Design Timeline: Collector's Choice

This post is part of an ongoing feature The Great Griffey Base Card Project.

Collector's Choice remains well-represented among the proletariat collectors out there - the regular guys who love the smell of wax and cards with cool pictures on them no matter how overproduced.  You won't find any fancy-fants, bourgeoisie, $50-autograph-pack-busting supercollectors hoarding Fred McGriff gold signatures.  They're chasing Babe Ruth bat relics while we're having have all the fun.

This more affordable offering from Upper Deck won a lot of fans right from the get-go.  For around a buck you got subsets and checklists that were cool and well-designed plus two of the greatest and most memorable parallels ever conceived: the silver and gold signatures.  This set also gave us the unique You Crash the Game interactive insert which was a cousin of Upper Deck's popular Predictor cards.

Here's every design by year of Collector's Choice and UD Choice:

1994:

Released in two series, the inaugural set featured pinstriped white borders with a little baseball dude in the bottom corner.   The name is very small at the bottom and doesn't interfere with the great photography of this set.  For an entry-level brand in the card market, Collector's Choice looked fantastic.  Check out that awesome picture - this does not look like the photographer was told, "This is gonna be a buck a pack, Frank.  Just go snap something reasonably good and we'll slap it onto some cardboard."  It looks skillful and epic.  Hell of a start, Collector's Choice.

1995:

The base set this year had white borders with a light shadow effect around the edge of the photographs, but for All-Stars and players who stood out among the rest, Upper Deck went full-bleed.  The same design would also be used in Collector's Choice SE that year but with blue borders and no full-bleeds.  It was released in a "single series" with redemption cards for updates seeded into packs.

Homegirl there won a contest from the '94 set to be on Junior's '95 card, and here she is.  Despite the occasional old lady, this set had some great action photography and a lot of soul.  Plus, '90's fonts!

1996:

Keeping it simple with a color field along the long side and a team logo.  This worked well because (with the exception of the team logo) they didn't have to change the orientation of the design elements for horizontal cards.  Junior didn't get the borderless treatment in '96 despite making the All-Star team (and not starting), but Collector's Choice more than made up for it with this great portrait of Griffey sporting his 75th Anniversary of the Negro Leagues patch.   On top of that they also had a great 10-card insert of Griffey die-cut cards.

1997:

This year they made borderless cards for all kinds of dudes including rookies and even some non-All-Stars like Brian Jordan and Jay Buhner.  I'm not sure the criteria for having your border removed - I think they just had to like you.  Griffey got a cool card again, a kind of digital mock-up of a triple exposure card. 

My only complaint this year is that they did away with the silver and gold signature parallels.  I still can't believe it - that was the greatest thing about this set: lots of cards for cheap and silver signatures in every pack.  It would only be downhill from here for ol' Collector's Choice.

You may claim that I cannot place the blame for the failure of an entire brand on such a small thing as a change to the parallel;  To that I say, "Yes I can."

1998:

I think this looks like a Score card, but the picture is awesome.  Can you spot why?  If not, you're a bad baseball fan.  All the base cards in this set have white borders except those on the stars' cards which are silver.  I find this design a little more generic than in previous years, and that "CC All-Star" logo confuses me.  The colors are good and the layout isn't horrible, but I'm just not wild about this one.

1999:

Brand failing?  Don't do anything rash like bring back the component that helped make it successful in the first place - just change the name.  Maybe I'm just being petty. 

The design here is actually really cool.  I tend to be against random boxes and lines, but all these seem to have a purpose and a place in the layout.  The opposing sharp and rounded corners frame the card well.  Upper Deck kept the black and white logo, an homage to that of its predecessor, and even the name font is very Collector's Choice-y. 

All the previous Griffey base cards from this group had great pictures full of uniqueness and fun little winks to the collector, but this is just a cool action photo.  No compaints, I guess, but while still completely awesome this is the least awesome picture in the timeline.  And that's where it ends....

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I bought a ton of CC from '95 through '97, and the contents of my collection prove that.  I also just recently did a box break of '95 CC that was a really fun half hour of nostalgia.

If Upper Deck ever gets its license back, I hope they make an updated set ful of throwback cards to the '94-'97 era with lots of signatures of varying color foil.

Here's the short but sweet Collector's Choice Timeline in its entirety:

Design Timeline: Fleer Ultra

This post is part of an ongoing feature The Great Griffey Base Card Project.

Here is every Griffey card made by Fleer Ultra.  This is one of those brands whose life cycle began and ended within the timeline of Griffey's career, so there was never a year in the brand's existence that didn't feature Junior on a base card.  That also makes this post a compendium of every Fleer Ultra design by year.

I find Fleer Ultra's design evolution more coherent than that of nearly every other brand of this scale.  Almost 30% of Fleer base sets feature the Kid fielding - ratio-wise probably more than any other brand.  Over half of the base set designs have roughly the same layout.  On the down side, the set is also known for having a billion inserts and parallels, a fact that completionist collectors like me resent but that also made pack ripping a lot of fun.

Here's the complete Fleer Ultra design timeline:

1991:

The inagural set is unremarkable in many ways and utterly unrecognizeable as an Ultra card.  I've always thought of it as the "silver-headed step child" of the brand's timeline.  Even the logo would change after this first set, but bigger changes were also coming.....

1992:

Now we're getting somewhere.  Gloss, foil, a permanent logo, and a cool, colorful, modern design.  We are getting there.  This design was so popular, Ultra used it again.

1993:

There it is: the same basic design with a few minor tweaks.  Gold letters, marbling in the fields, and a flaming baeball in the Ultra logo weren't enough to properly differentiate this set from it's predecessor.  Even as a kid with a mind like a steel trap who had every design and year memorized, I still had to go to the logo to see what set I was dealing with.  Still, a really cool design.  Can't blame them for sticking to it.

1994:

This is a favorite for the cool gold foil logo with the tasteful font and horizontal lines.  On horizontally-oriented cards the name and logo are kept on the short edge for a really awkward look.  Luckily we don't have to worry about that fact on the Griffey.  Instead we have a great candid shot of the Kid caught looking right at the camera, gettin' kudos from his homie, Jay Buhner.  Great card.

1995:

The first of Ultra's "full-bleed-with-shiny-floating-name-plate" aesthetic.  More than half their sets have this same basic layout, and it works.  The name plate here is low-impact and see-through.  This is also the year they would introduce the Gold Medallion parallel, an imprinted gold seal on the logo.  Kind of a lame way of doing it, but they were noobs to the whole parallel thing and would get better by and by.

1996:

Again with the low-impact name plate, this time embracing simplicity.  This is another favorite among Ultra cards because of the neat colors in the picture and party time Griffey keepin' things light n' breezy at batting practice.  Just chillaxin', you know.  Stayin' frosty.

1997:

I bought a lot of this when it came out.  The name plate has a cool refracty effect and is written in a big, playful script font.  This is the first of several "script-on-a-slight-angle" (SOASA) designs we would see.

1998:

SOASA, this time in slightly raised metallic printing.  The photography in this set is great - with that great background this particular photo pops right off the card.  Then again I find the diagonal-ness of the name plate here feels cheap and off-putting.  Is it just me?

1999:

SOASA, and our first shot of Junior fielding on an Ultra card.  Backgroud is suspect, but the font is really cool and a little signature-like.  Another good-looking card.

2000:

This super-baddass specimen shows us the potential of a full-bleed, horizontally-oriented fielding card.  The futuristic font in holofoil is perfect against the manicured outfield grass.  And what is Junior doing here?  Just kinda flying around?  I imagine him making airplane noises with his mouth, and I like it.  I bought a lot of Ultra in my collecting heyday, but that was years before this particular set came out.  Despite that, this is probably my favorite Ultra card.

2001:

A base-running collision on a Griffey card - that never happens.  This design is very similar to the previous year's but with less-awesome fonts.  And he's really close to that Dodger's balls.  I'm thinking that's Alex Cora based on the fact that he must have been coming from the shortstop position as opposed to 2nd base to wind up in that position.  If I'm wrong, it's Mark Grudzielanek.

2002:

Another super awesome horizontal, full-bleed fielding shot.  It's similar to Junior's '94 Upper Deck photo in that he's pulling a Superman.  The ball peeking out from inside the glove is also a nice touch.  Is it just me or does this feel like a Stadium Club design?

2003:

All the big brands are guilty of using a mess of random boxes and angular lines to look modern.  Ultra only did it this one time.  I like showcasing the guy's number, but the rest just looks silly.  Plus the picture is a little blurry and feels forced onto the card in general.  Not a fan of this one.

2004:

Back to the tried and true SOASA.  This one is very similar to the 1999 design.  It's also the last fielding shot we would get.

2005:

SOASA, a little more angular font, but roughly the same.  An excellent crowd shot here, especially with the epic grimace of the man in black on the left there.  He is not happy Griffey just did that, whatever it was.  This would have made a great sunset card if he hadn't ended up playing with two more teams after the Reds.

2006:

Script, not angled but italicized.  These last two are a bit of an embarassment.  On this one we have a great photo of the Kid having just launched one, his last name in script, and his full name and team in silver below.

2007:

On this one we have a great photo of the Kid having just launched one, his last name in script, and his full name and team in silver below.  To be fair, I think this picture was taken 1/100th of a second later than the '06 one.  Ol' Redshirt is in the background drinking out of his big white cup, Beardy McBlueshirt is there with his Brownish/grayish Blob of a wife, and Middle-aged Whiteshirt is hanging out near Junior's left elbow on both cards. 

Maybe they ran out of money and were like, "Guys, we have all this paper and all this mylar - let's put out one last batch of cards then go get hammered," and they found the one script font they hadn't used yet and slapped it on there.  Anyway, here's Ultra's swan song: the same thing they did the year before.  Sad ending.

There's going to be a lot of sad endings in some of these Timeline posts.
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To this day I really like Ultra cards.  They were always cool, shiny, and forward-thinking even when they were thinking about the year before. 

Here are all 17 years of Fleer Ultra base cards:

The Great Griffey Base Card Project

I am trying to acquire every Griffey base card.  The lists and charts involved are harrowing and complex - a few base cards I can't even seem to verify exist.  It's proving to be a bigger job than I expected; but as I am hard-headed and nerdy, it will surely be done.  Plus the great thing about base cards is that they tend to be cheap.

As I complete base card checklists, I'll be putting together timelines of each brand's design evolution over the course of Griffey's career and posting them on the blog.  It's mind-boggling how many brands were born and died just in the years Griffey played.

Here's all the base card checklists I've completed so far along with links to each brand's respective timeline as they are posted:

Bowman
Collector's Choice/UD Choice
Donruss
Finest
Fleer
Fleer Metal Universe
Fleer Tradition
Leaf
Leaf Limited
O-Pee-Chee
Pinnacle
Score
Select
SP
SP Authentic
SPx
Stadium Club
Studio
Topps
Topps Chrome
Topps Gallery
Topps Total
Triple Play
Ultra
Upper Deck

One-Set Wonders:

Donruss Best of Fan Club
Donruss Fan Club
Donruss Originals
Donruss Super Estrellas
Pinnacle New Pinnacle
Skybox Molten Metal
Skybox Thunder
Topps Laser


FYI: brand name changes count.  As you can see, I'm taking liberties with the titling of the timelines.  For example, I'm including UD Choice in the Collector's Choice timeline.  I also plan on merging some of Fleer Tradition with regular Fleer.  These "spinoff" sets are basically replacements for their predecessors or have aesthetic similarities in the absence of the original set.  Fleer was more or less replaced by Fleer Tradition, Flair went away and Flair Showcase took its place in the market - boom: same timeline.  Brands that are clearly stand-alone sets (such as Fleer Focus and Pinnacle Aficionado) will have their own timelines.

Keep in mind that this is a continuous project, especially as some brands are still made and other are being re-introduced by new owners (looking at you, 2013 Pinnacle).

Enjoy!

Design Timeline: Topps Flagship

This post is part of an ongoing feature The Great Griffey Base Card Project.

I have been wanting to compile every Griffey from each major base set into their own respective posts and analyze the designs.  What better place to start than with Topps, the flagship flagship set? 

With all the lots and trade packages I get you'd think assembling the complete Topps timeline would be effortless; but the truth is that until recently there was one Topps base Griffey I had been missing: his 2005 Topps fistbump card.  I had a whole bunch of them from the Opening Day set, but the base set version eluded me.  Thankfully, the last card needed for this project arrived in a package from Night Owl just a few weeks ago.  That day Project Timeline became a go.

So, here's every Topps design by year that Topps made during Griffey's career:

1989:

OK, so this is not a flagship card - it's from the Traded set; but the design is identical, and I would be remiss not to include it.  Ride the wave!

1990:

This set stands alone in the realm of card design.  Frankly, it's got more in common with '88 Donruss than with any Topps design.  I call this the Buttafuoco Pants set.

1991:

These were the glory days of the overproduction era.  Some of the most universally appreciated sets Topps ever made came in the early 90's, and this one usually takes the top prize.  A great checklist, excellent photography, and an attractive layout make this 40th Anniversary set a big hit among collectors.

1992:

Comparable in photo quality and design to the '91 set, this year Topps started using white card stock instead of brown cardboard.  This allowed for cleaner, brighter colors on the front and especially the back.

1993:

Just a slightly more modern design than the previous year, but comparable in quality.  Also the first modern design wherein Topps did not include a border within the white border. 

1994:

The first all-glossy base set from Topps, this set is a lot more modernized with a fancy new cursive font.  This is a set that doesn't get much attention, but it has it's share of great cards.

1995:

The first flagship set with player names in foil, a design tradition that continues to this day, 1995 featured the more abstract "torn" border with a kind of "handwritten" font.  A little messy and casual, it's the baseball card equivalent to the "just got out of bed" look.

1996:

A clean, modern design, this set was the first since 1984 to feature a mini picture in addition to the main one.  Unlike the '84 design the picture is just a close-up of the main picture.

1997:

Minimalist to its own detriment, I don't believe this was a super-popular set.  The color selection was a little strange, and the design as a whole comes across a little generic.  This is also the precursor to six years of border color zaniness.

1998:

This set is the first of two gold border years.  This set is also known for the psychedelic, colorfully-patterned backdrops they used in the name plate.  There's a lot of eye-grabbing here.  I call it the ADHD set.

1999:

This is the other end of the spectrum.  They toned the design down and moved the name from the bottom of the card for the first time since 1980.  You can't really tell here, though, as the horizontally-oriented cards maintained the same layout putting the name at the bottom.  Other than that, it's just a thin gold line and a single rounded corner.  Very dry, but good photography.

2000:

For the border this year, Topps invented a new color called shmudge.  There is no way to make anything look good next to the color shmudge.  They also returned to the use of the nameplate which in this case is a random juxtaposition of lines and boxes that for some reason says "modern."  The method to this design's madness is lost on me.  On the other hand the photography is OK, this being one of only two Topps base cards to show Griffey's exciting fielding (in someone's backyard?).

2001:

They got it right this year.  Huzzah!  I suppose the teal border isn't for everyone, but the gold 50th anniversary logo looks great as do the font, the logo placement, and the unobtrusive border.  Nice work, boys.

2002:

Ah, jeez.  Banners and baby food.  The banners aren't even that bad - they remind me of the '89 swoosh design.  But that background color - what is that, goldenrod?  Camel butt?  Cat pee?  Whatever it's called, it looks terrible.  A white border here would have looked better and offset the banner colors nicely.  Or am I being boring?

2003:

Like the '83 and '84 designs, this set has a portait on every card.  The bright primary colors of the border and nameplate dominate this card like a fat guy on a park bench.  The overall design has a nostalgic feel, but it still doesn't look like a Topps card to me.

2004:

The reign of ugly borders is finally over!  The 2004 set is certainly one of the better Topps base designs of the '00's.  Not just modern but futuristic, this set is known for the little silhouette on the bottom-left corner mimicking the action of the player on the card.  It's a unique design element I've only ever seen in this one set.  Daddy like.

2005:

While there is a whole lot going on in the 2005 set, all the elements come together in a relatively harmonious way.  From the color-appropriate twisting borders to the large central team logo to the player surname in huge gold letters across the top, this is not a bad look.

2006:

This is also from the "more is more" school of design.  While it's not a bad-looking set, I don't feel like they pulled it off as much as they did in '05.  Maybe it's the yellow.

2007:

This year Topps switched to black borders.  The '71 set is another one known for its black borders.  It's also known for it's cards being in terrible condition because those black edges show every nick and bump and soft edge no matter how small.  They also brought printed signatures back which we have not seen since on a Topps base card since 1982.

2008:

I think Topps tooka  big leap here with that giant colored circles announcing the team name, but I think it comes across as fun and baseball-y.  The same can be said also of the font used for the team and the player name.  And I like the facsimile signature though some complain about them.  The only real issue I have with this card is the accomodation of the Topps logo by the border - seems like a waste of photo space.

2009:

I really like this design.  Team-appropriate colors, the tasteful borders, ALL CAPS Times New Roman font.  The design does not dominate the card as much as in some previous years.  The angular look is cool, and the little corner finials on the top that match the bottom balance the design nicely.  And who doesn't love the team logo on the slightly-askew home plate?  This is a good-lookin' card. 

2010:

The last of Griffey's Topps base cards and the only one to show him as a DH, the 2010 card is dominated by a great big team logo and a big wave along the left side of the card colored according to the team.  I think the prolific use of the team logo here is a thumbing of the nose to the other brands that didn't have license to use said logos.  That's right, Topps - kick 'em when they're down!  The overall design is unremarkable, but it's not particularly bad, either.  I would like to have seen a better sunset card from Topps for the Kid, but nobody knew at the time this card was made that Junior would have a very sudden retirement mid-season.  I'll let it slide.

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In all Griffey got 22 regular Topps cards.  Of all the brands out there during Griffey's career, Topps, Bowman, and Upper Deck are the only onesto have made a card for Griffey every single year he played.  All the rest either folded, declared bankruptcy, or just left the business entirely.  Kudos to Topps for keeping it going longer than anybody and never missing a year.

Here's 22 straight years of baseball history on cardboard: