The Finest Month: 1994 Topps Finest

September is the Finest month here at The Junior Junkie. I’m going to be posting about the legendary first four Topps Finest sets in the timeline culminating with the original bastard of 90’s super-premium, the 1993 set. There will be many adjectives, much Chromium, and refractors refractors refractors.

At 27 years and counting, Finest is now one of the longest continuously-running baseball sets in history behind only Topps flagship and one other set (can you guess which one?*) – not bad for a sub-brand. This only adds to the mystique and importance of these early issues.

And early or not, the designs are excellent, standing apart from the “junk” wax of the time in every aspect. That’s a good thing considering Finest was such a huge hit in ’93. There were a lot of expectations attached to this ’94 set, and it did not disappoint.

Just as it was in ‘93 the base set is comprised of two main designs: the “home plate” and the “rainbow oval.”

Home Plate design vs Rainbow Oval design

Personally I’m partial to the home plate despite the fact that Griffey got the oval treatment here. Luckily the card backs are the same among the different designs because these are some of my favorite card backs of all time. Seriously.

This is a masterpiece any way you slice it. More on that later. On to the Griffeys!

How Looney Tunes is this thing? And I don't mean crazy or wacky - I mean it literally looks like the Looney Tunes intro - I'm waiting for Bugs Bunny’s giant grinning mug to fly out of it. My favorite bit some folks may not have noticed is that the Mariners nautical star logo is pretty much dead-center on the card front here. If you're like me you'll probably notice it every time you look at this card from this day forth.

While I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere, there seems to be a consensus that a number of the base cards including the Griffey was short-printed. Regardless of whether that is true, it is verifiable that some Series 1 cards were included in Series 2 packs. If the production numbers for both series are equal, there must be fewer Series 2 cards out there in general. A short-print of any Series 2 cards would only increase their scarcity. Some hard production data would help here, but where is it?

This thing is literally perfect. It’s not that it has any more information than your standard Finest card back (though it does have a blurb which ’93 does not); it’s just beautifully-assembled in general, all centered and balanced with an excellent gold-framed backwards-cap shot and that great MLB Anniversary logo. There is nothing abstract or out of place here at all - it is the back of a high-end baseball card, no question.

If I wasn’t already doing the “Finest Month” theme for September, I’d have subtitled this post “Baby Got Back” with little to no shame.

1994 Finest #232 Refractor

This was another ’96 Beckett Tribute checklist item (one of the bigger ones now) that I huffed and puffed about having to pay 100 dollars for just a few years back. It had been up as a Buy It Now at that price for weeks which would be unheard of today. I may look like a shrewd investor buying it when I did, but really I was just trying to complete that checklist. Looking back my timing was pretty perfect.

Where the ’93 refractors were estimated to land about 1:15 or just short of two per box, the 1:9 ’94 refractors fell just shy of three per box. Along with the increased production numbers across the set this means there ought to be more refractors overall, even with the potential short-printing. Then again the larger checklist may have balanced this out, resulting in a comparable number of refractors. It's all guess work, though, without production figures.

The market has certainly never been hotter with loose copies running upwards of $500 and high grades reaching well into the thousands. That’s got to make it one of the best performing 1:9 Griffeys of all time.

But it’s so small…

1994 Finest #232 Jumbo

That’s better. These were box toppers, and not terribly uncommon. They are identical to their little bros in every way, even the card numbering, so I'm only showing this photo for comparison.

1994 Finest #232 Superstar Sampler

Factory sets of Topps Flagship contained three-card “Superstar Sampler” sets that included one Bowman, one Stadium Club, and one Finest base card for a given player. These have a small stamp on the bottom of the card backs that is easy to spot if you know to look for it. The seller of this one did not know to look for it, so I got it cheap.

What you really want, though, is the sealed Superstar Sampler cello pack:

1994 Topps Superstar Sampler Cello Pack (sealed)

Especially if you’re going for the 1996 Beckett Tribute checklist which calls for the whole cello pack specifically.

LOL @ $20.00

Whether you are looking to complete your ’94 Topps Griffeys, ’94 Finest Griffeys, or the monstrous ’96 Tribute checklist, you need this one. Happy hunting.

The ’94 and ’93 sets have just about everything in common to the point that they might be easy to confuse with one another. Nobody does confuse them, though, because the ’93 card is an icon. More on that next week when we close out the Finest Month. Thanks for reading!

*BTW, the second-longest continuously-running set is O-Pee-Chee whose 29-year run (1966-1994) Finest will surpass with their 2022 set.