1991 Panini Stickers: One Spicy Oddball

In my collection: 2

Griffey looks: molto bene

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  It's from Italy which cannot be said for many baseball cards anythings.

The set: There's not very much to this set.  It's a very nice color photograph for a sticker.  It's printed on extremely thin stock - thinner than most computer paper I use.  There is an abbreviated stat line on the front and some basic information about the player - Griffey's card notes that he is a "1990 All-Star."  With all that, the front of this card resembles a generic card back.

The back of this card tells us that "Trading double stickers with your friends is fun."  I agree, unless we're talking about Griffeys in which case I jealously hoard all the stickers and strike like a cobra at anyone trying get their grubby little paws on them.  The back also tells us to "bend and peel."  Ha ha ha NO.

So is this an oddball card?  After much deliberation I decided it was not (despite the cute title) and gave it its own post.  Here's why:

First, Panini had already been making baseball stickers for several years when this came out, and they would continue for years after.

Second, Panini made sports-related memorabilia exclusively.  This is not a maker of frozen pizzas or soft drinks putting out a promotional item.  Sports memorabilia is all they do.

Third, the design is unique.  This isn't a co-opted design such as Coca-Cola did with Topps (and Donruss in 1992).  Basic as it may be, it is 100% original to Panini.

Fourth, they are still around today.  They even have the same logo they had back then. 

Finally, this bad boy is officially sanctioned.  It's got the logos and pedigree of a real, honest-to-goodness baseball card.

I mention these guidelines here because Griffey has an absurd number of oddballs out there and I'm going to start posting them soon a few at a time.  Rules must be in place for proper oddball classification.  Input is welcome in the comments below.

In the meantime, let's get another look at that Griffey:

This must be an early afternoon game as the sun is hitting the field just right.  As the guys who printed this card would say, Griffey looks molto bene.

I love shots that show a lot of faces in the crowd.  This one is a little too small to get the full benefit, but I still find myself hunting for the inevitable one guy picking his nose (bottom-right corner in the hat - unconfirmed).

I hardly ever do this but......

1991 Bowman the Purple Dinosaur

In my collection: 1 regular

Griffey looks: gazing Northwest

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.

The set: When it comes to innovation, Bowman was still lagging when this set was made.  Bowman made some big changes to their cards in 1992, making this the last year before most of those changes took place.  The result is that apart from the stat box and the lack of a Tiffany set this set isn't very different from any other.  '91 was Bowman's stepping stone to greatness, but not its arrival.

The design itself is an improvement over the "Rasta" set of the previous year, but it wasn't quite at the level of aesthetic subtlety they would produce in '92.  First, it's still on cardboard.  The green back looks great despite having nothing in common with the front.  I think they got the bar across the bottom right, but the borders feel a bit confining.  Then again, I am a sucker for purple split-fades.  Anyone else on that trolley?

Besides its drawbacks, Chipper Jones, Jeff Bagwell, Jim Thome and Pudge Rod all had rookies in this set.  I think I have one of them:



Yep, here it is.


There's also this bad boy:

 

This is probably my favorite card in the set outside of my Griffey fandom.  Bobby Thompson knocking Ralph Branca's fastball out of the park to win the pennant for the Giants - a great moment in Baseball history.

There's not much else worth mentioning in the base set beside the fact that there are a few gold foil-stamped subsets. The above card is one of these.

Here's Mr. Griffey:

A great candid shot of the Kid gazing Northwest.  Perhaps it's a nod to all that Seattle has given him, perhaps there was an attractive redhead waving to him from the stands - we may never know.

One great thing about this card is that it demonstrates perfectly the function of a baseball cap on the guy renowned for wearing it backwards.  Isn't it ironic, dontcha think?

This is a relatively overlooked set despite the great rookies, but it is still one of my personal favorites of that year which isn't saying very much.  Topps was the only real standout set of '91 with Bowman, in my opinion, at a distant second.

This has been another one of those "one-Griffey sets," meaning a nice, short post.  I suggest you use the extra time you had set aside today for reading The Junior Junkie to better yourself in some way.  Read a book, do some pushups, or go hug a loved one.

The Junior Junkie: we care.

Mo' Cardboard, Mo' Problems: 1990 Topps Big

In my collection: 1

Griffey looks: young

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes, despite the fact that the gimmick of slightly-larger-than-normal cards makes collectors insane with rage.

The set: I have never seen a completed set of Topps Big.  I have to wonder if anyone out there is masochistic enough to try.

Small cards are huge right now (ironic, no?), and no one is going to complain because they fit into cases and sleeves and pages and boxes and pretty much everywhere you can put regular cards.  Sure they rattle around in there, but at least you're not getting finger grease on them.  At least they're not sticking out of the top of the case getting all bent and soft-cornered along the top edge only - looking at you '89 Bowman.

Then again, '89 Bowman could still fit into an irregularly tall top loader.  They would get precariously close to the top edge, but they were in there.

Cut to Topps Big, which at 2 5/8" by 3 3/4" is too tall and too wide to fit into whatever cases you already own because top loaders size-discriminate worse than Ambercrombie and Fitch.  Hey, kid - you want to keep that Jim Abbott card from getting all dinged up by the world?  Get your Mom to drive you to the card shop for some irregularly-sized cases.  Oh, and by the way, the next size up is way too big for that card, so you're going to have to find a spot to store those cases as well. 

Or you can just throw the stupid card away and move on with your life, an idea that seems plausible until you remember that the promise of future baseball card values has made you into a pre-teen hoarder and you can't bring yourself to throw it away, so you just keep it sideways in a white box with all the other oddball-sized and shaped cards that have no justifiable storage space in your collection.

Then 12 years later you open said box and see that Jim Abbott card and all you can think is, "Oh, God.  Those stupid things.  This card used to stress me out like crazy.  Baseball cards are evil."  After that you go to the backyard to burn the card in an attempt to cleanse yourself of all the organizational dysfunction it has caused in your adult life, but you still can't do it because you underestimated the deep-seated psychological trauma that is now rooted firmly in your psyche from this card not having a place in the world, so you clutch the card firmly to your chest and rock back and forth on the lawn, crying into the night "I must protect you, cardboard orphan, until your Beckett hi-value grows strong.  You're gonna make papa proud someday," and back into the white box it goes.  Then decades later you die of a sudden brain aneurysm and your family finds the box stuffed into a closet, opens it up, recognizes the contents as worthless, and chucks the entire thing into the trash.

Possessions are fleeting.

All that being said, this set has a cool classic design that I really like.  Both the front and back are bold and colorful; and like the 1988 set of the same name and dimensions, all the cards were printed horizontally which works well with the size.  And you've gotta love the inclusion of both an action shot and a portait on the card front.

With all that great space, I would like to have seen more stats or a nice, big blurb full of cool information.  Topps decided to go with a cartoon, which is cool.  I'd prefer it showed Griffey instead of some white guy, but whatevs.

Speaking of the Kid:

Griffey looks so young here.  If someone showed me this picture without the M's cap, I wouldn't have guessed it was Griffey at all.

After graining it up for a vintage look, Topps re-used this picture in their 2007 Topps '52 Debut Flashbacks set.  Here it is:

Topps Big would have made more sense if the cards were, say, 4" x 6" or 5" x 7".  Then at least you could put them into a picture frame or something.  As it is, that couple of extra millimeters made the set a cruel joke, and I hate it to this day.

And I still don't know who the white guy on the back is.  Paul O'Neill?  A.C. Slater?

1992 Bowman: 90's Fashion Time Capsule

In my collection:3

Griffey looks: well-insulated

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  A unique shot of Griffey at practice in one of the landmark sets of the 90's.  This is a set that falls right into my wheelhouse (baseball reference!).

The set: 1992 Bowman is an otherwise timeless set that somehow got trapped in the 90's.

This is the first year Bowman made all of their cards Tiffany-style: glossy and on higher-quality card stock.  Moreover, it was not overproduced as the previous modern Bowman sets had been.  That scarcity combined with a shift in focus to rookies and prospects made this an alluring set that continues to fetch good prices.

And how about that less is more design?  Bowman has always embraced that concept, but they really pull it off in '92.  The front is clean and simple: player name, Bowman B, nothing else.  The substitution of the brand name with just the B is modest and attractive, and the mildly sylized color bars on opposite corners frame the picture tastefully.  The backs are colorful and engaging with that big, weird team-by-team stat box looking more legible than ever.  Overall, this is just a well put-together baseball card.

The content of the sets is also given the simplicity treatment.  You may have seen some of the cards from this set stamped in gold foil.  Those are actually base cards and should not be confused with parallels.  There is no parallel of '92 Bowman, not even a Tiffany set.  There are also no inserts and no subsets (apart from a few of the cards sporting gold foil).  No gimmicks - just sweet-ass baseball cards, y'all.

'92 Bowman is also loaded with great rookies including Carlos Delgado, Mariano Rivera, and Manny Ramirez

Here's one of my personal favorite rookies from this set:

A dollar at the card show - well spent.

And here's one of the great rookie cards of the modern era:

Not mine - this one is still on my want list.



Luckily they got Mike in his uniform.  I say "luckily" because much to the delight of bloggers who poke fun at the more questionable wardrobe choices of aspiring young ballplayers, Bowman started photographing rookies in street clothes.  And not just any street clothes - 1992 street clothes.  Needless to say, the results are hilarious.

Yikes.  There are dozens upon dozens of cringe-worthy photos of the 90's making fashion victims of us all.  I get to complain because my Mom was still dressing me when this card was made, so it was all her fault I probably looked like a spaz.  Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Let's see that Griffey:

The Kid looks to be practicing catches in the outfield.  I'm thinking it must have been a little nippy out that day because he is well-insulated against the elements.  Good hustle, Junior. 

This is one of those rare sets that only has one Griffey to get; but for those of us who cannot get enough '92 Bowman, there is another.  In 2010 Bowman re-used this popular design for their Bowman Throwbacks insert:

Great card, amazing photograph.  I love how you can't see his eyes.  I'm thinking that if you could, the laserbeam of Griffey-focus would slice your skull in twain.  Best to let that stay between a man and his ball.

This entire set is available at dacardworld.com for $125.00.  For that you get all the great rookies including Piazza, Mariano Rivera, and Carlos Delgado as well as 2nd-year cards for Chipper and Pedro Martinez.  But what is more than that, you get tons of pictures of dudes sincerely sporting Esprit turtlenecks, stonewashed Guess jeans, and Jordache bermuda shorts.  Now that is priceless.

1993 Flair: Fleer Goes Fancy-Pants

In my collection: 3

Griffey looks: crystal-clear

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  The first Flair set, and it's a beauty.

The set: This is Fleer's foray into the realm of the Super-Premium.  Topps went in a whole new direction for Finest, their super-premium set, by embracing the Chromium process while Fleer took the pre-existing standards of great cardmaking - quality stock, quality printing, gold foil lettering, and high gloss - and ran out of the stadium with them.  Flair is the product, and it is sweet.

These were the nice things you're not supposed to let kids play with.  They made you feel older, classier, responsible for something beautiful.  Even as a kid, they made you want to put on a smoking jacket and pour a glass of cognac. 

The detail in the printing was finer than anything we'd seen.  The ultra high-gloss made the card look like it had just been dipped in syrup.  The pimary lettering was gold foil.  And the cards were all so thick and heavy in your hand, like a painting as compared to a photograph.  They had weight, dimension, and substance. 

I swear I just saw on another blog that someone else said the exact same thing, but it made me chuckle because it happened to me, too: I showed one of these to my Dad when I was a kid, and he really looked at it and said "wow."  That was impactful.

Instead of mylar packs, the cards came in little boxes.  They were more expensive, and much more difficult to convince Mom to buy, but dammit if she didn't spoil me rotten.

There is only one insert called "Wave of the Future" comprised exclusively of rookies.  I don't know why they bothered making a rookie insert with no star insert and no parallels.  Still, the base set really was enough on its own.

Let's see that Griffey!





You've got to admit Fleer did a heckuva job on the printing here.  Griffey looks crystal-clear on that front.  Look at his eyes - you can almost see the ball hanging in mid-air, just beyond the edge of the card.  I tend to make fun of yearbooky, faded background pictures, but that one balances out the card nicely.  This is a truly awesome Griffey, folks.

1993 Flair is a rare one-Griffey set, so there's no ridiculous list of cards for me to complain about not having.  Enjoy it, because it doesn't happen a lot.

I will note that tonight I return to Zephyr field to watch the #2-ranked LSU Tigers take on the Golden Eagles of Southern Mississippi.  I'm knocking off work early and heading to the tailgate in my purple and gold.  We are all praying it doesn't get rained out.  Luckily the tailgate is on regardless of the whether the game takes place.  Two baseball games in 5 days - it's gotta be some kind of personal record.

Happy hump day!