1997 New Pinnacle: the Ol' Hidden Set Trick

Let’s get this out of the way now because we’re going to get to it eventually anyway, and I prefer to have everything out on the table.

1. Is this a Pinnacle flagship set? And 2. What do we call it?

Yes, it is a flagship set. It meets every definition of one despite the fact that a flagship set (or at least the first series of one) had already been released that same year. I did not, however, count it among the flagship sets for the Pinnacle Design Timeline as I prefer to err on the side of history which shows that you only have one flagship set in any given year. Despite that, the answer is yes - a reboot of a flagship set can only be a flagship set.

"Original" 1997 Pinnacle

As for what to call it, Pinnacle calls it “Pinnacle.” I already made the Pinnacle design timeline which I’m not budging on. I will continue to call this NEW Pinnacle until the day I die. Most online repositories of cardboard knowledge seem to be on the same trolley.

That said, kudos on this bad ass reboot, Pinnacle. I don’t know why it happened, but I am certainly happy it did. 

1997 New Pinnacle #1

The regular base cards are LIGHT YEARS BETTER than the scrapped flagship set. Just look at them. This nameplate remains one of my favorites in cardboard history. Then they gave us great photography as well as gold foil AND holofoil on every card? I mean, come on. These have more in common with Ultra or Stadium Club in all the best ways. 

And how about that photo? Looks to have been a tough leap back to first for the check throw. The Kid must have been leading hard not unlike that one scene in Little Big League wherein Griffey (playing himself) exchanges words with the great Timothy Busfield who says "You gotta do what you gotta do, Junior." And if you don't remember what happens next, I suggest you give this one a watch.

No, it's not as good as Rookie of the Year, but it is still better than Angels in the Outfield.

They carried that roaring 20’s nightclub font over to the back along with a nice, big action shot and a reasonable stat box. The blurb is essentially just repeating stats here, but no big complaints.

1997 New Pinnacle brought with it a new concept that continues to this day: printing plates. They called them Press Plates, but it’s the same thing.

I generally avoid printing plates, but if there were ever one to break this rule for it would be these as they were the first. There were eight plates per card (including inserts but not parallels), four colors for each side. As Griffey had nine cards in this set (including inserts), that gives Griffey a total of 72 plates. However one of those inserts is a dual-sided number he shares with Tony Gwynn, so if we subtract the Gwynn-side plates that gives us 68 Griffey plates.

The insertion ratio is 1:1250 for the plates of 288 cards with 8 plates per card giving us a total pack production of 2,880,000. I’m ashamed to admit in an effort to explain one of the mysteries of the following Pinnacle set (which also had plates), I originally made the mistake of interpreting the asterisks in the distribution table as meaning the 1:1250 was for all the plates of each given card rather than individual plates. I have since learned that is not the case and do not do that for the love of God because you will look like an idiot.

But using the correct plate figures one can determine the quantity produced of every insert and parallel from 1997 New Pinnacle. I invite you to whip out your calculator and see for yourself.

1997 New Pinnacle #1 Museum Collection

1997 was a banner year for parallels in general. How on Earth any company can release a banger like this year’s Museum Collection and fold the very next year is a travesty. This was the case with the scrapped Series 1 flagship, too, which gave us what may be the coolest parallel of the ‘90’s. These have the look of an ultra-scarce, #/100 super premium of the highest order; but at 1:9 they are not terribly hard to find.

1997 New Pinnacle #1 Artist's Proof Green

Where in the scrapped flagship they divvied up the Museum Collection AP’s into gold, silver, and bronze backgrounds, here they assigned the best 25 players the color green, the 50 mid-level guys blue, and the remaining 125 players red. All the colors fell at 1:39 or just short of on in every two boxes, making this the rarest Griffey of 1997 New Pinnacle by a wide margin.

And every color looks awesome.

1997 New Pinnacle Spellbound #1KG-6KG

This would not be the last year of Spellbound, but it would be the best. Where the following year’s set was that papery foilboard stuff, these were big and bold with plenty of foil, Dufex, and photos integrated right into the giant letters. And they really fill out a binder page nicely.

Check out the back of #4. Look familiar?

The bat isn't hitting a ball on the Spellbound card, but the spirit is there...

And this, I guess:

They’re a great option for people who want that multi-card, spell-stuff-out effect in their collection but don’t want to shell out hundreds for giant letter patches and autos on every card. I am one of those people. Hi.

While the Museum Collection and its AP are some serious stunners, this one remains my favorite Griffey of New Pinnacle. By the numbers these have only the 4th smallest production run of ’97 NP, but the recent market seems to treat the Griffey like a short print (which does not seem to be the case) with prices climbing well into the hundreds. None of the other players in the checklist go for even half that – not even the Jeter. Either the Griffey is harder to find for some unstated reason, or this is just another case of his cards being a hobby anomaly. Man there are a lot of those.

And here’s the best part: the information on the back is relevant to the theme of the card. And it’s actually interesting! This shouldn’t be such a big deal, but so many inserts forget what they’re about. This one nails it. 

I like to think we’d have seen more from this insert in later Pinnacle sets, but that would not be the case. Fleer would release a football insert in 2001 called “Keeping Pace,” but that’s as close as anyone would get.

1997 New Pinnacle Interleague Encounter #3 (w/ Tony Gwynn)

With a set like Keeping the Pace to be had, putting this one at the highest insertion ratio feels a bit like the insert version of burying the lede. The cards are cool (more so in person than in scans), but they don’t even approach the appeal of KTP. Sure everyone was excited about interleague play, but come on. 1:240 or about 1:13 boxes is just crazy talk for what is essentially a very standard-looking dual-sided card.

Granted they have the exact same foil-stamped mirror quality of Pinnacle Certified, and I can testify that they really are impressive in person with nothing between your eyes and the card surface. Maybe I'm just being picky.

That's all the Griffeys from New Pinnacle. Again it is amazing that Pinnacle had the gall to bust out a surprise second flagship set, and it's even more amazing what an improvement it was. Weird move, but it worked out. The cards hold up to this day.

There is only one more Pinnacle flagship set to cover before I've shown them all, so look out for that one next week. Thank for reading.

Dufex Debuts: 1993 Pinnacle

It’s Pinnacle-tober here at the Junior Junkie. This is the month I cover the four Pinnacle sets I have not gotten to yet, including the inaugural ’92 set, the forgettable ’93 set, the "New" '97 set, and the doomed ’98 set, culminating in the complete Pinnacle Flagship Griffey master set.

With the exception of a more prolific use of foil, 1993 is kind of a step back in terms of card design for Score’s premium offering. Not unlike the strange jump from the great 1989 to the not-as-great 1990 Upper Deck designs, it feels less refined in just about every way compared with the beloved 1992 set. Jeter fans might disagree here because of this:

1993 Pinnacle Derek Jeter Rookie

That’s a really nice rookie card, but it changes nothing. 1993 Pinnacle is objectively meh.

There are still plenty of great Pinnacle cards this year including some of the first Dufex and one of the most legendary Griffeys of the early ‘90’s, so it’s not a total waste.

I am a pretty big fan of Pinnacle in general, so as a sign of respect for this great ‘90’s brand, I would like to show you some of the subsets and inserts of the ’93 set. The Griffeys can wait a minute.

1993 Pinnacle Now & Then Cal Ripken, Jr.

It’s been done before and since, sure, but it’s hard not to love these things. Did they have to double-up on the mouth breathing shots?

1993 Pinnacle The Idols Delino DeShields

As promised The Idols is back. And it appears Pinnacle was pretty accommodating with the heroes, too. Larry Walker, for example, picked some hockey guy and Delino here chose civil right leader Malcolm X. I mean, there he is. Malcolm X on a baseball card, Delino swinging away for Canada superimposed right over. How often are you gonna see stuff that?

1993 Pinnacle Hometown Heroes Cal
Ripken, Jr.

Another great insert concept relegated to a subset, Hometown Heroes would eventually become its own standalone brand from Panini at which point, exactly 20 years later, Griffey would finally get his Hometown Heroes card. Unfortunately the cards in that set were not as cool as this first one. Sorry, but McDonald's colors will never look as cool as silver and black.

They must have used the same artist for the Team Pinnacle Insert this year, but they regressed from full-bleed to full-borders for some reason. Oh, and they left out Griffey. The hell, dude?

Pinnacle also made an entire Tribute subset to George Brett and Nolan Ryan, and the photos are excellent. Honestly it's kind of amazing Ryan was still pitching (and occasionally beating someone's ass) at this point.

There was also a Team 2001 insert just like the previous year's Team 2000 with the same design and everything. It doesn't have Griffey in it, though, so who gives a crap.

1993 Pinnacle #110

This would not be Griffey’s last #110 of 1993, but it’s certainly his cheapest. While there is something to be said about a nice photo completely free of overprinting and logos, this thing strikes me as an oddball more than the premium base design it was meant to be. I tend to like black borders which, again, worked beautifully in ’92; but here they are just a condition liability. It’s a wonder how they nailed it so hard just a year earlier only to follow up with this Plainy McPlainerson base card. Even the first use of foil on a Pinnacle base card wasn’t enough to save it.

Just give me "a" design element. Anything. I mean, come on, look at what the hockey cards looked like this year:

LOOK HOW COOL THIS IS! Why didn't we get this? You're based in Texas, Pinnacle - why are you knocking it out of the park with hockey?

As unimpressive as the front is, this back is a thing of beauty. The star here is that Studio-quality portrait all centered-up and surrounded by the standard card back stuff. The blurb is solid, too. A+ on this side, guys.

1993 Pinnacle Slugfest #28

While ’93 Pinnacle is positively loaded with cool subsets, Junior makes an appearance in none of them. He did, however, show up in the one-per-“superpack” (series 2 only) Slugfest insert. It’s a nice enough card despite about half of that blurb being a straight-up recanting of his season stat line. And of course Pinnacle remained consistent with the black-and-gold theme this year.

Also this is the first Pinnacle Griffey on which he is not swinging away. Here he is just getting ready to swing away. Variety!

That’s it for the Pinnacle flagship set. Lucky for us Pinnacle was all about those direct-sales retail sets. In addition to a 30-card set celebrating the life of Joe DiMaggio complete with autograph pulls, they also released these two other totally above-average sets:

1993 Pinnacle Home Run Club #13 /200000

These card are metal Dufex, guys. METAL DUFEX. When I first laid eyes on these things in the early '90's I was immediately hooked. A fellow card guy had a whole set, and while he wouldn't trade away the Griffey, he did trade me a Mo Vaughn. I was glad to have it, too (I still do). They have the look and feel of a $500 card. Unfortunately they are cheap as dirt because they made 200,000 of them (serial-numbered on the header cards). So I bought two sets and even opened one just to show them to you here:

Wow! Only 200,000? Hurry before they sell out!

Now that's a checklist.

Genuine imitation leather case

Genuine red felt lining. Side-mounted recessed comfort
grips for optimal phelangal actuation.

Swinging away again

Despite the high production run they are real stunners. They have the slightly-below-room-temperature feel of metal and keep whatever shape you bend them in, so be careful. You can find whole sealed sets on eBay for pennies per card. I'm not usually into direct-marketed sets, but these are a big exception. Go buy one.

Can you imagine these in a refractor? Just the thought makes my pants tight.

1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown #22

Ooooh big swing away. This set was pretty mass-produced, so they're not terribly pricey even to this day (though they do run more than the Home Run Club which is weird). There's a surprising number of guys in this checklist who are NOT yet in the Hall of Fame. Hopefully there'll be a few Veterans Committee inductions from that list.

1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown #22 Dufex /1000

There it is: one of the biggest Griffey gets of the early '90's. Let’s go straight to BBCP for this one:

“A special all-Dufex version of the Cooperstown set was distributed to attendees of the 1993 SCAI conference in Dallas, TX. 1000 Dufex sets were produced; however, since attendance at the convention was less than anticipated, this set was also distributed through other methods.

Because of the scarce (by 1993 standards) production run, these are some of the more valuable cards issued in The Junk Wax Era.”

A run of 1000 is easy pickins nowadays, but back in ’93 it was decidedly not. For reference that is the same quantity of each version of the 1994 Upper Deck Griffey/Mantle cards.

1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown COA

They’re also some of the first Dufex card ever printed. Being that Dufex would become Pinnacle’s trademark effect, that makes these cards a must-get for fans of the Pinnacle brand (of which there are many) or of ‘90’s cards in general. And I’ve said before, these are rite of passage cards for Griffey collectors. You just need it.

Hey, let’s talk promos for a minute.

1993 Pinnacle Cooperstown #22 Promo

No, it's not mine. Allegedly some promos were printed for the regular Cooperstown cards. BBCP lists only three players having had promos produced – Andre Dawson, Eddie Murray, and Mark McGwire. To be fair I’ve never seen one of these in person, but I have seen several Griffey promos bought and sold in various online card haunts. It sure seems like they exist.

The nature of these promos, differentiated only by black printing across the image on the back and nothing else, makes me nervous. I’m not saying every promo outside of those three players is a fake. PSA has graded and authenticated numerous promos of Nolan Ryan, Will Clark, Joe Carter, Clemens, Mattingly, Puckett, Brett, Winfield, and, yes, Ken Griffey, Jr. It doesn’t get much more official than that.

The explanation that seems the most correct is that promos were made for every card in the set and BBCP is only showing those promos they’ve verified which I totally get. However, if those three players were officially announced by Pinnacle as the only promo cards, prospective promo buyers (and their current owners) might want to know about that.

So '93 Pinnacle flagship was mostly a dud this year for us Griffey guys. There were still some decent (ugh) non-Griffey base cards to be had. And those two retail sets hold up well even to this very day. Enough bright spots here to give Pinnacle a pass in '93.

Next week we jump straight to the infamous New Pinnacle of 1997. You can read the posts I've done for all the in-between sets at the links below. Warning: I usually wait until I have most of the Griffeys from a given brand before I do a post about it, but that wasn't always the case. A few of these I probably tackled a little prematurely. Just a heads up.

1994 Pinnacle
1995 Pinnacle Part 1
1995 Pinnacle Part 2
1996 Pinnacle Part 1
1996 Pinnacle Part 2
1997 Pinnacle

Thanks for reading.

Friends of P: 1992 Pinnacle

It’s Pinnacle-tober here at the Junior Junkie. This is the month I cover the four Pinnacle sets I have not gotten to yet, including the inaugural ’92 set, the forgettable ’93 set, the "New" '97 set, and the doomed ’98 set, culminating in the complete Pinnacle Griffey master set.

Was there ever a brand that more perfectly exemplified the ‘90’s than Pinnacle? These guys literally hit every cardboard trope of the era:

- “super premium” introduced in the early ‘90's

- introduction of a cool new proprietary printing technology
- multiple tiered parallels
- significant chase program using wide array of printing technologies and materials (Dufex, die-cutting, acetate, holofoil, all that biz)
- numerous spinoff brands
- bankrupt by 1998

Pinnacle has a lot of well-deserved fans, and I’m one of them. They are the quintessential ‘90’s brand in every way. It’s even more ‘90’s than Ultra if you count the fact that Ultra stuck around well into the 21st century. It’s sad, but going out of business in 1998 is about the most ‘90’s thing a baseball card company can do. We miss you, Pinnacle.

That's why we are starting Pinnacle-tober with this, their inaugural set. With all the slick cardboard this brand gave us in their heyday, it’s fun to go back to their roots.

This is just a great looking rookie card. It’s also strikingly similar to a certain someone’s Upper Deck rookie. This thing was money in the late-90’s but a dollar bin card at best nowadays. That still doesn’t diminish from the coolness.

Pinnacle went with black borders, a design choice that would carry through in one way or another to just about every card they made for those first few years. That combined with the high gloss and quality card stock gave these a high-end feel but also made them more condition-sensitive than most releases from this era. Finding one of these with little or no chipping can be a challenge.

It’s totally worth it, though. Nothing is out of place here. Even that partial sub-border within the main border frames the card nicely, hammers home the black theme, and accentuates the card’s overall Pinnacle-iness. There really was nothing else at the time with this level of modernity.

Pinnacle also embraced the subset like no brand before it. Even in this first set most of the subsets look like reasonable-quality inserts.

1992 Pinnacle Shade Jay Buhner

This very same theme would be used in some great die-cut inserts including a proper one from Pinnacle five years later. The back is as scant as it could possibly be, but what more do you really need on an insert back? A boring re-telling of the stats already on the base card? An anecdote about that time Buhner wore sunglasses (I always assumed he never took them off)? No. You need a card number and some legalese and that’s it. Strictly speaking, anything else is decadent and unnecessary.

1992 Pinnacle Sidelines Kirby Puckett & Nolan Ryan

This would have been a great Studio insert. Check out Kirby avoiding the hell out of that corner. The lie of the 8 is precarious to say the least. I take it he's aiming at a ball in the far corner because cutting that 15 could end in disaster. Then again odds are good he missed here because Cal Ripken won this particular pool tourney according to the card back. Kudos to Kirby on the house stick, though. There's nothing more satisfying than clearing the table with a janky old house stick against some bozo with a Balabushka. Only fools bring their own stick to the hall.

Also Nolan Ryan can be spotted riding a horse on what must be a record number of baseball cards. It's probably not even close. 

This pitcher-centric subset highlights different grips for each player. My favorite is the “Vulcan Change” which sounds like something my wife and I tried the other night after a few glasses of wine (I didn’t have the leg stamina for it, but I see what they were getting at).

1992 Pinnacle Technicians Nolan Ryan

Another subset that could very well have been an insert, this one sports a cool blueprint aesthetic that points out strategic positional moves right in the card photo. The blurb, while not really player-specific, gets down and dirty with the attributes of a successful player at each subject’s respective position. They got a little playful, too, dividing up every aspect of the card including the number, brand, and requisite MLB and Players Association logos. It’s all very meta and even a little snarky, two things that immediately grant it Junkie-approved status.

Okay, sold on Pinnacle yet? Let’s peep some Griffers.

1992 Pinnacle #549

This design looks ten years ahead of its time. It’s clean, modern, and missing nothing. I’d have bought the living daylights out of this brand back in ‘92 if 11-year-old me wasn’t busy playing Sid Meier’s Civilization and memorizing Ren & Stimpy quotes.

It should be no surprise that Pinnacle had amazing card backs being they were made by Score, king of card backs in the Junk Wax Era. I love the horizontal design here (which they kept for the ’93 set) with that big, centered portrait and zero defects to speak of. It’s a little funny that they mention his “ever-present” smile in the blurb, but chose the most dead-pan photo they could find to support it. Luckily he would loosen up a bit for future Pinnacle releases.

1992 Pinnacle #283 The Idols

I’m still a little surprised to see Rickey on here. Not that there’s a single thing wrong with Rickey – I mean, I get it – but I kind of expected Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, or the obvious choice, Ken, Sr. Does Rickey have something to do with Junior wearing #24? Am I a bad Griffey fan for not already knowing this? This card is making me question everything.

The cards themselves are cool, of course. Sepia for the idol, the card subject superimposed in color, a nice subset logo that could very well be an insert one. It’s the works, man. Well done.

The Idols continued into the very next year as you will see. While I wish there was a Shades or a Sidelines card for the Kid, they left our guy out. Maybe because he was Upper Deck’s main squeeze? Was that a thing yet?

1992 Pinnacle Team 2000 #47

Pinnacle’s easiest insert pull was this set at three per 27-card “Superpack.” It was comprised of a whopping 80 cards, all players destined to be stars by the year 2000. While things didn’t quite work out that way for a lot of the guys in the checklist, it remains a who’s who of young ‘90’s talent. The gold foil on the front and back of every card was a pretty huge deal and a major selling point of Pinnacle in general at this time. Some great photography all over this one. Peep the massive Taylor on his earlobe. Homie's iced out.

1992 Pinnacle Slugfest #7

Slugfest would show up in multiple Pinnacle sets through the years including 1993, 1996, and even the 2013 reboot; but this first one has a charm few of those can touch. These also showed up only in Superpacks at a rate of 1:1. The horizontal orientation is the rule across the entire checklist, allowing the photography to highlight some of the meanest swings of the early ‘90’s. It’s a photogenic set to say the least and a personal favorite of that particular year.

The back is loaded with goodies, too, including what very well might be the remainder of that massive swing from the front. Pinnacle really clicked with inserts right out of the gate.

1992 Pinnacle Team Pinnacle #9 (w/ Brett Butler)

At a seriously tough 1:100 (about 1:3 boxes), this remains the big get from ’92 Pinnacle.

Whether it was Team Pinnacle, Team 200X, or Z-Team, Pinnacle anointed themselves the perennial fantasy roster-setter in one way or another. And Junior pretty much always made the cut.

Team Pinnacle was the most prolific example of that fantasy team theme, and it deserves a timeline all its own. Junior made this first cut, but was tragically omitted from the ’93 insert only to make a triumphant return in ’94 then on all the way through the demise of Pinnacle brands. All Team Pinnacle inserts feature the same theme: two-sides, each side showing a player from one of the two leagues. The first three sets are pretty interchangeable, all featuring paintings of each subject player. This changed to photos with Dufex embellishment for the ’95 release and thereafter.

As for the paintings, they’re no Dick Perez. They’re not detailed enough to be considered photo-realistic, but they are in that arena. More specifically they are not abstract or impressionist in the slightest. I assume the majority of baseball card-collecting bros are just fine with this, but artsy-fartsy liberal arts kids like myself may find it a little boring. Say what you want about Dick Perez, but he was rarely boring.

One strange aspect you may have noticed is that every single Griffey card in 1992 Pinnacle shows him swinging away. Being that this is a painting, they could have chosen pretty much any position they wanted, and yet they chose one of.....uh-huh, him swinging away. Come on guys. 1:100 is tough - give us something else here. Even Brett got a sweet bunt.

Team Pinnacle would end its life as an insert in Pinnacle Plus and finally as a Pinnacle Collector’s Club insert, both in 1998. It does make an appearance in the one-and-done Panini reboot in 2013, but I don’t think a lot of people noticed.

That's every 1992 Pinnacle Griffey, so no want list today. Next week we will look at the Griffeys of ’93 Pinnacle, including the infamous Cooperstown Card. Thank for reading.