Contrary to what Donruss would want you to believe, Fred McGriff never won an MVP award. Did he ever deserve one? No, probably not.
But so what? Teams need players like McGriff to be successful. In a similar vein, someone recently said that teams wouldn't win with a whole roster of Dustin Pedroias. Why not? The guy has over 200 hits, 100 runs, he hits for average, he's a good fielder... what's not to like? Is it because he's short? Scrappy? Prematurely bald? Is it because he does that weird thing with his mouth and eyes before every swing? The same could be said for Fred McGriff. Could a team win with a roster of Fred McGriffs? Who wouldn't want a bunch of guys consistently smacking 35 homers, driving in runs and hitting for average?
Though until recently Pedroia had been putting together an MVP-like season, guys like Pedroia and McGriff aren't really MVP-caliber players. They're complementary guys. They're guys who make a lineup formidable. And though they're not a given lineup's heavy hitter, they're guys pitchers don't want to face in any situation.
They're like Thursday night. It's not quite Friday, but you're almost there.
Why are baseball cards made? I know I keep asking that question, but it’s important. I’ve been batting around different ideas, but the most realistic answer I’ve come up with is “Because it’s big business.” Name me another product that is tied to childhood, nostalgia and bonding with family and friends more than Topps Baseball Cards. I can think of only four: Coca-Cola, firecrackers, TV and Playboy Magazine. All are timeless products that have helped shape the American identity. “The first time I…” with each is a venerable rite of passage.
One side of business is branding, so obvious and important in the baseball card business (especially during a period such as the early Nineties, when there were scores of different products competing for dealers’ shelf space and collectors’ attention).
Another side is competing in the marketplace. For all intents and purposes, there was one manufacturer from 1956 to 1980. In 1981 that figure tripled to three and by 1989, with the introduction of giant killer Upper Deck, there were six. And though for those thirty-some-odd years it may have seemed like there was Topps and then there was everyone else in terms of market share, Topps’ response to competition (or lack thereof) helped the company slip in the standings. It got so bad for the company that it took them two years to respond to the biggest threat the company had yet to face: Upper Deck. In Topps’ defense, it was the worth the wait, as the inaugural 1991 Stadium Club release was a fantastic set, and Topps wasn’t alone in its delayed reaction. It also took Fleer two years to lob its response (1991 Ultra).
But by waiting two years to respond to the higher-quality standards of Upper Deck, Topps and Fleer were no longer responding to just one company, they were jumping on the bandwagon of a hobby trend: premium cards.
Born out of 1989’s Upper Deck (and possibly even 1988’s Score set), premium cards were printed on higher-quality stock, with better photography, brighter colors and more bells and whistles, most noticeably the heavy use of metallic ink. To ensure their desirability, manufacturers released them in a more limited quantity (or that was the idea). As such, they could charge dealers more per case, dealers would pass on the price increase to the collector and the value of individual cards would skyrocket. Add in the big ball of hype surrounding the hobby at the time and it was a recipe for success.
The company that didn’t wait to see if premium would survive more than a year was Donruss. By repositioning their Leaf brand as a premium set, they ensured not only that theirs was the first Big Three (Topps, Fleer, Donruss) response to Upper Deck, but that the set would garner more attention within the hobby.
All this preparation could’ve backfired had the set been terrible. Luckily for Donruss (and collectors) it wasn’t. Far from it. If we pull back for a moment and look at the long-term values of the set and individual cards, the Sosa rookie is still within the $15 to $20 range, which is remarkable considering all the bad press he’s accumulated over the past five years. Unopened boxes still go for $30 - $60 each and it’s safe to say that the cards remain in demand.
Long-term card value is not the reason why I’ve ranked this set so high. Premium or no, this was a great set. The design wasn’t bad: there was a subtle futurism thing going on that included more than a healthy dollop of metallic ink. The photography was excellent. The cards were printed on clean, smooth white stock. And the checklist was stellar.
With big-name rookies (Thomas, Sosa, Olerud, Justice, Walker) and strong second-year guys (Griffey, Belle and Randy Johnson), Leaf was suddenly the coolest kid on the block. The Thomas rookie was at one point as big as Griffey’s iconic Upper Deck rookie from the year before and when Sammy Sosa became a household name in 1998, there was no bigger card of him than his Leaf rookie.
It wasn’t just the rookies and young guys that made this set desirable. Like with any popular card set, what’s old was suddenly new. Cards of veteran stars and other established players were desirable.
But perhaps the most telling statistic for the popularity of a given set is the price for individual commons. For context, you can probably get a common from 1990 Topps for two or three cents. For Leaf, expect to pay a dime per common. That’s five times the average rate for a Topps common from the same year. That difference is, in a word, sick. I think you have to go back to 1984 Donruss before you see a common price that’s even remotely in the same league. Seems like the initial decision to limit the quantity paid off.
Was it a good decision for Donruss to jump the gun on their response to Upper Deck? I think so. It was a strong set that whet collectors’ appetites not just for more Leaf, but more premium cards in general. And though our opinions differ of if it was good for long-term card quality, we all can agree it was good for business.
By 1990, Donruss and the other baseball card companies were beginning to understand that their industry was in a very different place from as little as three years before. Following the initial across-the-board quality of Upper Deck, the others suddenly found their market shares smaller. In order to stay competitive, they had to find the intersection between maintaining a traditional set and adapting to the competition with bells and whistles.
From what I can tell, Donruss’ idea of “bells and whistles” was to go red. Eye-catching, hellfire, mid-life crisis, love-it-or-hate-it red. That’s not to say their strategy didn’t work. I, for one, was both shocked and pleased to see them shake their black and blue funk (every year’s design from 1985 to 1989 had either been black or blue). The new color, coupled with the risk-taking cursive signature player name on the front, helped the set stand out in the crowd.
They made two other significant changes from the previous year. First, they put together a fantastic checklist with Diamond Kings you wanted, an intriguing “insert set” (MVPs), kick-ass ‘King of Kings’ and ‘5,000 Ks’ Nolan Ryan cards and one of the strongest Rated Rookie classes in years. Second, they let the presses fly without bothering to hire proofreaders.
Obviously that claim isn’t true, but consider the circumstances: just a year before, one of their competitors (Fleer) grabbed endless headlines after one of its cards (Billy Ripken) featured an obscenity. In order to prolong the news (or simply because they didn’t know how best to handle the situation), Fleer corrected the card not once but four different times throughout the season, resulting in five available versions of the card and guaranteeing a hard-to-find, highly collectible product.
Granted, it’s hard to monitor quality on every single card of a set, but 1990 Donruss featured eight error cards, with two of those being high-profile Nolan Ryan cards and one coming in the insert set (Glavine for Smoltz). Makes you wonder about motive.
Like other strong Donruss sets, in order for it to be truly great there had to be rookie balance over the entire checklist. This was certainly the case for 1990. Donruss had a track record of including great Rated Rookies since Bill Madden put together the first on-card-denoted subset back in 1984, but ran into trouble sometimes when it came to seeding rookies into the rest of the checklist. No such problem in 1990. With eleven desirable Rated Rookies (the most since 1987), the set found balance with rookies of Sosa, Larry Walker, Bernie Williams, John Olerud, David Justice, John Wetteland and flameouts like Junior Felix, Dwight Smith and Jerome Walton.
Yes, the base set lacked a Frank Thomas rookie (and so did the boxed Best of AL and end of year Rookies sets), but in this instance (unlike with 1990 Bowman or Fleer) it didn’t matter. Bowman nor Fleer had Rated Rookies to divert the attention away from the glaring Thomas omission.
Regardless, despite its overall quality and the changes the company made for 1990, this set finds Donruss at a crossroads. Yes, it has a checklist with more than a few highlights. Yes, it has the company’s third foray into insert cards. And yes, it was done with an eye-catching palette. But with the introduction of Leaf as a premium brand, created to compete and out-do Upper Deck on its own level, 1990 was the first year Donruss was the other brand for the company.
You know, it’s funny, but some companies seem to be able to cope year to year; their releases make sense as a cohesive whole. On the surface, this seems to be the case with Donruss (at least in terms of design). But if we dig a little deeper and examine the sets they released from 1990 through 1992—the first three in their role as secondary brand—the company seemed to go a few steps forward in 1990 (clearly their best set of the early Nineties, and their best since 1987) and then two or three giant leaps backward the next two years (crap in ’91 and more of the same for ’92).
It’s as if Donruss simply didn’t know what to do with the brand now that it was number two. Two series? Full color fronts and backs? Save rookies for an insert set? Did anybody even notice? Or care? Despite creating a great set for 1990, it was the beginning of a sad period for the brand.
It's taken me a while to accept it, but I've decided there's no use beating around the bush anymore: there are just some things that I'll never truly be able to experience, no matter how many hours I spend outfitting my Delorean with time-traveling capabilities.
One such event was a certain brainstorm at Donruss HQ. You know the one I'm talking about. The one where they decided that the time was finally right to take the Glamor Shots phenomenon out of the malls and share it with an audience as yet unaware of its glory. And hell, the hobby was practically a perfect storm; no one would have noticed had it flopped.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about the day Donruss sprung Studio on the world. And despite the fact that you may be able to take Glamor Shots out of the mall, no matter how you dress them up, you can't take 'the mall' out of Glamor Shots. And yet, this set was a hit. Because really, how could it not be? First of all, we're talking about 1991 here. If it was an air of quality that you were trying to exude, black and white photography set against a cross-hatched resume paper backdrop was de rigueur.
A limited checklist helps too. As does a metallic ink border (red copper, anyone?). Oh, and don't forget slapping big-time rookies right into the set instead of quarantining them as inserts. Who can forget Sammy Sosa's hair soufflé (even if they've spent the last 17 years trying)? One more thing helps distance this set from the rest: no inserts. And no bullshit.
Alright, a little bullshit. But in a good, Steve Lake-with-a-cockatoo-on-his-goddamn-shoulder senior superlatives way. That was what this set was known for; it was what separated it from the pack. Nothing wrong with that. Don't try to be more than you are, I say. Never mind that this was the first real, honest to God set that didn't use one color photo in 31 years (1960 Leaf had been the last). And while the return of black and white was somewhat of an accomplishment, the real hero here is the evolution of photographic equipment since 1960. Instead of a set of deer-in-the-headlights major leaguers, Studio could have been stray photos from a hairdresser's idea book: fades, mullets, crewcuts, feathered, layered; practically every style was represented.
It's too bad this set didn't exist in the late Seventies. Professionally-shot Avedon-esque portraits of guys like Oscar Gamble and Sammy Stewart. Can you imagine how great a set like that would be? I guess the closest set to Studio were the SSPC sets from 1975 and 1976, though the photos were taken at the ballpark. What can I say? I'm greedy. And disappointed that I'll never know what Willie Montanez's favorite TV show was.
While the countless other brands fought tooth and nail for a foothold in the hobby, GlamorShots, excuse me, Studio was the only set with a truly unique position: showcase the players as well-rounded individuals. And do so on great-looking cards. Instead of re-inventing the wheel each and every year, all they had to do was pull down a different backdrop: 1991 saw the classic charcoal, 1992 had a close up on a craquelure newspaper photo and 1993 gave us jersey detail. All that was missing was the hand-on-chin pose in front of the bookcase and soft-focus lighting on stars in the night sky.
For Studio, baseball was just window-dressing. The real focus was the emotional side of each player. From Curt Schilling: Hobbies are golf, war gaming and military history… Might have been a history teacher if he hadn’t been an athlete. And from Robin Yount: Hobbies are golf, motorcycles, cars and fishing… Might have been in professional racing if he hadn’t been a baseball player.
The key to this set was that players had lives off the field (who knew Curt Schilling liked to play Risk?), and were somewhat normal human beings with normal, everyday dreams. Robin Yount wanted to be the next Richard Petty? Me too. It’s the ‘me too’ aspect that takes down the wall between player and fan and endears them to us (damn you, psychological window dressing!).
This was a gorgeous set. Sure, some of the inserts were ugly (MVPs, Long Ball Leaders, Spirit of the Game, Elite, Award Winners), but others were fantastic (Decade Dominators, anyone?) and the base set was probably the nicest-looking Donruss design since… well, at least since the black’n’red of 1985.
But what really made this set unbelievable was that just three years earlier Donruss still held tight to their nerdy line motif. And yet, despite 1992 being one of the worst designs of the early decade, without it and the 1993 set, there’s a good chance that 1994 would look very different (this kind of design transition was nothing new to the hobby: in 1969 Topps released a minimalist set, then in 1970 did gray borders, setting up a short-lived design renaissance consisting of 1971’s black borders and 1972’s psychedelia). Let’s take a step back for a moment to note how 1994 Donruss came to pass (from a design sense).
1991 was the last ‘traditional’ Donruss issue, with thick patterned borders that completely surrounded the photograph on the front and came in two colors (green and blue), dependent on the series, not the team. ’91 also marked the last year of the pictureless, statistic-heavy two-color back (black for text and a border in the same green or blue of the front). 1992, while hideous in design, moved the set onto a better, more durable stock, with a four-color front and back, replete with a headshot. Because they added color (and thus photography) to the card backs, Donruss took a step away from showcasing row after row of statistics. 1993 saw more of the same: the borders on the front got thinner, the photography got more adventurous on both the front and back, and while they provided roughly 40% of the back for stats, gone was the always-entertaining ‘Career Highlights’ section (usually devoted to recounting a player’s freak injuries). For more on 1991, 1992, and 1993 Donruss, see earlier Nineties Countdown posts.
So then it made sense that 1994 would feature borderless photography on the front (it was next logical step). What was truly amazing was that Donruss made the backs borderless photos as well (with overlaid graphics); biographical information and statistics seemed as mere afterthoughts on these cards. And while I’m usually a proponent of full career statistics, the sparse use of typography (in any form) works well in this design.
Coupled with the more refined design was a refined checklist. 1994 saw the return to 660 cards, and the checklist had a ‘classic Donruss’ feel (despite there being no Diamond Kings in the base set, or, for the first time in 11 years, any Rated Rookies). And the set was not even really hurt by the fact that there weren’t Rated Rookies (though it would’ve been nice to have a 1994 Alex Rodriguez Rated Rookie, right?) or really any other, unmarked rookies to speak of. 1994 was all about veterans, doing veteran things, including a subset of cards celebrating various veterans’ accomplishments spread out over the checklist (many of them checklists themselves). There was even an insert of 1984 reprints.
I was 15 years old in 1994. And with greasy, matted hair, embarrassingly thick glasses, and a face full of pimples and a mouth full of braces, I was old enough to appreciate a thing of beauty.
These scans are from TwinsCards. Visit their great site if you get a chance.
32. 1990 Upper Deck
If you were Upper Deck, how would you have followed the seminal 1989 set? With an equally revered set in terms of design, availability and checklist, or by capitalizing on the hype surrounding your somewhat limited 1989 production run with a flood of product?
I haven’t looked at Card Sharks since reading it last summer, so forgive me if I paraphrase. The gist of the situation was that because the 1989 set took almost the whole hobby by surprise, everybody and his brother wanted to get in on the ground floor for Upper Deck’s 1990 release. Upper Deck, understanding the situation, was smart because they required dealers to buy in way in advance, guaranteeing a wide distribution. Then, as dealers realized en masse that the 1990 product was kind of a dud—and that the hobby was flooded with massive amounts of the product—Upper Deck was already laughing its way to the bank.
Why was it a dud? A couple of reasons. First, it wasn’t 1989 Upper Deck. The inaugural set was impossible to follow; any set in its wake was going to suffer. Second, the player that 1990 UD should have put on card #1 (Frank Thomas) wasn’t even included in the set (he wouldn’t find his way onto an Upper Deck card until 1991). Third, the stock was flimsy and the design seemed weak in comparison to 1989. I say that it ‘seemed’ weak because it actually wasn’t, it was just minimal to a fault. Fourth, there were so many of these cards that the special-ness of the Upper Deck brand seemed to evaporate.
But even though it was a dud at the time, the cards survive well. Sure, the stock is flimsy, some of the rookies have fallen by the wayside, and the design is a little boring, but it’s not a bad follow-up, especially when you take the situation into account. It bears repeating: any set would have had a hard time playing successor to 1989 Upper Deck.
31. 1993 Donruss
After creating birdcage-lining sets with ballooned checklists in 1991 and 1992, Donruss did something peculiar in 1993: they released a nice set that was worthwhile to collect. (They also did something interesting that didn’t seem so at the time: they released a set of 792 cards, the number of cards Topps practically trademarked in the Eighties. Why 792? It broke down nicely to two 396-card series. Ironically, though it didn’t feel that way, it was Donruss’ largest base set ever.)
It’s almost as if they frantically yelled ‘Wait! Wait!’ in vain as the trucks left the printing plant in 1992. Lesser companies would’ve turned to drink and vice, and probably closed up shop. Donruss just went back to the drawing board and came up with a somewhat attractive design, a balanced checklist worth buying into for both series, and inserts that felt more like true inserts rather than glorified subsets.
They also breathed new life into the by-then stale Rated Rookie subset by spreading the cards out over the entire set, and paring down the amount of them to 34 (from 40 in 1991 and 44 in 1992). By doing this, Donruss no longer felt naked without the Diamond Kings as a base set subset. It also allowed the Rated Rookie to become more of an event card (see the David Nied RR on #792, the last card of the set).
In addition to all the improvements on the base set, 1993 Donruss should be characterized as the brand’s transition set. It was the first Donruss set since 1981 without a puzzle. And even though they had separated the Diamond Kings into their own insert set in 1992, 1993 saw the brand put a greater emphasis on inserts (seven sets in all). The rest of the Donruss Nineties would follow suit.
Reader Grant sent in this question earlier today via email. If you can help him out, leave a comment to this post.
"I'm searching for an answer to a bit of baseball card mystery. I have a set of the 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best. The whole set itself is not factory sealed anymore but each individual pack of cards in the set is still sealed.
I noticed something some time ago that I've not seen before with this set and I have seen a few of these sets over the years. The pack that has the Gary Sheffield showing on top, also has Gary Sheffield on the bottom of the pack, showing the back of the card.
Naturally, I can't help but wonder: Is the whole pack full of nothing but Gary Sheffield cards? I've been looking and looking and have not seen another one like it nor have I found anyone else that has seen that. So, that is my question: Do you know anything about this or have you seen anything similar with this set? So far I've resisted the urge to open the pack but man is it tough. Any suggestions?"
If you don't feel comfortable leaving a comment, email me and I'll make sure your answer gets to Grant.
I just finished reading a rough draft treatment I wrote last year about how the explosion of card production in the early Nineties pretty much set the table for the implosion at the end of the decade. To illustrate this, I had singled out 1991. My thesis was that this year more than any other should be recognized as the true starting point for the premium card era, and that combining perceived value with vast over-production allowed for card companies to claim limited availability while cranking out the crap.
Highlighting this point seems obvious to me; I’m glad that I didn’t publish it on the blog. But there was something in there that I'd like to talk about.
The Evolution of the Donruss Diamond King
The Diamond King subset cards in 1982 Donruss were the first cards to feature out-and-out paintings since 1956 Topps. For nine years, 1982 to 1990, the subset featured the previous season’s stars, one from each team, in goofy headshots on colored backgrounds, each year more outrageous than the last (culminating in the bizarre Alexander Calder-esque background explosions of 1990).
Then, in a move that can only be explained as a Donruss executive realizing the 1990 Diamond Kings kind of resembled dried vomit—albeit in a totally awesome, Tron’n’Skittles way—the brand moved towards a more serious outlook for 1991 with stoic portraits (usually reserved for the oak-paneled walls of an early century gentlemen’s study) replacing the tried-and-true toothy grins and action painting. It was an interesting move, not only because it reflected the collective distance the hobby was putting between itself and the posed, close-cropped sideline portrait photography that had been featured on at least 90% of cards since the dawn of time, but because it essentially robbed Donruss of one of its trademarks: the humanized hero. Without the warm-toned close-ups and headshots, the Diamond Kings felt cold and distant, a meaningless element of a meaningless set. 
It’s also interesting to note that while Donruss was busy pushing the camera back, Score was eagerly pulling it closer. 1990 saw the pastel introduction of Score’s Dream Team subset, and while the subset became the Oddly Homoerotic Dream Team in 1991 (at least three cards featured shirtless torsos: Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson, Kirby Puckett), the factory-set-only Cooperstown insert set took the pastels to their soft focus, ethereal pinnacle. It was almost like Score had out-Diamond King'd Donruss.
It's been almost sixteen years and I still don’t understand why Donruss pulled the Diamond Kings out of the base set for 1992, and I’m not entirely sure it was a good idea. I mean, I get that they were trying to compete in an out-of-control marketplace lovesick on inserts. But isn’t that why they had Donruss Elite? If they really needed a more tangible insert that anyone had a chance of getting in a pack, couldn’t they have put their heads together and created something new? By pulling the Diamond Kings from the base set, Donruss effectively killed their own product.
#69. 1991 Donruss
1991 Donruss is one of those sets that don’t deserve your time or your energy in analysis. Here’s my review of this set, in ten words or less. Blue. Green. Two series. Cheesy Donruss Elite Inserts You’ll Never Find In A Pack. OK, so that’s fourteen words, but that’s about it. Also, there were something like two hundred Rated Rookies, probably to better compete with Bowman and Score.
#68. 1994 Select
When I got my hands on sample preview cards from this set back in early 1994, I couldn’t help but ask what the point of issuing this set might be. The fronts had two photos separated by a thick gold foil band with the player’s surname stamped out, so that the photo behind it showed through. It was just way too busy a design for anything to register. It was almost like having an epileptic fit, even though nothing was moving.
In essence, Score had to release this set: with Select they effectively had a product for every price range—Score for the cheapies and the kids, Select for the middle-of-the-road and Pinnacle for those deep-pocketed, discerning collectors. The only problem was, 1994 Select was garbage, so middle-of-the-road collectors took their money to other brands. 
#67. 1992 Donruss
This is one ugly set, in both design and checklist. The only card you’d be happy to get in a pack of 1992 Donruss was the randomly-inserted Ripken autographed chase card, and the chance of finding one of those was so astronomically small that opening pack after pack of this crappy set was like some kind of baseball card purgatory.
And it’s too bad, because this set had certain makings of a great (if not at least good) set. It was the first Donruss set that not only had a headshot on the back, but more than one color back there. It was just the second Donruss set that came in two series, and one of the only flagship sets to be issued in two series, giving rise to the possibility of multiple special subsets (in order to drive sales throughout the season). Instead, 1992 was the first year Donruss pulled the Diamond Kings from the regular set, putting them instead into an insert set.
Without Diamond Kings to infuse a little Dick Perez into the set, the checklist was a perfect example of monotony. This set became top and bottom blue bar hell. Granted, it was the first set without the trademark Donruss Tron-inspired borders, but without any hint of dark colors to separate the photo from the background, Donruss actually hurt their standing in the hobby. They had spent almost ten years building up an image in terms of design (very masculine, with straight lines and sparse use of color) and transitioned away from it without even the faintest whiff of pause or regret, stranding those collectors that appreciated a geek-inspired design to help them through the summer. Too bad Donruss didn’t see it that way.
#66. 1993 Select
I wanted to like this set. Hell, I did like it. It's just that, well, this set was bad. And there were a lot of bad sets in the early Nineties. A needless set that may have been decent, with decent design, but had only come about because hobby had become a virtual free for all in the early Nineties. Most were unnecessary, but some of those sets had historical significance. 1993 Select is one of those sets that I liked, were bad, and had balls enough to make a difference for sets that followed.
It’s important for its design, as it was the first Score/Pinnacle product to feature a slightly off-kilter graphical border; going all the way back to Score’s 1988 debut, all previous front-of-card design had plopped the photo in a traditional rectangle (only the two-toned infield of 1989 Score deviated, and then not even very much, as that element was layered over the photo). 1993 Select was also one of the first sets regardless of manufacturer to bleed the photos all the way to the edge (but only on two sides, and then not all the way on either side). Only the premium brands Fleer Ultra and Topps Stadium Club beat Select to the punch, and for the record, photos bleeding to the edge as a design advancement was very 1993, as Select, SP, Flair, Studio and Leaf all made the jump. By 1994, borderless fronts were par for the course.
It’s also important because it was one of the first sets promoted across two different product lines. In 1992, Donruss inserted a packet of 1992 Leaf preview cards in each of its 1992 Donruss factory sets. On paper, that’s a pretty good move: I know I was underwhelmed by the freezer-burn blue of 1992 Donruss and no way did I find myself wanting to purchase packs, let alone the factory set, but the incentive of Leaf preview cards was intriguing.
With the launch of Select in 1993, Score took this idea a step farther. Score inserted Select Stat Leaders, a mammoth though rather pedestrian set (much like 2007 Topps’ Generation NOW), one per pack of 1993 Score (an incredibly underrated set). Granted, there were a ton of cards in Stat Leaders (90), almost more cards than actual statistical categories, but odds were you’d never get the same card twice, and, if you liked the design and the gloss (oh yeah, Select had a glossy front), you might try a pack of Select.
So then it’s a shame that this set came entered the market as another needless premium set debuting the same year as SP, Finest and Flair, three vastly superior sets against which Select could only compete in vain.
I guess that's why they called it 'Select'--only a select few of us chose to collect it.
1990s Countdown Sets #65 to #62 Coming Soon