  My favorite two Cardinals out of the set, I eliminated Ozzie because he's the easy answer, were.......

This is actually the last Willie McGee Cardinals card until he came back to the team in 1996 as a fourth outfielder.  He also won the National League batting title in 1990 even though he finished the season playing for the A's.  This is also one of the final Coleman cards as a Cardinal as he would leave for the Mets at the end of the season.

Not the flashiest set, but overall I had a good time opening up these packs and checking out these cards.  Happy that I could finish off a set while I was at it.

Had to listen to some 1990 music while I was writing this post.  I went with my most played album from that year on my iTunes which is......

30 Year Top 50: 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome

48th on my list is the 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome set.  This was an interesting set from the day that it hit the stores back in the spring of 1992.  Why?  The design of the cards is actually the same as the 1991 Topps Stadium Club set and Topps had originally designated the set as a 1991 release.  Now, if you go back, even just a few years, this used to be a very common practice.  The calendar year would change and card companies would post date the card release back a few weeks.  

Why didn't it work in the case of the Stadium Club Dome?  Well, Topps had released their 1992 Stadium Club product in January of that year and this 1991 release followed it by about eight weeks.  Card collectors will argue over all sorts of things, but the Stadium Club Dome set does not really have an argument for being a 1991 release other than the fact that it shares a design with the 1991 Stadium Club base set.  

Now, there were more interesting things about the set other than it's release date.  This set also had cool packaging, cool rookies, and one of the biggest flops in all of baseball draft history.  So, let's start with the easy stuff first.  The product was sold as a set and came in a cool box that was in the shape of the Toronto SkyDome.  It may be a large concrete dump right now, but in 1991 it was new, modern, and incredible.  

1992 Stadium Club Dome Toronto SkyDome Set Box

The other cool part of this release was the rookie cards.  The set was comprised solely of the 1991 American and National League All-Stars, the USA Baseball team, and a whole bundle of draft picks.  At the time of the sets release there were three important rookie cards in the set.  The two that stayed relevant the longest were the Manny Ramirez and Shawn Green rookies.  Manny Ramirez's most important rookie card is the 1992 Bowman and Green is a toss up between anything released in 1992.  There is also an early Jason Giambi card in the set which matches his 1991 Topps Traded set card.  

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Manny Ramirez 

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Shawn Green 

The hottest rookie card at the time of this sets release actually belonged to a Yankees draft pick from my adopted home state of North Carolina.  Brien Taylor was the first selection in the 1991 draft.  He was immediately labeled a can't miss prospect and people snatched up his cards.  Out of high school, Taylor threw in the high 90s and Scott Boras said that he was the best high school pitcher he had ever seen.  He actually started out strong in the minors, but was injured in a fight during the off-season while he was out with his brother at a bar.  During the fight Taylor damaged his shoulder and was never the same player.  He eventually became the second first over all draft pick not to reach the majors.  

1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Brien Taylor 

His cards are worth pocket change now, but I still really enjoy look at this card from time to time.  It still amazes me how much money and time people pour into finding cards of minor leaguers when there are just as many who have gone the way of Brien Taylor and not Mike Trout. 

Like the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set?  Not appearing in my countdown is the 1990 Fleer set.  Just like the 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome set, this release has some very solid rookies.  In fact, one could argue that the rookies in the 1990 Fleer Set are better than the 1992 Stadium Club Dome set.  The rookies included: Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, and Juan Gonzalez.  Not too shabby.  Also, another huge flop.  During the 1990 season, the Yankees used Kevin Maas to replace the often injured Don Mattingly in the lineup.  Maas went on to hit 21 home runs in what amount to about a half of season.  Collectors went crazy for Maas cards, but luckily he had a card in almost every 1990 set.  Plus, the next season he only hit 23 home runs playing full time.  Maas continued to decline and spent his last few years bouncing around from team to team.  

1990 Fleer George Canale/Kevin Maas