You see, this set is a bad mother--
(Shut your mouth)
But I'm talkin' about 94 Score
(Then we can dig it)

Admit it, you were thinking the same thing… and you’ve seen this set the same way since it came out. 1994 Score is a bad mother: it’s strong in the right places, it makes risky moves and they work, it’s classy and suave and no one understands it but its woman (I guess “its collectors” would be more appropriate). If this were 1994 and you lived in a magical world where baseball cards came alive, you definitely didn’t want to run into Score down a dark alley. Unless your name was Fleer or SP, it would beat your ass every time.

It would do this in a number of ways, least of all with its silent-but-deadly, take-no-prisoners blue border. It’s almost impossible to believe that the same company responsible for 1992 Score created this set only two years later. Where the former was card design in puberty—an experimentation of ugly gradients and bright colors—’94 was understated and mature. Look no further than ’93 Score for the initial design shift towards sophistication, and though it’s not a popular set with collectors, that set did most of the heavy lifting for the brand’s later editions, ’94 included.

Also, where ’92 was bloated (893 base cards), ’94 was lean (660 base cards). Granted, we probably should give 1992’s set a pass on its massive checklist, as it was produced a year or so before it became industry custom to strip subsets from base sets and upgrade them into inserts, a practice Score started in 1993. By 1994, formerly traditional base set highlights like Dream Team and The Franchise (represented in ’94 as Gold Stars) had been sequestered to life as hard-to-find inserts, cutting down on the number of base set subsets. The strategy worked. In 1992 it was fun to get a Dream Teamer in your pack. By 1994, getting one was the best thing to happen all week (and yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how sad my social life was as a 15-year-old).

But this set didn’t just beat you with a flawless base set or good-looking inserts. It beat you with a classy parallel. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: I do hate parallels. But we’re talking about 1994 here, fool, the year the parallel came of age. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if news came out that 1994 Gold Rush was hand-crafted by dwarves burrowed deep beneath the Misty Mountains. Seriously, I think Heaven is missing a baseball card-related angel: Gold Rush is the most perfect parallel set ever created.

And as if that weren’t enough for you, if by some fluke you were still conscious after this pummeling, Score would send you to the hospital with its version of the right-arm wind-up, left-arm knockout. I’m speaking of course of Rookie/Traded.

Sure, it included the awesome Alex Rodriguez rookie “Call Up” redemption card, but the real scene-stealer here was the R/T base card design. It looked, in a word, terrible (though putrid, ugly, forgettable and shitty also fit the bill). But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the cards didn’t look like the regular set.

Thinking forward once again, Score took the opportunity Rookie/Traded created and not only debuted a new company logo but debuted a new card design, one that would—with a few tweaks here and there—carry over into their 1995 product. It was an ingenious move. The set itself, besides the hard-to-find Rodriguez insert, was weak and forgettable. But the idea that it could be an extension of the regular set and be some kind of live testing ground for future sets, well, that’s pretty powerful.

Note: I can't find the piece of paper that has my ordered list of remaining Countdown sets. I've decided to wing it, but I must warn you: there will be no set number 12. This will be corrected in later versions of this countdown.


When I say '1994 Fleer,' what is the first thing that comes to mind? The Update A-Rod rookie? The elegant design? How about the ridiculous amount of insert cards? Or is it so overwhelming a set that you're blinded by a swirl of all of the above? If your answer hovers somewhere around that last option, don't worry, you're not alone.

Following the logical design arc from the year before, 1994 Fleer not only boasts the best-looking front and back tandem of the company's decade, but considering the hodgepodge puke they released in 1995, the clean, almost flawless '94 seems like the end of an era.

Sure, the set's epically minimal design does sort of predict that 1995's design could possibly be the worst, most seizure-enducing stationary-subject product ever created by human hands (taking cues from the basic card backs of 1993 Score, the Fleer back-of-card used two lightly translucent boxes, set askew to suggest a very pleasant Frank Lloyd Wright sensibility), but the jump from a practically graphic-free layout to an overloaded frame the very next year is cause for alarm.

But enough about the design. This is clearly one of, if not the best Fleer checklist of the early decade. Following the new company tradition of an expansive set, each team had at least 20 players represented (the last 660-card Fleer checklist was released in 1990; subsequent sets from 1991 - 1994 consisted of 720 base cards. 1995's checklist dipped down to 600). Add in an Update checklist of 210 cards, not to mention a boatload of inserts--and by the way, this set should really be considered the epitome of the decade's insert mania--and you've got yourself a true 'master set.'

1994 Fleer and Update make nice additions to any collection, to put it mildly.And before I wrap this up, a quick note about Alex Rodriguez. I find it interesting that the two companies to produce his rookie in 1994 were Fleer and Upper Deck. Upper Deck now owns Fleer and Rodriguez himself is a Topps spokesman (Upper Deck's chief rival). It leaves the unanswered question of whether the hobby would have progressed differently had Topps, Donruss and Score produced Rodriguez rookies as well.

Its name said it all: collectors either loved or hated this set. I happened to love it. It was the perfect antidote to a hobby spiraling out of control. A throwback created not two years removed from the sets it emulated in spirit, it was the first in what would become a kind of weird tradition at Upper Deck: the ‘manufactured nostalgia’ set. It had a parallel worth collecting (the only appearance of any type of foil within the set). Its checklist was no-frills in a frilly way. It had rookies you cared about, players you revered and a simple, seersucker pinstripe design that brought sipping lemonade on the back porch and listening to the game on the radio, Disney World’s Grand Floridian Hotel and 1973 Topps to mind all at the same time.

The Collector’s Choice brand was the logical next step in the evolution of the Kids Kards sets (Topps Kids, Donruss Triple Play, Upper Deck Fun Pack): a brand with a buy-in point (99¢ a pack, if I remember correctly) that appealed to kids as well as empty-wallet collectors. With clean, sun-drenched photography, no-nonsense stat lines and simple blurbs that pertained to the player’s performance as opposed to his favorite hobby or TV show (inevitably Cheers or In Living Color), it elevated, instead of patronized, its audience. This is remarkable, considering we’re talking about the early Nineties, when there was a general crisis in how to get kids excited about a hobby in which they could no longer afford to take part. It’s also remarkable when you remember that we’re discussing Upper Deck, a company that had not only positioned itself as technologically superior to the competition, but more irreverent, fun-loving and self-deprecating—all qualities that are noticeably muted in this Collector’s Choice set (they would creep back onto the cards in subsequent editions). It wasn’t Upper Deck growing up (that had happened the year before), but it was Upper Deck taking all of its audiences seriously, which was perhaps more refreshing.

Yes, I can feel your stares on the back of my neck. And I’m ready for the comments expressing your incredulity at my not including this set in the top 20 of the early decade. First ’93 Upper Deck and now this? This one even has an A-Rod rookie! What, exactly, are you smoking?

Yes, 1994 SP was one of a handful of sets to including an Alex Rodriguez rookie card. Actually, it had four of them, plus a special autographed version available through Upper Deck Authenticated. But this is not the A-Rod Countdown, so I’ve approached sets with Rodriguez rookies like I did a few years back with those sets with Canseco, Clemens, Bonds and other hobby titan rookies (nice company, eh Alex?). This hasn’t been done to spread my personal dislike of Rodriguez, but because sets have to be rated objectively. Maybe you don’t agree with my rankings (and wait till you see who made the top ten!). That’s fine; let’s open the debate. I’m not doing this countdown to make friends (or really enemies, for that matter).

1994 SP was a beauty of a set. The cards weren’t the first to be printed on metallic stock, but they were the first to silhouette the players in such a way that they appeared grounded in reality, not floating through some Lawnmower Man alternative dimension. They were little pieces of gold, and packs were insanely expensive for the time (and today. Have you tried buying a pack? Forget it. It will probably run you $20 or more, and I’m guessing that it will keep going up as Rodriguez races towards the career home run mark).

I only bought one pack of these when they came out, and even though I got mostly commons—though check out the Delgado die-cut; yeahhh boy-eee—I coveted them like they were the treasure of the Sierra Madre.

But so what? As Upper Deck’s answer to the Finest and Leaf brands, SP may have been the popular choice as 1994’s king of the premiums, but that wasn’t exactly a tall order: Topps Finest couldn’t rebottle the magic of its debut set in 1993 and Leaf/Limited wasn’t that great (though it too had a Rodriguez rookie on its checklist). And besides, SP was the hot shit second fiddle to Topps Finest in 1993. That Upper Deck’s competitive fire was enough to turn the tables on Topps in 1994 was almost to be expected. That’s the way things work.

I’m not trying to come across as downplaying a set of SP’s caliber, but I… ah forget it. Call this set #17. Dammitt… now I have to rethink my top twenty.

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.

There are a few things I’ve never been able to figure out: the inner workings of the female brain, the inherent difference between Go-Bots and Transformers and what the point was of the elongated black and white photo in the lower left of the 1994 Upper Deck design. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never understand women, and I’ve decided that even though I couldn’t tell them apart, I liked the Go-Bots almost as much as Transformers. But that little black and white photo? I think we should get to the bottom of this one together.

It’s a funhouse mirror? The misguided beginnings of a Fibonacci sequence? Oh wait, I’ve got it… It’s a waste of precious real estate! It’s as if Upper Deck’s design team, by 1994 in the middle of the pack in terms of overall design (1. Score/Pinnacle; 2. Topps; 3. Upper Deck; 4. Fleer; 5. Puke; 6. Donruss; that’s right, ‘Puke’ boasted a better overall design than Donruss prior to 1994), all ate brown acid in the photo lab and embarked on a bummer of catastrophic proportions, only to commemorate it with a bizarrely skewed Mini-Me photo in the lower left. Don’t worry, they told themselves. Ain’t nobody gonna care ’bout a little old photo.

Well, I care, and not only because I’ve been stumped by its significance for almost 14 years. I care because it ruined a pretty great design, and ruined a possible four-year run—from 1992 through 1995—of great design that rivals anything any of the other sets had put out since 1976. (But, ah, let’s put the little black and white photo to bed. It’s tired. And it’s gotten me all riled up…)

As for the rest of the design, it’s a winner. Full bleed photography on both front and back, silver foil logo and player name on front and copper metallic typography on the back. Not to mention ample statistics and no clutter. What can you say? Upper Deck rides again.

For your consideration: before Topps re-ignited its relationship with old flame Mickey Mantle, Upper Deck had him. And while they were not so bold as to ram him down collectors’ throats in the base set, Upper Deck gave him ample voice in the insert department, including a wet-your-pants-if-you-found-it dual autograph card with Ken Griffey Jr. And one last thing about this set before we move on: 1994 was the first year of base set parallels in packs of any Upper Deck product (in addition to flagship’s ‘Electric Diamond,’1994 also saw the ‘Silver Signature’ set in Collector’s Choice, the ‘125th Anniversary’ set in All-Time Heroes and the die-cuts in SP). It’s hard to believe that Topps had something two full years before their west coast rivals, but there you go.

35. 1993 Leaf
I’m sorry, but even white boys have to shout: Even though this marked Leaf’s first foray into full-bleed photography, foil stamping and shiny hologram printing, the night skylines on the back outshined whatever bells and whistles they could throw in. It should have been the front design. With all apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot, 1993 Leaf is the ‘Baby-Got-Back’ set of the early Nineties.

The checklist? A snooze, with no major rookies to speak of (unless you count Curtis Leskanic as a major rookie), and Ben McDonald slated on card #1. Also: 106 inserts seeded over three series, including possibly the first cross-brand cards: Frank Thomas Hero Worship. I remember these cards in 1993 Studio; they were in Leaf as well.


34. 1992 Stadium Club
It is for this set (and 1991 Leaf) that ‘sophomore slump’ applies the best. Oh sure, I’ve thrown the term around quite freely over the course of this Countdown, but it is the very definition of 1992 Stadium Club.

Coming on the heels of one of the most iconic sets of the early decade, Topps tried to make this edition even better than the previous one. Because we’re talking about 1992, that meant adding inserts and send-away offers, not to mention opening up the checklist to seemingly include every major leaguer, and everyone they went to high school with–a whopping 900 cards in all (up from 600 in 1991). And yet even with all these base cards, and in one of the best rookie crop years to boot, there are few (if any) major rookies in the whole base checklist.

Instead, they were lumped into the special ‘SkyDome’ box set, along with the other subsets that Topps should have included in the base set: All Stars, Draft Picks and World Series Highlights. Maybe these cards weren’t included in the regular set because of timing. I don’t know. What I do know is that this special 200-card set is more exciting than the 900-card behemoth it followed, and had Topps cut out 200 cards from the base to include these SkyDome cards, 1992 Stadium Club would have been a more logical follow-up to 1991.


33. 1994 Studio
It was hard not to like Donruss’ Studio brand: the photography was amazingly sharp, the checklist wasn’t bloated, the overall base design was attractive and for the most part, it seemed like the set had little if anything to do with baseball. Of course, it had everything to do with the game, but since its inception in 1991 with those hideous charcoal-background portraits, Studio was all about infusing the stars of the game and the game itself with an artistic sensibility, like Diamond Kings come to life.

And like every other brand in the early Nineties, Studio was not immune to the insert craze. But because the base design was so classy, naturally it rubbed off on the inserts (actually, I shouldn’t say ‘naturally,’ because even some sets with the best base designs had some terribly-designed inserts; 1993 and 1994 Donruss come to mind). Studio debuted the tiered Silver and Gold Stars sets, as well as the filmstrip ‘Editor’s Choice’ (the film strip design motif seemed to be a big deal in the early Nineties, probably because of the heightened emphasis on quality photography). 1994 also saw the continuation of the ‘Heritage’ insert (contemporary stars dressed in historic uniforms), a personal favorite.

So if this set is so great, why does it rank somewhere in the middle of the pack? Simply put: it’s fluff. 220 base cards hardly constituted a major issue, and if it was real statistics you were after, Studio was not the place to look. But if it was senior superlative, yearbook-type body copy and old-timey boardwalk dress-up you wanted, Studio was your set.

42. 1994 Bowman’s Best
I never collected this set. Not when it first came out, and not any time since. My collection does not have one single card from this set. Chalk it up to lack of interest, I guess. So then why do I have it tucked into the middle of this Countdown? It’s because of my interest (bordering on obsession) with the art of checklisting.

This first edition of Bowman’s Best is a landmark in the way Topps divided the checklist, as well as in card distribution within packs. That they seeded two 90 card sets–red for stars and blue for promising rookies–within the same packs marks the first time in company history (as far as I can tell) that this was done (and that neither was an insert set). It’s a remarkable achievement. I’m not so sure you can say the same thing about the cards themselves.


41. 1994 Finest
In 1993, Topps Finest was something of a pioneer. It was one of, if not the first of the ultra-luxury sets. The checklist was limited to 199, with room only for the upper echelon of players (though guys like Dave Fleming and Mike Devereaux snuck in somehow), not to mention that the quality of the cards was staggering: the backs featured a full color gloss and the fronts resembled pressed beer can art. Everything about the set breathed ‘fine art a la baseball,’ and the quantities available and pack and individual card prices only reinforced that idea. And I haven’t even mentioned Refractors yet.

This background is important because without it, you can’t begin to understand why 1994 Finest was a major letdown. Finest’s debut the year before had got a lot of things right; the bar was set high, but not impossibly so. The limited checklist and quantity available allowed Finest to cater to a higher-end customer, and limiting the number of insert sets down to just the Refractors parallel set—especially in the context of insert mania in the early Nineties—gave the brand a refined air. Packs were expensive, there weren’t that many cards per pack, and the Refractors were scarce. In other words, everything fed off each other to create a perfect storm of collector buzz.

So why didn’t Topps follow the same game plan for 1994? Were they frightened of possibly appearing staid in the overwhelming hobby environment of push-push-push? It’s hard to say. Instead of taking the lead from the previous year, 1994’s Finest was bloated: With a total of 440 base cards—more than twice the amount from the previous year—it became just another ‘premium’ set without much substance.

Say this in your best Christopher Walken voice: "Guess what? I gotta fever... and the only prescription is more countdown!"


45. 1994 Pinnacle
There are two ways a set or a year could be deemed a Hobby Turning Point. The first is in content, ie rookies, subsets, corrected/uncorrected errors, major stars included, and perhaps the last cards of retiring stars. The second is in the medium and the technology in its presentation. For example, 1981 was a hobby turning point in medium: the hobby went from one manufacturer to three. 1987 provided a hobby turning point in content: it was one of the strongest rookie classes of that particular decade, squarely focusing future hobby attention on the seemingly endless waves of strong young stars.

I bring this up because I’ve been trying to figure out just where 1994 fits in. The year saw Upper Deck’s and Score’s first parallel sets and the first Bowman’s Best set, all of which clearly expanded the hobby landscape in a technical sense (I’m not counting UD’s gold hologram set from 1993, as that was released in factory-set form only). But it also saw the introduction of one of the decade’s defining rookies in Alex Rodriguez, a player who has become so important that all rankings, lists and analysis of sets from his rookie year must be made with his inclusion in mind.

This point sort of contradicts one of the pillars of my thoughts on how to rank a set. One great card does not a great set make; the set should be judged on its entire checklist. A great example of this is between 1986 Topps and 1986 Fleer. That year’s Topps set was iconic, even though it didn’t include a card of Jose Canseco. Fleer, on the other hand, could be best described as Canseco and a pile of commons. In other words, a given set shouldn’t be punished if it doesn’t have the big rookie from a given year.

I’m thinking I might need to amend this rule, simply because in 1986 it didn’t matter quite so much that Topps didn’t have Canseco, because there were so few sets (and Topps had subsets and other cards that Fleer, Donruss, and Sportflics didn’t). But because by 1994 there was so much parity in a hobby landscape of literally scores of sets, it certainly did matter if a given set didn’t include Rodriguez. Accordingly, in a countdown like this, sets without Rodriguez should be given a demerit.

That’s why it pains me that 1994 Pinnacle doesn’t rate higher. This was one of my favorite sets that I couldn’t really afford to collect: Clean, crisp photography on a full-bleed glossy stock, minimal front-of-card graphics and understated black backs. Just a great looking card, not to mention what has quite possibly become my favorite parallel set of all time (narrowly beating out the run of Silver Signatures sets from mid-Nineties Collector’s Choice): The Museum Collection. By championing the use of Dufex, Pinnacle created a gorgeous, shimmering card, and an excellent, poor-man’s stand-in for Topps’ refractors.

Unfortunately, that’s where the niceties end. The checklist seems stale in hindsight (especially without a Rodriguez rookie), with no real deviations for subsets within the base set, complemented by a smattering of boring inserts. All of it seems a little fishy, too, because 1993 Pinnacle had great subsets and massive, fun-to-covet insert sets (like Team 2001 and Then & Now), which seemingly disappeared from one year to the next. It’s too bad, because 1994 Pinnacle had its shit together in a big way in terms of its design. And that’s no small feat.


44. 1994 Bowman
No, this set didn’t have an Alex Rodriguez rookie, either. In fact, only eight sets had him on one of their checklists in 1994. Still, by 1994 Bowman had firmly established itself as a major player, if not the player in the rookie game. It didn’t really need Rodriguez to prove its position, even though many 1994 rookies weren’t surrounded by as much hype, nor made an immediate impact.

It took guys like Derrek Lee, Trot Nixon, Torii Hunter, and Billy Wagner a few years to get things going. And, like earlier Bowman sets, many rookies never got it going. Guys like Cleveland Lavell, Arquimedez Pozo, Gar Finnvold, Duff Brumley and the immortal Ruben ‘Derek Jeter Wanted Me To Steal These” Rivera. But the thing that brought attention to Bowman—even to a weak set like 1994—was that there were so many rookies. First came the flameouts, then guys like LoDuca, Renteria, Edgardo Alfonzo, and Wagner. Then a third wave of Lee, Hunter, Posada, Nixon, and others. By no stretch of the imagination can we compare this set to 1992 (or even to a lesser extent 1993) Bowman, but three waves of rookie interest does give your set some staying power.

Rookies aside, the rest of the checklist never struck me as exciting, fun, or even interesting. At just under 700 cards, I have always approached this issue as ‘just another set with all the same guys.’

The mantra of producing a set in the Nineties was that to compete you had to give collectors what they wanted: presumably a thousand versions of their favorite players, be it from the base set, as part of a subset, and/or in a mixture of inserts. But because every manufacturer was following this rule, you also had to be sure that your product stood out from the rest. So what did Bowman do? They slapped some shiny foil on the some of the cards. They gave every card hideous strips of metallic gold. But most of all they made it about the base set, meaning no inserts. Collectors might have come for the rookies, but why should they have stayed for the rest? I’m still trying to figure that one out.


43. 1994 Leaf/Limited & Leaf/Limited Rookies
I think I can explain the logic behind these sets. Obviously they are ‘These Go to Eleven’ sets from the Donruss and Leaf executives. Let’s start in 1990. Leaf comes out, trumping Upper Deck’s mind-blowing inaugural 1989 triumph. Then in 1991 Fleer chisels out the Ultra line, and Topps debuts Stadium Club, teaming with Kodak to melt some faces with full-bleed photography and full-color backs. (Donruss replies with unintentional comedic gem that is Studio.) 1992 sees the introduction of Pinnacle from Score, a beautiful card with crisp photography, black gradient borders and a thin gloss. 1993 raises the stakes even higher, with Topps’ Finest throwdown, Upper Deck’s stylish SP, and Fleer’s cigarette-cased Flair. Oh sure, Donruss still had the Leaf line chugging away since the 1990 bow, and a few of the sets were relatively decent (1992, 1993), but the manufacturer didn’t have an answer to Finest, Flair, or SP. Then in 1994 they released Leaf/Limited and L/L Rookies, super-premiums that accelerated the arms race for the deep-pocketed, new-card collector.

And truthfully, even though I considered the appearance of sets like these as a sign of the hobby apocalypse, they aren’t bad looking. The base card looks like a cross between a playing card and the cardboard back to a new razor, with squares and dark lines harking back to those heady old-school Donruss days of 1985 and 1986 (albeit L/L is a little classier).

The base checklists are tight: L/L is at 160 cards; L/L/R at 80. And yet no one stands out. That’s because the star of this show is not in one of the base sets. It’s in the L/L/R insert set ‘Rookie Phenoms.’ I’m speaking, of course, about the Alex Rodriguez rookie, gold-foiled up the wazoo and serial-numbered to 5,000. Talk about summing up the future of the hobby in one card.

But let’s get back to the actual base sets for a moment. Were they even collectable? I’m not sure. Besides being wowed by the super-premium-ness of it all, what were collectors after? Without the inclusion of the Rodriguez rookie, these would rank lower than late-run Triple Play.

It’s 1986 Fleer Syndrome all over again. Too bad Leaf threw their Canseco stand-in in as a hard-to-find insert, leaving almost everyone with the pile of commons.

This is my fourth stab at a re-introduction to the Nineties Countdown. I was going to characterize the Nineties as the baseball card hobby going through puberty, but it seemed a little over the top. Then again… voices cracking, overnight acne explosions, hair in weird places… all of these things happened in their own special way within the hobby, seemingly overnight.

Where did I leave off? More importantly, does it even matter? The early Nineties were a gluttonous, sweaty free-for-all, with so many sets that there seemed to be one for every type of collector. You like shiny things? No problem. Maybe you’re more interested in re-hashing the glory days of nostalgia? We got those. Don’t like grubbing with the kiddies? Might I interest you in a Superkalifrajilactor of Nolan Ryan? How about some bulk rookie lots of promising summer campers?

I know that I left off back in July at set #50 (1993 Stadium Club), but I just did another tally of the sets and I think I should’ve numbered that one #48. So, for those of you who haven’t read the first half of the Countdown, and the rest of you who’d like a reminder, here’s what’s come before:

The Early Nineties Countdown (So Far)

75. 1994 OPC
74. 1993 OPC Premier
73. 1993 OPC
72. 1994 Sportflics
71. 1994 Triple Play

Sets 75 through 71 were considered so bad that they weren’t worthy of analysis.

70. 1991 Leaf
69. 1990 Fleer
68. 1990 Bowman
67. 1994 Select
66. 1992 Donruss
65. 1991 Donruss
64. 1993 Select
63. 1990 Topps
62. 1992 OPC Premier
61. 1994 Pacific
60. 1994 Topps
59. 1992 Triple Play
58. 1993 Triple Play
57. 1992 Fleer
56. 1992 Fleer Ultra
55. 1994 Leaf
54. 1993 Fleer Ultra
53. 1994 Fleer Ultra
52. 1991 Fleer
51. 1991 Upper Deck
50. 1994 Stadium Club
49. 1993 Topps
48. 1993 Stadium Club

Whew. What a pile of garbage. And aren’t we all sort of to blame? I mean, we hyped them to each other and saved for them and bought them by the boatload. Well, at least we don’t have to think about them unless we want to. I mean, if you’re still wistfully pining over 1993 Triple Play, well, jeez…


47. & 46. 1993 & 1994 Upper Deck Fun Pack
Fun to the mutha-effin’ Pack, homeboy! Yeah, I can’t imagine any sort of respectable gangsta rapper saying that, either. But you have to admit it, the Fun Pack sets were pretty awesome, and for those all too brief ‘Kids Kards’ years (1992 through 1994), Upper Deck showed the world it knew how to really overstuff a set, especially a set with less than 250 cards in the checklist.

The subsets were so over the top that it was almost like Upper Deck was using the Fun Pack brand as a testing ground for the unbelievable decade they were quietly assembling. The more you look at Upper Deck in the early Nineties, the more you see that it wasn’t just creating sets, it was establishing itself as Master of the Subsets.

When you think about the Nineties, what do you think of? I think of inserts. And while all the card companies were in on the act, it felt like Fleer won the race for sheer quantity produced, and Upper Deck led the way in originality. And because printing plants had evolved from the Topps Sixties, inserts were no longer rinky-dink cardboard, but mind-blowing holograms, diecuts, cards with protective layers, refractors (you know, I’m not really sure what a refractor is made of, exactly, besides crystallized sugar, fun thoughts, and LSD-soaked blotter paper), cards in 3-D, and other glossy, see-through, heat-sensitive, fold-out, sequentially-numbered guilty pleasures that immediately went from pack to top loader. I still salivate thinking about some of those cards.

And just one more word about the ‘Kids Kards’ movement. 1992’s Topps Kids was a great set, but whereas Topps created it by removing the bells and whistles from their other sets from that year, the great thing about the Fun Pack sets was that all that extraneous bullshit that made inserts great was included within the base set. Maybe that’s why these sets seemed to do better than the noble Topps Kids experiment: kids like shiny things. They like interactive, over-the-top bullshit with bells and whistles.

I mean, who doesn’t?


More Countdown Coming Soon! This time, I mean it.

You've done too much damage.
Now get outta here!

This trade comes in from Tony in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Giving: Ichiro, #104
Getting: Honus Wagner, 1994 Ted Williams Card Company

I know I'm the one who decided to trade away all his Goudey cards, and so far I don't regret that decision, but tonight I'm a little jealous. Tony's getting a great card of one of my favorite players: Ichiro Suzuki.

Don't get me wrong, I'll take a Wagner in trade any day of the week. It's just that this Ichiro is one heck of a beautiful card. Give 'im a good home, Tony.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The Pyramids of Egypt.
The Great Wall of China.
The Astrodome.

When you think of the great wonders of man, these items usually float to the surface. Well, I’d like to add one more to the list: The Jeff Bagwell Rookie Card.

Why should the Bagwell be on the list? I’m glad you asked. When Bagwell is inducted into the Hall of Fame, he may be the first Hall of Famer whose rookie card is worth less than ten dollars. Tell me: how do you explain that?

I’m sure the first thing you’ll mention is that Bagwell came on the scene at the height of card production in 1991, so his cards are worthless because there were so many of them. Maybe you’ll add that because there were so many of them, everybody had one so no one would pay that much for something they already had. Or maybe you’ll say that Bagwell wasn’t that big of a deal when he broke in, so there’s really no point in getting worked up over nothing. Also, didn’t he hit a boatload of home runs during the steroid era?

It’s true, all of these things are going against him, but the facts are like this: Bagwell was National League Rookie of the Year in 1991, he consistently excelled for over ten years, he was a perennial All-Star and all of his home runs were clean. Plus, he played for one major league team for his entire career—not too many guys of his generation can say that (I’m looking at a checklist of 1991 rookies right now and only Tim Salmon and Chipper Jones fit that category).

#53. 1991 Upper Deck
Including Bagwell in the regular set was a smart move for Upper Deck, as it provided added oomph to the high series and allowed the Final Edition to stand on its own as a look-ahead to 1992, featuring rookies Thome, Lofton, Klesko, Rondell White, Pudge Rodriguez, Dmitri “I Collect Only 10s” Young and of course Pedro J. Martinez (his only card from 1991).

In fact, the checklist for this set is incredibly well balanced in terms of debuting rookies. The Low Series had cards of Phil Plantier, Eric Karros, Mike Mussina and Chipper Jones, plus first cards (not rookies) of Mo Vaughn, Chuck Knoblauch and Frank Thomas giving everybody the finger. The High Series had Jeff Bagwell and Final Edition had everyone mentioned earlier.

But rookies alone can’t save this set from mediocrity. Enter the Heroes of Baseball insert series. Upper Deck really went hog wild with the inserts in 1991, with 45 different cards, plus five autographed cards (Hank Aaron, hobby workhorse Nolan Ryan, plus Harmon Killebrew, Fergie Jenkins and Gaylord Perry), up from ten inserts and one autograph in 1990.

And yet, even with the Bagwell Rookie, the Chipper card and the Pedro Final Edition card, plus the extra-curricular help from the Heroes, this set is still lousy. Who’s to blame? Maybe it was the cheap card stock that made the cards stick together. Maybe it was the crappy design that seemed to take up more front of card space than in years past. Or maybe it was that the hobby was catching on that Upper Deck, though expensive looking, autograph-loaded and hologram-encrusted, was a one-trick pony (insert autographs and they will come). And they were tired of that one trick.


#52. 1994 Stadium Club
Remember Stadium Club? Remember how it used to be three series? Jesus, they made a lot of cards in this set. And don’t forget that they made two parallel sets this year: First Day Issue and Golden Rainbow. And the funny thing about all of this was that I never knew a single person who cared. You know what I mean? Seriously, did anybody know someone who put together an entire Golden Rainbow set from 1994? And what kind of name is ‘Golden Rainbow’ anyway?

In 1991, when Topps debuted Stadium Club, no other set ever made had featured full-bleed color photography on every card. And yet by 1994, just three short years later, the full-bleed photo had become a sports card cliché. What had made Stadium Club the shit to rock in 1991 was keeping it down by 1994. Add a tired post-Grunge zine-style American Typewriter freeware font and faux cool ripped look on the front and ugly graphics, utterly ridiculous text treatments and nonsensical statistics on the back and you’ve got yourself a truly forgettable design.

I never could figure out what was worse: the prospect that because there were so many of these cards I could never ever complete even the most basic set, or the fact that I was repeatedly suckered into purchasing $1.25 packs even though I knew the first part was true.


#51. 1993 Topps
Topps ’93, in one word or less: disappointing. I had a lot riding on 1993 being a good year for The Flagship, but it was just, well… boring. And it had so much going for it: two-headed All-Star cards, four-headed rookies, a Draft Picks subset with Jeter and a Coming Attractions subset with Jim Edmonds, plus full-color headshot/mini-action shots on the back (Topps’ first set since 1971 with a back-of-card headshot and the first time ever in color). And who can forget the hologram explosion disco that was Topps Black Gold?

1992 Topps, with its clean, modern Craftsman-style lines and thin uncoated stock, is one of my favorite sets of all time, so I guess you can chalk up my lackadaisical attitude to the fact that Topps made a change for 1993 and printed the cards on a sort of thick, smooth coated cardboard stock. On the new cardboard, the whites seemed really white, almost teeth-gleaming white, while the other colors sort of all blended together, which made the white borders seem all the thicker. I also could never get the corners to bend and fray. That might seem like a godsend to most collectors, but as a purist it almost feels like Topps was cheating the system. I wonder how many graded 1993 Topps Jeters there are out there at 9 or better. I would bet quite a few, simply because those corners were made of steel. Coated white cardboard steel.


#50. 1993 Stadium Club
Topps Writer 1: There must be some mistake.
Topps Writer 2: I’m telling you, there isn’t.
Topps Writer 1: But…we just did one of these sets last year. Wasn’t that enough?
Topps Writer 2: Man, how long you been playing this game? It’s never enough. Just when you finish one they’re on you about the next one and the next one and the next. It never ends.
Topps Writer 1: Jeez… Do you think people really buy all this stuff?
Topps Writer 2: Who knows…
Topps Writer 1: Hey, I’m being serious here. Does anybody really even want another one of these sets?
Topps Writer 2: Hey man, I only work here…
[BEAT]
Topps Writer 1: …Do you ever feel like you’re wasting your life?

The funniest thing about Stadium Club circa 1993 was that their best set of the year wasn’t even produced for general hobbyist consumption, but in a specially boxed set distributed solely at Toys ‘R’ Us. The cards, despite sporting the trademark Stadium Club full-bleed photo, were flimsy, cheap, had beginner’s guide to graphic design front and back graphics and featured end-of-the-roll type photos, like this great one of Sheff striking out with a guy in a skirt in the background straddling part of the dugout, or whatever it is he’s doing back there. Plus, the cards were stamped with just enough gold foil to make them feel legit. It was a great set. I wish I could remember who was in it.




Baseball Funnies

What do you call Jose Canseco without the juice?


Ozzie Canseco


More Countdown Coming Soon!

57. 1994 Leaf
Oh man, it’s been a long day. And here I am, staring down 1994 Leaf and I can’t even remember the damn thing. Nothing—and I’m scanning that old Beckett I told you about before, and yet still nothing. According to my mid-Nineties price guide, there were eight insert sets and it looks like Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas dominated just about all of them. That brings up a funny point: remember when you’d scan the latest Beckett or Tuff Stuff and notice that they’d list every single insert card from a set except for one and then also note what a common from that insert set went for? I hated that. It’s obvious that they had the page space to list every card (plus I collected Fred McGriff, and more often than not he’d be the one they’d leave out).

So coming back to this Leaf set for a minute, I feel like a dunce for ranking it towards the middle of the pack (granted, the high end of the middle) and then not remembering one thing about it that may have made it special, or horrendous. So let’s try to forget this ever came up.


#56. 1993 Fleer Ultra & #55. 1994 Fleer Ultra
1991 is generally recognized as the Year of the Boom in the hobby, though perhaps a more apt name would be the Year of the Great Crescendo, as it was not so much the beginning of the present day landscape—1993 was. No, 1991 was truly the last year of the Topps Dynasty. (Yes, I know I’m on record as having said that 1989 was truly the last year of the Topps Dynasty, but generally unwritten history’s designed to be a little fuzzy, so cut me some slack). So with three important products coming on the scene in 1993 (Fleer’s Flair, Topps Finest and Upper Deck’s SP), not to mention that scallywag Score Select, it became more important than ever that the premium products already out there were strong enough to deflect the new competition.

1993 Fleer Ultra survived the influx, but not without boring us all to tears in the process. Ultra’s marbleized design ruled across all four major sports (baseball, basketball, football and hockey) in 1992, and instead of mixing it up and trying on something new, the Fleer execs pulled a Donruss on us and gave Ultra the subtlest of facelifts for ’93. Granted, the cards were good looking and the inserts somewhat desirable, so no big deal, right? Well, I would argue that precisely because they didn’t even try to raise the bar for 1993, Ultra put the onus on 1994’s product to perform in an ever-expanding marketplace. And while 1994 Ultra at least had a major design overhaul, a boatload of inserts, autographs of Daulton and Kruk and draft picks, it was no prize pig.


54. 1991 Fleer
I have been moved to tears over matters of the baseball card encrusted heart only twice: upon seeing the beautiful T206 Wagner framed, matted and on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the first time I ripped open a pack of 1991 Fleer.

From the moment my hands touched yellow cardboard, I knew that this was the worst set ever made. If all the card companies had attended the same high school, 1991 Fleer’s face would’ve been plastered all over the senior superlatives pages: ugliest, most worthless, most useless. Not even pimple-faced, greasy-haired Donruss would’ve been seen hanging out with this one.

So then why the hell is it ranked here and not at the bottom of the pile? Because. That’s why. Back in the day I would have characterized this set as Ugly with a capital ‘U’. But I’ve mellowed out, and some may even say I’ve matured just a little bit. I’ve grown to appreciate the inner beauty in ugly things, so now it’s only ugly with a regular lowercase ‘u’.

To be fair, there are positives (they’re just few and far between). Take the Pro-Visions and All Stars insert sets. Those PV’s really knocked my socks off, mostly because it was completely obvious to me that if Fleer had only made the whole regular set with kick-ass black borders, I would’ve collected this set by choice, instead of by necessity, as it was still one of the only sets I could afford.

The checklist on this set was pretty drab. Granted, Fleer had all the big names, and even a great card of Bonds and Griffey billed as ‘Second Generation Stars’, but what it had in stars it lacked in rookies. To illustrate this point, let’s briefly compare Fleer’s 1991 (meaningful) rookie class with that from 1991 Score.

1991 Score
Phil Plantier
Brian McRae
Mike Mussina
Carl Everett
Jeff Conine
Todd Van Poppel
Rondell White
Chipper Jones
Ivan Rodriguez RT
Luis Gonzalez RT
Jeff Bagwell RT
Pete Schourek RT

1991 Fleer
Phil Plantier
Luis Gonzalez
Jeff Conine
Brian McRae
Ivan Rodriguez U
Jeff Bagwell U
Pete Schourek U
Mo Vaughn U
Chuck Knoblauch U

Fleer loses this one easily, for two reasons. First, Fleer did not include cards of draft picks so therefore didn’t have rookies of Mussina, Everett, Jones, White and Van Poppel. Because they didn’t include draft picks in the 1990 set either, they had to wait on Vaughn and Knoblauch for almost two full years later; both debuted in 1991’s Update set.

Granted, both the Fleer and Score rookie crops pale when compared with Bowman. In addition to everyone named above, Bowman had perennial Blue Jay Pat Hentgen, Jim Thome, Tim Salmon, Bret Boone, Roberto Hernandez, Wil Cordero, Kenny Lofton, Javy Lopez, Ryan ‘The Forgotten Superstar’ Klesko, Eric Karros and that unforgettable hobby monster, Raul Mondesi. Bowman was all about the long-term, the rookie that would mature into the superstar. Score was all about having close to a thousand cards in the base set. And Fleer, sadly, was all about neither of the two. For Fleer to have had an impact, it needed immediate rookie sensations to carry the set (the company even acknowledged as much the next year with their ‘Rookie Sensations’ insert set).

When I approach this set today, I save my tears. Sure, I still feel bad about this set; upon close inspection it represents the idea of ‘wasted opportunity’ surprisingly well. It had the potential to contribute more than it ultimately did. But 1991 Fleer does not break my heart anymore. Today my heart is tired from much bigger things than a pile of lousy yellow cardboard.

Last night I finished reading Pete Williams’ Card Sharks, an excellent read. The book, currently enjoying a round of renewed attention thanks to Michael O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson’s The Card, is great not only because it confirms my personal thoughts on Upper Deck, but because it helps me appreciate how the other companies approached UD, both leading up to its debut in 1989 and how they reacted and played catch-up in the early Nineties. It’s especially poignant in regards to this latest Card Critic Countdown.

It’s also interesting to note that there aren’t very many written accounts of the history of the hobby, and certainly few from the collector’s point of view. Not to be too self-indulgent here, but I think the recent burst of collector-fueled blogs is exactly what this hobby needed. Finally the collector has a way to express his or her own history in the hobby, how they approach collecting, what they’ve taken away from it and where they see it heading.

Anyway, the book is a good litmus test to see how much of a diehard collector you are. If you can make it through this book and still be in love with collecting cards as much as you were before, despite all the crap that the Upper Deck executives pulled, and how under the guise of “making a better baseball card” they mostly just sucked the soul out of the hobby—then congratulations, you’re really in this to the bitter end.

One last thing not related to the current Countdown. Yesterday I bought a hobby box of 2007 Topps Series 2, and although I got almost every card except Daisuke Matsuzaka (which leads me to believe his card may be as hard to find as Griffey Jr. in packs of 1989 Donruss), it didn’t really bother me, as I got this unintentionally funny card of Fernando Rodney and Pudge Rodriguez. Rodney is really into it; it looks like he’s waiting for a smooch. Too bad Rodriguez is still in his mask and pads.



#65. 1990 Topps
Ah, good ol’ 1990 Topps. A jewel in the rough. Yeah…not really, but sometimes it’s fun to pretend. It’s actually pretty amazing that this set was as bad as it was. Think about it: draft picks cards, Nolan Ryan Hero Worship, a decent crop of All-Stars, good Turn Back The Clocks (especially the 1975 Freddie Lynn, perhaps setting the precedent for later Archives Best Years and other retired players sets where they turn four-headed rookies to one-headed rookies with ease and grace), various other subsets and of course, Ken Griffey Jr, poised on the dugout steps gazing up into the sky, hopeful for a long, achievement-filled career. It’s a set brimming over with optimism.

It even had a high-profile error card, back when Topps was in the error card business by mistake. A quantity of Frank Thomas’ draft pick card, already one of the best cards in the set, were printed without his name on the front. Prices on the secondary market went through the roof and have stayed high, even after almost eighteen years and despite problems with counterfeit error cards.

Unfortunately, in terms of design, when Topps shot for ‘computer-gradient cool’ it missed widely and instead delivered ‘patchwork puke.’ This was one ugly set. Actually, you could say that it set the bar for the decade in terms of ugly design. Any ugly set that followed had to be compared to 1990 Topps to put its ugliness in perspective.

I want to say that this set has aged gracefully, that today’s sense of fashion, design and sensibility have grown and changed enough to be able to accommodate for Topps’ hiccup. But I can’t, because while the world has progressed, this set is woefully stuck. Instead, here’s what I appreciate about 1990 Topps: the unreadable backs and the ill-advised 3-D front, not so much for what they are as for what they symbolize: these design choices sum up just how much Topps (and the rest of the non-Upper Deck companies) had riding on predicting Nineties pop culture and style better than Upper Deck. Thumbing through a stack of 1990 Topps is like staring the end of the Topps Dynasty in the face.

Once the Traded and inaugural Major League Debut sets came out, it all but confirmed what the regular set had established: Topps was on the brink of becoming just another card manufacturer.


#64. 1992 OPC Premier
It was a big deal when O-Pee-Chee came out with their Premier line in 1991. I remember paying over a dollar for packs of Premier in 1991. But 1992? There was no hype, no buzz, nothing surrounding the set. And the set itself was like a minor tweak of 1991. Historically, that shouldn’t have been a problem. 1982 and 1983 Donruss differed only slightly in their design. But it was a problem with 1992 OPC Premier.

The player name, the crux of the 1991 design that was at once so crisp and delicate, was suddenly large-print size in 1992. The photos themselves were also softer, the backs were portrait instead of landscape and there were more cards in the set. But the real difference was that it was something in 1991 for a set to have a full-color back, with a color headshot, especially since not everybody could afford Upper Deck and Stadium Club. By 1992, that novelty had worn off. Too bad O-Pee-Chee didn’t get the memo. Ultimately, this set needn’t have existed.

#63. 1994 Pacific
God, how I loathed this set. Bad photos, unreadable front type, stupid company logo, cards that stuck together, bad back design (complete with torn linen resumé paper bottoms). The only good thing was that it was half in Spanish. Everything should’ve been in Spanish. The way it was, it seemed like a half-assed job to me. Think about it: the Player’s Association should of let Topps just make cards in Spanish, like they did with O-Pee-Chee for French-speaking Canadians. They could’ve built off the resurrection of the sets Topps released in Venezuela in the Sixties and early Seventies. People would’ve become interested in those hidden gems, if however briefly. Anything would’ve been better than Pacific’s set from 1994.

#62. 1994 Topps
I kind of liked this set when it came out. It was a derivative of 1993 Topps, only with a better design, better photos and a nice thin gloss varnish on the front and back. I call it derivative of 1993 Topps because it was released in two series over the course of the season and Topps Gold parallel cards were seeded one per pack, which was kind of neat. There weren’t too many All-Star caliber rookies (though Konerko and Jason Schmidt made an appearance in the Traded set), and All-Stars were head-to-head AL/NL by position. Really, there’s not much to say about this set.
That’s because it’s not who’s included in this set that is important, but who’s not. Topps had three chances to include a card of Alex Rodriguez in this set, but didn’t. Only a handful of sets did include the A-Rod rookie (SP is the most notable), and those that did were rewarded with more interest from collectors.

I guess the only thing I can add right now is that I unearthed this card of Barry Bonds over the weekend. When this card came out in 1994, it perfectly summed up the hero cloaked in stoic greatness. Today it’s still perfect; a perfect photographic metaphor of the shadows that have enveloped much of this man’s game.




More Countdown Coming Soon

#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