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?

2002 Donruss Elite With a Capital "E"

[Note: for some reason Blogger is not centering all the pictures and it's making the post come out al weird structurally - sorry.  Also, the concert ticket put up for grabs at the end of this post has been claimed.  Thanks for playing!]

 

In my collection: 2 regular

Griffey looks: fancy deuce chunkin'

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  Homeboy is chunking a high-end deuce of supreme shininess.

The set: It may not come out in the scan so well, but the finish of this set is relentlessly mirror-like.  I don't usually like the shiny finish but Elite got it right this year - it reflects light tenaciously and without apology.  It also features the player name in that great script font found in several Donruss/Leaf sets of the time including one of my all-time favorites, Leaf '95.

The design here puts a lot of stock into the giant script E, so huge it can't even fit on the card, that we are supposed to associate with this high-end set.  I've never been a fan of brands using self-referencing as design elements.  Indulge me for a moment, gentle reader:

Every Holiday season Lexus runs these commercials of upper-middle class suburbanites giving each other Lexuses (Lexi?) with big red bows as presents - super practical, right?  The commercials always feature the infamous Lexus Holiday jingle, the same one they've been playing for years.  This past December (and November, and probably some of October) the commercials depicted couples finding unique ways to play that song as a clue that they were giving someone a Lexus.  In one a family gives a Mom a jewelry box that plays the jingle at which point she realizes what it is and runs outside because obviously she is getting a new Lexus.  A couple is in the elevator of their apartment building and the song is playing in the elevator, and the wife turns to her husband all excited because obviously this means a new Lex is waiting for her downstairs.  Lexus' ad agency now thinks that we know that song well enough to associate it with a new Lexus, a point completely lost on my sister.

You see, my sister (who is a little older than me) and I were watching one of said commercials this past year, and when the jewelry box recipient mom got excited and ran outside to see her new car, my sister said to me something along the lines of, "Wait - how did she know there was a new car outside?"  I replied, "That was the Lexus Holiday jingle.  She knew from the song."  It was then that I realized that I'd been had.  The campaign had worked.  A self-referencing ad just proved to me that I watch way too much television.  Perhaps I should start using my time more constructively by, say, starting a blog (see what I did there?).

Such self-referencing is happening on the front (and back) of this baseball card, and I'm against it as a design element.  It's not a bad look, but does it have to reference the card brand?  True, Elite had been around for a few years at this point, but are we as collectors supposed to look at it and say "Ah, yes, the great E of the Elite.  Such a fine specimen is this.  It says to the world 'My taste in cards is quite impeccable, is it not?'"  It couldn't be a big G for Griffey or his uniform number or just about anything else?  Is anybody really that enamored with this set?

Rant over.  Let's take a look at that Griffey:



Here we see Griffey doing a little fancy deuce chunkin'.  The shininess of this set accentuates the excellence of said deuce.  Hey, Junior!  What's the candlepower of that deuce?  Two?  Hm - seems like more.

The portrait on the back was taken either an instant before or an instant after that found on the back of Donruss Fan Club cards from the same year:



That's Elite on the left, Best of Fan Club on the right.



This is another 2002 Donruss set that omits Griffey from its inserts.  The only cards Griffey collectors have to chase here are parallels.  Here's all the parallels I don't have from this set:

#8 Beckett Sample Silver
#8 Beckett Sample Gold (about 10% of the production run)
#8 Status Parallel #/24
#8 Aspirations Parallel #/76
#8 2002 National Sports Collector Convention #/5
#8 2002 National Sports Collector Convention Status Parallel #/5

Those Chicago Sports Collector Convention cards keep popping up in early-aught Donruss sets.  They all seem to be #/5.  They're not makin' it easy......

Tonight is Father John Misty live at One Eyed Jacks.  His solid album Fear Fun is one of my favorites of 2012.  I have an extra ticket, so if you're nearby and want to come along, shoot me a comment below....  Because let's face it, if there's anything in this world that says party, its Thursday night and talking about baseball cards.  Woooooooo!



Elite en Español: 2002 Donruss Super Estrellas

 [I opted for French in high school and college, so forgive me if my Spanish is a little off.  Or a lot off.]

2002 Super Estrellas #26



2002 Super Estrellas #26

In my collection: 1 regular

Griffey looks: chunk the deuce!

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  I mean, he's chunkin' the deuce, bro!  Mess with that, please.  I dare you.  Plus it's fun to see what certain baseball terms are in Spanish.

The set: This 100-card set was created by Donruss/Playoff as the first entirely spanish-language set (unlike Pacific which had both English and Spanish).  Each box came with a poster also entirely in Spanish.  Sadly it was both the first and last year the set was made.

I suspect that Donruss, having just recently returned to baseball after declaring bankruptcy three years before, was trying to find a niche with this set.  Nobody except maybe Pacific was going after the Spanish-speaking baseball collector, and Pacific wasn't making baseball cards anymore at this point.  I can't say this was a bad strategy.  Then again, perhaps the fate of Pacific was a sign of things to come.

El Griffey esta aqui:

 

 

2002 Super Estrellas #26



I'm willing to admit that Griffey could be celebrating the fact that they have two outs on the opposing team, but I prefer to think that this is shot of Griffey chunkin' the ol' deuce.  Griffey is super cool and up on current urban trends.  Peace in, playa.

They did add a shadow behind Griffey even though he is in front of a far-away backdrop.  It looks kind of ridiculous, and for some reason the effect makes me feel claustrophobic. 

The design itself isn't bad.  It includes the diagonal effect found in the 2001 flagship set and a banner similar to that used in the 2002 flagship set.  Both of these elements are repeated on the back of the card.  As a whole its not bad, but also nothing to write home about. 

The best part of this set is piecing together what all the words mean.  I really like the J after his name - it stands for Jardinero which must mean outfielder.  Apparently his lanza is izquierdo, which I think is saying that he throws left-handed.  This card is an interesting read all over the place.

One issue: the picture is the same as that found in the 2002 Donruss Elite base card:

Pretty lazy, but appropriate when considering the excellent deuceage being thrown.  The card backs look nothing alike:

A Pack to Be Named Later published this post a few years back wherein you get to see this very Griffey just pulled from a pack.  Very exciting - to me, anyway. 

The only thing I'm missing from 2002 Donruss Super Estrellas is the poster:

Posters de Jugadores #9

Besides that, the base card about does it.

Right now I'm going to try to decipher the blurb on the back using only my powers of context, my knowledge of the Romance languages, and what I know of Mr. Griffey's career.  Here goes:

"At 31 years and 261 days old became the youngest player in the major leagues to hit 450 homeruns  against San Francisco's Russ Ortiz on August 9th, 2001.  Griffey was 15 days younger than previous record-holder Jimmie Foxx who is in the Hall of Fame."

How'd I do, Spanish-speakers?  I think I'm pretty darn close.

Vaya con Dios....

2002 Donruss Fan Club and Best of Fan Club: a Celebration of Mediocrity

[Note: Over the next few posts we're going to spend some time with the Donruss sets of 2002.  I thought there would be only four or five, but no - I keep uncovering all these oddball sets they released that year.  So rather than mete them out one at a time over many months, we're just going to throw them all at the wall at once and see if they stick, exactly like Donruss did.  I've always been one to stick up for Donruss.  Sadly, now I'm starting to understand why they went out of business.....again.]

2002 Donruss Fan Club and Best of Fan Club



Seeing double?


In my collection: 2 FC, 1 BoFC

Griffey looks: poised to run

Is this a good Griffey card? Yes.  In the interest of collecting all the Griffey cards there are to be had, this is certainly one, er, two of them.  Ahem.

The set(s): We're doing a two-fer here as like Topps and Topps Chrome, there is essentially no difference between Fan Club and Best of Fan Club apart from the finish of the card and the words "Best of."  Even the backs are identical.  Yet somehow they are two different sets.

It seems Donruss took what should have been a subset of the flagship base and its parallel and made each into its own set solely for the purpose of shoving more cards into packs.

At least Topps Chrome is a cool finish and based on something pre-established, namely the Topps flagship base set.  Fan Club is a mediocre subset at best.  It's should never have gotten its own set.  Ever.  Yet it somehow got two.  These cards really, really never should have been made.

Let's take a closer look at the Griffeys....I guess:

Like Donruss in 2002, it appears that Griffey just pulled one foul.  But I happen to know that Griffey is awesome at baseball, and he actually just knocked a hit into right-center.  Now he's poised to run as he watches it drop between the fielders.

That's the Best of card.  It's shiny.  Ahem.  Let's move on.....

This is the back of both cards - there is no difference between them.  The design here is actually pretty good.  Complete stats and a decent layout.  I would prefer to have seen some blurb in the negative space at the bottom of the stat box; but overall no complaints, I guess.

I am glad that Donruss wasn't putting Griffey into many inserts at this time.  For that reason I am only missing parallels from these two sets, and I have no real interest other than that of a completionist in obtaining them.  Still, here they are (and big up to millercards.net who had complete checklists for this weirdo set):

2002 Donruss Best of Fan Club

#118 Chicago National

#118 Spotlight

2002 Donruss Fan Club

#118 Credits

#118 Die-Cuts

It's true that Donruss is not the only company to turn a subset into a set and a parallel into a whole other set; they are, however, a company that already failed once.  You would think their "come to Jesus" moment would have been declaring bankruptcy only three years prior. 

Still, in the words of one of my favorite podcasts: How did this get made?  Perhaps Donruss still had something to learn about dumping set after set on an already supersaturated market.  Perhaps the previously football-exclusive Playoff brand was releasing sets the way they had always done believing baseball collectors were always up to embracing the new, shoddy as it may have been. 

Regardless of how these two sets came to be, I have to wonder if they made money.  I would love to see some sales figures.  Or would I?

Happy hump day, baseball card people!