Happy Birthday Mr Padre - 2023 edition

It has been a long few months since I last posted, way back in September 2022. But as it's Tony's birthday (and this blog's anniversary), I thought it would be nice to add a new post. 

My collecting has slowed down somewhat. I tend to collect in fits and starts - I get really into things and then my enthusiasm wavers. To be honest, the longevity of this blog project has surprised me. Circumstances have changed quite a lot since I started Point 394 a couple of months into the pandemic lockdown. I have changed jobs and am about to change jobs again. The world has reopened up and I have been going to a lot of soccer matches. Generally, things have just been busy.

I have acquired one "new" card so far in 2023. It's 30 years old this year so it's new to me but not newly printed!

Card Number 1045: Kraft Singles Superstars '93; #23

I'm not sure which one of these counts as the front! Pulling the little tab would make Tony pop out and stand up, but that would ruin the card. In other design notes, I  like the way the card includes a batting and a fielding pose. This also fits into a collection subset of 'green cards'.

This came in a set of the Kraft Singles cards within a much bigger box of 'junk wax' that someone was offering on the UK Facebook Group for postage only. There were several other cards of Tony in the box that have gone in with the other doubles.

I presume these cards were included in packets of cheese. From an historical point of view this was about the era when the companies producing oddball cards started airbrushing out team logos but still used the team names on 'unlicensed' cards.

Even though I have not been buying many cards lately, I have got a little stack to blog so hope to get back into the blogging groove soon. 

(I'd like to say thanks to Richard (YoRicha) who noticed I hadn't been blogging and got in touch to ask if everything was OK a few months back. Thanks Richard, it meant a lot to me.)

Total: 1,045 cards

The Dawn of the Chrome Age

1993 - the year Topps started making "chrome" cards. Except they weren't called Chrome, they were called Finest...

Card 989: Topps Baseball's Finest, 1993; #77

There were 199 cards in this groundbreaking set from Topps as they aimed for the "super-premium market" (in the words of BaseballCardPedia). Topps announced a limited print run of 4,000 for the entire 'Finest' set - apparently the first time a card publisher had annonced production figures. [EDIT - I got this wrong, thanks to Fuji for pointing it out in the comments!]

The cards are super shiny and glow under my overhead scanner.  

The back is less remarkable. Topps clearly couldn't be bothered about making the backs looks like a premium product. It does have a photo, although Tony has a "Sure, Jan" expression on his face as he strokes his chin.

Sometimes, looking at these evolutionary stages of baseball card design makes me think how things could have turned out differently. If this product had bombed, instead of being jumped on by eager collectors with magpie instincts, Topps might have written off the chroming process as an expensive mistake. That would have curbed their urge to produce 'chrome' versions of everything in sight in later years.

But Finest was a massive hit when it was released and from then on up to the present day hordes of collectors swoop on shiny cards every time they are released!

Total: 989 cards

Some little things for St David's Day

It's St David's Day, celebrating the patron saint of Wales. David was a monk, preacher and reputed miracle-worker who lived in the 6th century. His earliest biography dates from the 11th Century. Much of that is apocryphal, but I really like one of the, perhaps legendary, tales about him. 

Towards the end of his life, David gave some final instructions to his followers and friends and told them to "Do ye the little things in life" as a way of demonstrating they remained faithful to their religious beliefs. It's a phrase I find inspiring because it's often doing the little things that show how much we respect and care for people.

So in honour of St David, here are some "little things", that came in the big parcel of items that Richard (YoRicha) sent me several months back. They are stickers not cards, but they count here as cards! (Although they are about a quarter of the size of a regular baseball card.)

Red Foley stickers were included in the Red Foley Best Baseball Book Ever that was published for several years in the late 80s and early 90s. The books had spaces to stick the stickers in. These stickers don't seem to never got stuck into a book.

Card Number 976: Red Foley, 1992; #44

There's no sticker back to show. Not even a number on the little bit of paper.

There were only 130 stickers included with the book so it's pretty cool that Tony was on two of them.

Card Number 977: Red Foley, 1992; #116

That photo might look really familiar. I am reasonably certain that's a photo from the All Star game in 1991. Mainly because of this Upper Deck card.

The guy in the yellow backwards baseball cap is in the background of both cards. I hope whoever he is he knows he was on a baseball card and a baseball sticker!

Tony got two stickers the next year as well!

Card Number 978: Red Foley, 1993; #38

Tony is adjusting his gloves in the photo that also looks quite familiar, although I can't quite place it. Dug-out pictures are fairly common, after all. 

And just to make it fun and confusing, Tony had the #116 sticker for the second successive year.

Card Number 979: Red Foley, 1993; #116

This is the same uniform and virtually the same pose as sticker #44 the previous year. It's a different background though, and Tony has sleeves on.

As a bonus Richard also included a little cameo picture cut from the cover of one of the Red Foley books.

I could have probably dated that photo by the colour of the batting helmet and the Van Dyck moustache and beard, but instead I used Google image search to locate it in the top right corner of the cover of the 1988 sticker book. Ironically, Tony wasn't on any of the stickers inside the book in 1988!

I really appreciate these little things from Richard - and thanks also for faithfully commenting on the blog along with other regular commenters. Your encouragement keeps me going!

Total: 979 cards (and stickers!)

Tuesday Twins - Familiar Fleer

For today's 'twins' post in Fabulous Fleer Fortnight, here are are some Fleer cards which may look familiar...

Card Number 930: Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion Edition, 1999; #596

The original version of this card (below) was very dark. This card is very shiny very gold!

On the back, Fleer have handily added a note that it's the gold medallion edition. There was one gold medallion parallel version in every pack.

Card Number 931: Fruit of the Loom / Fleer, 1993; #28

The only differences between this card and the normal base card was the small 'Fruit of the Loom' logo on the front, and a different number on the back.

These cards were available in packs of underwear produced by clothing company Fruit of the Loom. They were included in little packs of 6 cards in with briefs and boxer shorts. It's a quirky little parallel that is truly representative of the card collecting bubble in the late 80s and early 90s when just about any product imaginable could have baseball cards in it.

In the previous year, Fleer had produced cards for 7-Eleven (blogged with some heady nostalgia for my boyhood memories of 7-Eleven here) and in that promo set they changed the images on the front and back of the card. This time they didn't change the image on either side. Apart from the set number, this is exactly the same as the regular release. 

Card Number 932: Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion Edition checklist, 1996; #4

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Junior Junkie has a good write up of Fleer's gold medallion parallels in 1996 and explains how Fleer did a gold medal version of everything. Including checklists.

The main difference is a teeny foil stamp on the front. It doesn't scan very well.

These cards were available at a rate of 1 per pack. There was also one insert per pack and every ten packs contained a gold medallion version of an insert. As per Junior Junkie's post, that means some rarer inserts have an exponentially higher scarcity value in the gold medallion version. However, this checklist would have been comparatively common.

Just in case a collector didn't see the large word 'CHECKLIST' on the front, Fleer wrote it repeatedly over the back as well.

Fleer often divided their sets up by numbering players from the same team consecutively. I've complained before that this was a missed opportunity not to align the player on the front with the team on the back. As ever with these checklists from the 90s, there are names that jump out as recognisable and a load of players who have disappeared into sporting obscurity now. (When I blogged the regular version of this checklist, I mentioned Wonderful Monds. I still wish he had made it in the bigs. What a name!)

Total: 932 cards

Play your cards right

Some oddball cards today. And I mean, literally, some oddball cards today.

Card Number 907: US Playing Card Company Baseball Major League All-Stars, 1990; #NNO (Jack of Diamonds)

Yes, this is from a set of playing cards with colour pictures of baseball players on. This is a very intriguing photo. My guess is that Tony is scrutinising the play while doing some stretches in the on deck area.

The back is a boring card back. It has to be if anyone is going to actually play cards using this set.  I've played a lot of card games in my time - whist, canasta, pinochle. Novelty card sets don't tend to get used for games in my experience. However, judging by the playwear, this card was used in a few hands of some card games.

Card Number 908: US Playing Card Company Major League Baseball Aces, 1992; #NNO (3 of Diamonds)

Tony is still in the diamond suit in this deck, but seems to have been demoted from one of the face cards to a lowly number. 

This photo has been cropped to chop off Tony's feet and the end of his bat. I know that might annoy one of my regular readers!

The back looks more stylish than the cardbacks from the deck released in 1990.

And a bonus "card".

Card Number 909: Cartwright's Aces, 1992-3; #9

This was from a 12-card series issued with the short-lived Cartwright's Journal of Baseball Collectibles, which included trading cards in each issue. The Journal lasted for five issues in 1992 and 1993 and somehow released 9 card series, many with parallels. There is more information in this Wrigley Wax blog post.

The card is rather nicely done.

Despite the playing card imagery in the word 'aces' and the design of the set logo on the back, this isn't actually a playing card.

There is a minimal write up on the back. 

Something that stands out to me is there is no licensing information on this card at all. That's also true of the US Playing Card Company cards as well - but they were licensed and had the relevant logos on the box containing the cards. I suspect Cartwright's didn't have an agreement in place otherwise there would have been some very small print on the card. 

Total: 909 cards

He's making a list, he's checking it twice

We are a week away from Christmas, and this song lyric has been in my head. So it seems an apt title for a blog post about Tony's appearances on checklists.

Some player collectors don't count checklists. That's their prerogative. I think they're missing out.

Card Number 894: Upper Deck, 1995; #Checklist 2 

This card takes me to 500 cards over my original target of 394 cards!

These shiny checklists were basically insert cards.

On the front there's a reference to Tony's famous batting average in 1994.

I enjoy reading the list of names on these checklists. Among all the really famous names are players who have been long-forgotten, like Chuck Carr and Pat Rapp. 

Card Number 895: DonRuss, 1994; #440

DonRuss used this checklist to commemorate Tony's reaching the 2000 hit milestone.

Some of the random forgotten players on here include Phil Leftwich and the frankly amazingly named Hipolito Pichardo!

Hipolito pitched 350 games in a ten year major league career for the Royals, Red Sox and Astros. He also had 103 baseball cards in his career, according to TCDB. Phil Leftwich had 39 cards, which is actually more than the number of games he pitched in the major leagues (34 games in 3 years for the Angels).

Card Number 896: DonRuss, 1993; #660

This is really a 'cameo card'. It's not about Tony per se - DonRuss put a photo of  different teams on their checklists. But Tony is in the photo walking behind Gary Sheffield. There seems to be a giant patting Gary on the head as well. That guy must be about 6 foot six.

The winners in the peculiar names category this time around are on the front - Chuck Crim and Scott Scudder both sound like low rent villains from a comic book. They're joined on the back by William Pennyfeather! But the name that really stood out on the back was Tony's brother, Chris Gwynn, who was #657 in the set.

I could count this in the number of Tony's cards where Chris gets a mention somewhere. Chris had 118 cards of his own, and may well have been mentioned on a similar number of Tony's cards. (That's another project when I run out of cards to blog!)

Total: 896 cards

One Card Only - caricature All-Star

Card Number 860: Score, 1993; #525

This card is everything that was right about the baseball card hobby in the early 90s. It's cheeky. It's fun. It's different. It's just a great card.

On the back we have the starting line-up for the national league team in 1992 and a nicely phrased summation of why Tony made the team.

Some of the names on that list need no introduction. Ozzie Smith, Barry Bonds, Fred McGriff, Gary Sheffield, Ryne Sandberg and Greg Maddux were dominant players at the time. Andy Van Slyke is less famous, but this was the second of three All-Star appearances for him. Darren Daulton was also a three-time All-Star and was part of the Marlins team that won the World Series in 1997. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 55. I wasn't familiar with Lee Smith either, but it turns out he held the record for the number of saves in Major League Baseball from 1993 until Trevor Hoffman passed his figure in 2006. He is currently third on the all-time list, behind Hoffman and the current record holder Mariano Rivera.

All in all, that was quite the All-Star team in 1992!

Total: 860 cards

One Card Only - penultimate O-Pee-Chee

Card Number 836: O-Pee-Chee, 1993; #94

For many years O-Pee-Chee reprinted Topps cards, but then for a couple of years in the early 1990s they produced their own sets. This was the penultimate set O-Pee-Chee produced before they ceased printing cards after the 1994 season.

Tony is about to hit that ball that is flying towards him in the photo. The players sitting in the dug-out behind him look like they are in Mets uniforms. 

As this card is "Inprime au Canada", the factoid on the back is in French as well as English. O-Pee-Chee borrowed a Topps approach to factoids, by talking about a season 10 years previously. 

The player to Tony's right, with just his shoulder in the picture, has a name beginning with H and the top of a 4 visible. It's the same blue uniform. In 1992. Tony's team-mates included Greg Harris (46) and Bruce Hurst (47). They were both taller than Tony, so the fact he is looking up at them isn't a clue as to which one it might be. 

Total: 836 cards

A classic howler

Classic cards were ostensibly part of a trivia game, which always strikes me as a bit of a ruse to get around licensing agreements. Like all cards they evolved quickly in the early 90s, although they never really lost that flimsy card game feel.

Card Number 812: Classic Baseball, 1992; #61

Design note: It's the 90s. Let's stretch the year across the width of the card! This kind of kerning is a mark of a card being designed on a computer. 

I would argue this photo is quintessential early 1990s Tony Gwynn. Helmet and shades, watching the trajectory of a ball he has just belted up into the sunny sky, wearing the grey Padres road uniform that always looks a bit like pyjamas. The bright orange wrist guards match the orange in the San Diego name on his shirt. 

The back is a change for Classic cards. Gone are the old ropey-looking cheap card backs. Note the extended kerning for Tony's name again. Justified text! Plus, five questions for you to test your knowledge.

Over time, I have grown fonder of one line stats boxes. I also think it's incredibly cool that Tony only struck out 19 times in the season - what with that being his shirt number!

Card Number 813: Classic Baseball, 1993; #T41

This card was one of the 99 that came in the actual Classic game.

The photo in 1993 was not as good as the previous year. Tony's bat is occluding a background person's face in almost comical style. 

The back has one line of stats and five more questions to answer. Plus a major howler - instead of the Padres logo there is the Angels logo!

This error hadn't been previously noted on Trading Card Database. I've reported it now!

Total: 813 cards

Now & then & then & now

Two card companies. Same year. Pretty much the same name for an insert card series.

Card Number 810: Pinnacle, 1993; #289

This card marked Tony's tenth season in the Major Leagues. The photo from 1982 looks very familiar, but it obviously wouldn;t have appeared on a Pinnacle card. I think it might have been reused in a more recent release by a card company. I am absolutely certain the green background is a photoshop (or equivlent) job. The software debuted in 1990 and was adopted by the designers at card companies not long afterwards.

The back is relatively plain, just summing up Tony's career to date.

Did you notice the big trademark (TM) sign next to Now & Then? Having taken a project through the process to register tradmarks, I doubt that wording was ever a defendable trademark. Pinnacle's legal team could have tested it though, that very same year! Except Upper Deck switched the words around. 

Card Number 811: Upper Deck, 1993; #TN11

There were 18 cards in this insert series, which might have been the first time Upper Deck used holograms on their cards.

Trying to get a hologram to show on a scan is annoying. However, jiggle the card a bit and Tony appears!

Upper Deck were going through a phase of creating long blurbs to go on the backs of insert cards. There is another picture of Tony inserted as a watermark under the text. The write up includes how he just pipped Will Clark to a batting title - something I discussed when I blogged a card featuring both of them recently. 

Upper Deck didn't try to trademark the phrase 'Then & Now', even though they made much more of an effort with the logo for the insert series!

Total: 811 cards

Wax Pack Wanderers

Two days ago an envelope arrived all the way from North Dakota containing six Tony Gwynn cards that I didn't have before. They were sent by Jeff who blogs at Wax Pack Wonders, along with a note.

Jeff says 'Believe it or not' - well, I believe! And I'm really grateful to be able to give these wanderers a home!

One of the cards was from my favourite ever Leaf set, and in a change to normal practice I'm going to show you the back of the card first.

Card Number 742: Leaf Gold All Stars, 1993; #9

You can tell this is the cardback because it has the copyright notice up the side. On Saturday I blogged about another card from the Leaf 1993 set which had a brilliant cardback featuring a map of upstate New York. The base cards from the 1993 set also had spectacular backs with cityscapes in the background. Tony's brother, Chris, got a card in the Update series of that set too. 

This could have been a "Sharing the Spotlight" post, which is what I do when Tony features on a card with another player. These All Star cards had a National League All Star on one side and an American League All Star on the other. Tony was paired up with none other than Jose Canseco.

The vivid blue background in the photo of Jose really makes that picture look a bit special - more so than the picture of Tony. With the floaty fuzzy clouds and the sunlight striking him, he looks like a demigod. Not a bad cardfront, even if the real interest, for me, is on the cardback!

Thank you Jeff, for this great addition to my collection, and for the other cards too, which I will be blogging soon!

Total: 742 cards

Hall of Famer - 14 years early

In 2007 Tony Gwynn was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, in the first year he was eligible for the ballot. However, two card companies made an early case for his election, fourteen years previously.

Card Number 734: Leaf Heading for the Hall insert, 1993; #2

I really like the logo for this insert series with the little road heading towards a line drawing of the Hall of Fame. There are some sparkles under his name as well. 

The back is outstanding. Leaf had fantastic cardbacks in their 1993 set and this insert series is no different. The combination of the picture of the National Baseball Museum that houses the Hall of Fame, a map of the area and a mocked up plaque shows some exceptional care from the designers.

Here's what the actual plaque looks like, of course!

On that map you can see Lake Otsuga. Nobody ever really mentions Lake Otsuga when they talk about Cooperstown. This is a photo of it that is also my desktop background so I see it every time I write blog posts!

My wife Cathy and I spent two nights in Cooperstown on our road trip in 2016. I would happily say that the day in Museum and Hall of Fame was one of the best days of my life so far. It probably makes the top 3! 

There was an exhibit in the museum about the player's strike in 1994 that cut the season short. That was the season when Tony was tantalisingly close to breaking .400. (Which is why this blog is called .394!)  That exhibit has one of Tony's shirts from the 1994 season in it.

I also met another very famous celebrity from San Diego!

Anyway,. that's enough about the wonderful experience of going to the National Museum and Hall of Fame. Let's get back to baseball cards. Pinnacle were also considering future contenders for Cooperstown back in 1993...

Card Number 735: Pinnacle Cooperstown Card insert, 1993; #20

One day I am going to count up how many cards I have of Tony in this pose, preparing to sprint to first base, with his discarded bat disappearing off the edge of the card.

There's no map on the back, just another photo in his familiar anticipatory batting stance. 

Pinnacle felt Tony was "well on his way to Cooperstown". He added another four batting titles before he finally got there. 

It feels like both these card companies recognised Tony's greatness well before he retired and was officially inducted into the Hall of Fame. That is a genuine indication of his ability and attitude at the height of his career.

Total: 735 cards