1994 Topps: My Baby's Got Gloss

1994 is the year the whole cardscape changed. After the previous year’s array of new printing techniques and entire brands built around said techniques, ’94 is when we saw those techniques applied even to regular base cards. My adolescent friends and I liked the change, but vintage fans had to watch in horror as set after set began coming out of packs beset in glossy, full-bleed, heavily befoiled modernity that could hardly be described as cardboard anymore (and most of it wasn’t). When Old Man Topps jumped on the trolley, everyone knew this was less a fad than a sea change in the industry.

Cue 1994 Topps, the first in a series of all-gloss Topps base sets that continues unbroken to this day. It’s more than just glossy – the design is more colorful and intricate than ever before. The print quality of the base card photos is the best they’d ever had (it even holds up to early Stadium Club which, if you remember, had a Kodak logo on the box), and the content of the photos themselves is as good as the collector favorite ’91 set.

Despite ’94 Topps’ overall likeability, it has some minor issues. The cursive font in the nameplate feels a little dated. I can live with that, but I have a lot of difficulty dealing with the color palette. Despite being grounded in the green of the nameplate below, the palette tends to jump between attractive, team-appropriate color fades and seemingly random colors with no point of reference in the photo. There are Yankees cards with red borders, A’s with blue borders, and Cardinals with green and yellow. I hate to admit it, but it reminds me a lot of ’92 Fleer in that way. That’s super mean because ’92 Fleer sucks. Still, the good outweighs the bad here by a huge margin.

Last month I got a whole box of this stuff for a measly sawbuck, and while I’ve decided to build sets based on box breaks in the past, it became obvious early in this break that that was not going to be the case. The cards all stuck together from age with less than half being serviceable specimens for a decent set build. Still, there were a few great moments in this break I’d like you to see.

That may be my favorite Alomar of all time.

The Maddux would have made pretty nice trade fodder if not for being so sticky. And Mark Lewis is hardly the focal point of his own base card.

Too much quirky photography to speak of in this tiny little space under the scan.

I am obsessed with meta-cards: that being cards that show other cards.

Simply one of the greatest base cards of the 90's.

A pretty decent subset with an extremely above-average checklist

This cards was the bee's knees when I was a lad

I got a nice selection of base cards and subsets out of that box, but when it comes to inserts, I only got one:

Imagine my surprise – a ’94 Finest card in a pack of ’94 Topps flagship. Turns out this isn’t so rare after all. A set of these special preview cards were randomly inserted at 1:36 packs. I’d like to have pulled a different player, but I was excited all the same. This is for trade, btw.

Let's go to the Griffeys:

1994 Topps #400

Here is a very simple but beautiful shot of the Kid in that peaceful moment when he, along with everyone else in the stadium, watches the ball float in apparent slow motion over the right field wall.

The lighting is perfect, the static field of mixed crowd in the background gives focus and singularity to Junior in the foreground, and the angle lets us see both the back of his jersey and his face gazing at what is presumably a very long fly ball. Even he looks amazed. Just a fantastic photograph.

The back gave us a reasonably nice layout with easy-to-read stats and even a blurb. The flipped-up shades photo is one of my favorite categories of Griffey photo.

Here is the third iteration of the Topps Gold Parallel:

1994 Topps #400 Gold

Unlike the gold versions of the ’92 and ’93 sets, the name and only the name is in gold foil here with the Topps Gold logo up top. In previous versions the entire nameplate was done in textured gold as opposed to just flat gold in the lettering. The look here is more modern and less garish than the Topps Gold of ’93, but I still prefer the ’92 version.

1994 Topps #388 All-Star Outfielders (w/ Lenny Dykstra)

These dual-sided All-Star cards appeared in several consecutive mid-90’s Topps sets, and it wouldn’t be the only card Griffey would share with Dykstra. I like the big lump in Lenny’s cheek here (it’s massive, like he’s chewing on a rolled-up sock), but I must admit that I did at one time have a problem with this card.

When I was young and didn’t yet think like a collector, these cards confused me because of the big “1993” emblazoned across the top of the card despite it being from the 1994 set. Similarly, the 1993 version with Griffey and Any Van Slyke reads “1992” and the one in 1995 has him with Barry Bonds and says – you guessed it – 1994. Part of me wished they would just say “All-Stars” and let us assume they were from the previous year. Whatever - it’s not as big a deal as the card’s flagrant tobacco use and tacky speckled dirt background (or is that also chewed tobacco?).

Here’s the Topps Gold version:

1994 Topps #388 All-Star Outfielders Gold (w/ Lenny Dykstra)

As subsets go, I prefer this one:

1994 Topps #606 Measures of Greatness

This subset is a veritable who’s who of mid-90’s stars, young and old. The front design here is kind of vanilla (the background of famous names and stats is pretty neat), but the back more than makes up for that. There we get one of my favorite stat boxes of the 90’s wherein we see Junior’s career stats up to this point compared with the average among all Hall of Fame outfielders. Below that we also get a career line for Stan Musial (with whom Junior’s career is often compared – they were both born in Donora, PA). Other stars in this subset got similar treatment: Frank Thomas’ numbers are set against Jimmie Foxx and Kirby Puckett’s against Joe DiMaggio. The recycled image FROM THE SAME SET (ARGHH!) is a little off-putting, but overall this is a really cool subset that I’d like to have seen more from. Oh, and the card back is purple. I like purple.

Here’s the Topps Gold version:

1994 Topps #606 Measures of Greatness Gold

1994 was also the second and final year of the massive Topps Black Gold insert:

1994 Topps Black Gold #8

I mean "massive" in that there are 44 guys in the checklist - I don't recall these ever being considered especially rare or valuable, And yet I had no idea these were such tough pulls until I checked the back of the pack. The regular cards were 1:72 packs with several partial set winners even rarer and the grandaddy ABCD set winner seeded at 1:3600. Do I need that card? Yes, I do.

In fact, the last few cards I need to complete the Griffeys of '94 Topps are all Black Gold redemption cards, so I'll just go ahead and list those here:

1994 Topps Griffey needs:

Black Gold Set AB Winner

Black Gold Set ABCD Winner

Before we get to this last thing, you should know that there were two different versions of the factory set you could buy back in '94, the retail and hobby versions. The hobby version included more Pre-Production Finest samples than the retail as well as a sealed pack of special preview cards featuring three cards of one player, those cards being each of the three biggest Topps releases of that year: Bowman, Finest, and Stadium Club. There were 45 different players for which you could pull one of these "Superstar Sampler" packs, one of which was...

1994 Topps Superstar Sampler Set (sealed)

This appears to be the rarest 1994 Topps Griffey item there is to find. I've seen loosies for sale between 15 and 30 bucks a pop, but a sealed pack is very rare, indeed. The cards within are almost indistinguishable from their regular set counterparts save for a small stamp on the back of each card that looks like this:

To be honest I only recently learned of these things' existence, and I've been checking the backs of all my '94 Stadium Club, Bowman, and Finest cards ever since. I've found zero more, but they're out there, guys. Check your stacks. In the mean time, this pack is going to remain sealed and top-loaded as long as I have anything to say about it.

Overall I'm a fan of '94 Topps. I like how they eased into modernity slower than everyone else, pretty much keeping it classic longer than anyone else did. By this time Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck - they were all decking out every one of their base cards in foil. Topps really let the photography do the talking this year, and the result is an above-average set.

Enjoy it while it lasts, though. Any "easing" Topps was doing into the modern age was certainly done by the time the '95 set came out. That thing is nuts.

4000! A Milestone, a Giveaway, and a Look Forward

On April 28th, 2014, my Griffey collection reached a milestone: 3000 unique cards. On August 10th of this year, 469 days later, it happened again. The unique Griffey count has skyrocketed to over 4000. Wanna see the culprit?

1996 Score Big Bats #2, my 4000th unique Griffey!

I started the last Griffey sort at 3,992, and this was the 8th new card added. That makes it super spesh.

The Contest

When we hit 3000 last year I held a giveaway, and this year will be no different. Last year’s contest was won by Jeff at One Man’s Junk (Wax) who was able to guess the number closest to the stamped numeration of card #3000. He won with Rod Carew’s jersey number of 29. As card #4000 has no numeration, this year is going to be much simpler.

Guess a number between 1 and 4000. That’s it. I ran a single randomization, and the number has already been generated with a time stamp of 8:22PM (performed on August 16th, 2015). I have a screen shot of said randomization waiting to go up on the blog no later than this time next week, so get your guesses in before then. One guess per person. I expect thousands (millions?) of entries here, so watch you don’t repeat someone else’s guess. Closest guess wins (not Price is Right rules).

The prize? 100 Griffeys of my choice from the Griffey Overflow Box. If the winner is a Griffey collector, I will try to choose only those Griffeys that person could use, provided you can get me a list. (Note: if you’re a supercollector like magicpapa or Jason from Virginia, I can’t make any promises – you may be getting some repeats, bro).

4000, though!

Now that the giveaway is out of the way, let’s talk about that landmark for a moment. Since the beginning of the year I’ve added 507 new unique Griffeys, just a bit short of last year’s pace. While I was averaging 2.67 new Griffeys per day in 2014, for 2015 I’m at only 2.23. So yes, growth has slowed, but I’ve been anticipating that for a while now. Why?

1. Inexpensive Griffeys are drying up. As I knock out all the cheap Griffeys, the holes in my collection become more expensive to fill.

2. Griffey’s HOF induction is upon us. Hence, his cards are enjoying a nice little price bump. Whether Beckett recognizes that or not, it’s happening. I’m watching it happen.

3. Former collectors are re-entering the market. 30-somethings who idolized Junior now have careers and expendable incomes. More are returning to the hobby every day. Case in point: I’ve watched the 1993 Finest Refractor Griffey I bought in 2013 DOUBLE in market price in just the last year. Those Holy Grail cards are on the brink of a resurgence as demand picks back up.

4. My tastes are getting more and more refined. The first scotch I enjoyed was regular old Dewar’s. A few years later Johnnie Walker Black was my go-to. Now it’s Balvenie Doublewood. I’ll still drink some Johnnie and the occasional Dewar’s on the rocks, but I pine for the single malts. The same is true for Griffey cards.

5. I’ve been doing quite a bit of whale hunting. In fact, the combined cost of three specific cards added this year is greater than the combined cost of every other Griffey I’ve acquired this year put together. Call me Ishmael.

I made this at the beginning of the year, and by the first week of March it
was a done deal

2014 was a defining year for this Griffey collection. It was the year we broke the 10,000 card mark (see: The Binge). It was the year of the collection’s biggest reduction in size (see: The Purge). But most of all, it was the year I made the difficult choice to truly focus on quality over quantity.

I went left

Even as the overall Griffey count nudges closer to 10,000 once more, I’m happy to report that I’ve been sticking with the quality road. This year’s acquisitions have been far more substantial with several high-profile adds and plenty of fun new relics. Despite slower growth, I have a lot more “sick” cards to show for it.

And to that point, the Top 30 Griffey Acquisitions of 2015 list is going to be a knockout come January, especially the Top 5. I have no idea how I’m going to order them. It’s a problem I love having.

A bigger problem is how I’m ever going to top it in 2016.

Thanks for reading!

Wallet Card Wednesday: Crawfish Murder Porn Edition

I know, I know: too many food-related posts on Wallet Card Wednesday; but here we sit at the tail end of the crawfish season (pun intended), the greatest of all seasons here in south Louisiana. It must be celebrated! For those of you who have never been to a crawfish boil, I can’t think of anything in the culinary world I can compare it to, but today I hope to give you a little taste of what they’re about. I brought my wallet card to every boil I went to. Here’s what that looked like.

If you’ve never had a crawfish (or crayfish according to…well, I don’t really know. Apparently someone out there calls these things crayfish), they look like little baby lobsters with tails full of delicious white meat. There’s also a little meat in the claws if you’re seasoned enough a peeler to get at it.

Yes, there is a ridge along the top-center of the tail that contains a little vein of poop similar to what you may find in shrimp. This is usually full of mud and completely harmless to eat. I don’t remember the last time I “de-turded” a crawfish.

In addition to the lovely tail and claw meat, there resides in the belly of a crawfish a delightful fatty “mustard” that can be sucked out of the carcass. I like to give the body a little squeeze when doing this which adds a small shot of juice in with the mustard. But beware: it’s a spicy cocktail of salty textures that can make you cough if you let it intrude too far into the throat.

The boil itself starts with live crawfish sold in 20- or 40-lb sacks. You empty these sacks into tubs or ice chests and give them a nice rinse with the garden hose before boiling. Some folks throw a few canisters of salt in, too, which is meant to “purge” the crawfish of any excess poop in their systems; but I don’t believe this does anything except waste salt. And yummy poop.

As you can see they start off this greenish-brown color. When they hit the boiling water two things happen immediately: they die, and they turn bright red. The same is true for crabs and lobsters, of course.

Creating the boil itself is the most important part. There are no rules as to what ingredients to use. Everyone has their own mix, but they all tend to consist of the same items in different quantities: salt, crab boil, cayenne, lemons, garlic, seasoning bags, and celery. 

Other edibles that go into the boil are potatoes (the little red ones), onions, halved garlic pods, sausage, and large segments of corn on the cob. Some folks get creative here and throw in any number of bizarre foods - things like punctured cans of peas, sweet potatoes, and Brussels sprouts (beware – these things are like little spice magnets). 

So you mix all that together, get it to a nice rolling boil, toss in the crawfish, let ‘em roll around for a while, let ‘em soak for a while, drain it (you can see an internal basket with drain holes in the picture seated in the pot), and pour it all out on a newspaper-covered table. Then everyone just kind of sits down and starts going at ‘em in whatever way they prefer. 

The peeling process has a sharp learning curve the key to which is simple practice and repetition. Everyone has their own style. Mine includes a quick snapping of the forward shell for easier meat extraction supplemented by ripping off of the crawfish’s genitals at the base. Sound hideous, I know, but the tail meat just slips right out. It’s a good system.

Having been to boils in numerous cities around the country, I can say there are some regional differences that cannot be ignored. Some places don’t put salt in the boil. Some don’t make them spicy at all. Many places (and this boggles my mind) season the outside of the crawfish. As in they pour spices and/or hot sauce all over the shells. Don’t do this.

But there are other extremes, too. One time in Texas I had crawfish so spicy that nobody at the table could eat them. Being the only person at the table from New Orleans, everyone looked to me with watering eyes as if to say, “Is this right??” I confirmed that it wasn’t. We had to send them back, a big deal since they were four bucks a pound and we had gotten 20lbs for the table. Another table even followed suit. The owner of the restaurant insisted his method was correct, so I asked him to show me what he was putting into the boil. Turned out the guy was throwing cayenne in there like a lunatic and not even tasting the juice before boiling. We ended up with "cajun" hamburgers instead (burgers + hot sauce - sigh), and hopefully the guy now makes edible crawfish.

Hey, remember when this was a baseball card blog? Anyway, crawfish. Eat them.

Wallet Card Wednesday: A Day on Bourbon Street Edition

My wife and I are kind of unofficial tour guides when someone we know is visiting New Orleans for the first time. It’s not that we’re full of interesting historical tidbits or anything fancy like that – it’s that we know the best way to get places, where to park, what order to see things in, and timeframes to make sure meal times align with certain destinations. Oh, and we know where not to go which is just as important.

This is Bourbon Street, and I am extremely ambivalent towards it. It can be a lot of fun, but as locals we also kind of hate it. It’s not so bad during the day, so that’s when we bring visitors who absolutely have to go there. A little day drinking helps the whole thing go down easier.

This is the courtyard of Pat O’Brien’s, a tourist destination to be sure but also a solid first stop. The piano bar here is the one by which I measure all other piano bars, and few can compete. At night the fountain in the photo spits both fire and water simultaneously.

There are two drinks everyone wants to try when they come to New Orleans: Hurricanes and Hand Grenades. While I always get a pair of Hurricanes at Pat O’s, my wife is a big fan of their mint julep. They muddle the hell out of one massive wad of mint for each one of these, so the flavor is strong and refreshing.

Down the road is Tropical Isle where you can get your Hand Grenade on. It’s not quite as polished a place to drink as Pat O’s, but it, too, can be a blast. Here’s a pee game you can play right at the urinal. Needless to say, Tropical Isle exudes class.

This, like the photo at the beginning of this post, was taken at the Canal St. end of Bourbon which has a lot more tall buildings and “nicer” strip clubs. Strip clubs in general are just terrible, but if you have to go I recommend Rick’s Cabaret on the left there. It’s not quite as skeezy as the rest. My bachelor party was there - the girl had kind of a Sarah Palin thing going on.

As your Bourbon St. experience wears on you may find yourself in one of the many random daiquiri bars that line the street. These places are catch-alls for random drunk people. Bright colors, loud music, tacky décor – they’re drawn to it. 

I don’t know how we ended up in here – could be that someone had to pee or saw a video poker machine or just wanted to switch to beer. Shoot, it may have been me that brought us in. In any case, we were here, so we made the best of it with a few jello shots.

On our way home we stopped at the Lakefront (we were with someone who had never seen Lake Pontchartrain) just in time for the sunset but a little too early to see the fishermen reeling in specks.

My advice to you if you’re coming to NOLA is Bourbon Street during the day, Frenchmen Street at night, and always ask a local where to go and the best way to get there. We’re more than a little friendly down here, so don’t be afraid to talk to strangers; but be wary of those that talk to you. Especially if they tell you they know “where you got your shoes.”

We Need to Talk About Kevin: a Trade Post

I can only dream of having a trademark as goofily recognizable as the myriad Bieber cards and stickers that have been coming out of France for the past few months. There's no mistaking what you're going to see when the Beeb's genetically-engineered hair helmet graces the top photo of a post: a bunch of cards from Kevin Lecath....Lecathe....Papoy. Kevin Papoy.

Kevin collects Griffey cards, so it means a lot that he would send me this silver parallel from 2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll. There are only 100 of this guy floating around, and the differences from the regular base card are very slight.

2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll #8 Regular vs. Silver #/100

The regular card foil is kind of a pewter color where the parallel is silver, but the most obvious difference is the use of blue accent in the regular card. There is also a gold version out there that is #/25 that I assume uses gold in the same way the regular base card uses blue. Someday...

I'm flattered by all the Marquis Grissom love I've been getting since adding him as a PC. I was also very excited when I heard he would be appearing in 2015 Archives as a Fan Favorite. With all the Braves collectors out there I think his card would be more popular were he in an Atlanta uniform, but I love this card all the same. The '89 Topps design is a childhood favorite of mine. And there's no denying that both he and Mr. Finley here have some great-looking signatures. Quelle bonne surprise!

I'm amazed at how many King Felix relics Kevin seems to get. I think this is the third trade package in a row he's sent that had one, and they're all numbered and from super high-end sets. Where are you getting these, sir? WHERE?

Kevin, like me, is a 90's guy; and his taste in 90's parallels is...well, unparalleled. These are three of the toughest-to-land parallels from 1995: we have an Upper Deck Electric Diamond Gold, a Stadium Club 1st Day Issue, and a Pinnacle Artist's Proof. These are not dime box parallels, my friends. They are PC gems.

On top of that was a refractor from the first year of Topps Chrome showing one of my favorite shots of Marquis Grissom looking kinda pissed. The man was known for his speed, but did he just get called out at second? Check out the cloud of dirt in the background - you know there must have been some serious sliding going on just a second before this was snapped. I have to believe he was safe here and just looks like that.

That Javy is a great example of early die-cutting and from fancy-pants Flair, no less. I've never owned one of these. And below that is a great-looking, numbered beast of Jay Buhner being his congenial self. I need to go bar-hopping with that guy before I die. When I do, I'll bring this card and a sharpie. The space below his name is begging for some ink.

Now honestly, Kev. How on Earth did these end up in France? This was not by chance. Somebody's been doing some personal shopping, am I right? Well done. I absolutely love 'em. I'm pretty certain they're going to end up in top loaders stored with my very best cardboard.

In case you were wondering, "boo-dro" and "clo-teal."

I'm happy to report that in my most recent trade package, I did not need to check the spelling before writing your real last name. I think we're approaching a level of familiarity that can be appropriately classified as "Bieber Buddies." Thanks a ton, Bieber Buddy!