To properly celebrate the hot shit that was 1991 OPC Premier, I should really do my review in French, or some half English/half French (like the cards themselves). The only problem is that I don't know French, so I'm afraid you're going to have to bear with me.


When I was a kid I did not grow up wishing to be President (I spent my childhood trying to figure out how to take over a baseball card company). Even now, politics don't enter my thoughts all that often. That said, were I to assume an office, my choice would be head of tourism for Quebec. I'd bet that as soon as I got in there and put my ideas in motion, people would forget all about the gratuitous backroom fixing that was required in giving me, a U.S. citizen, a prominent job in the Canadian government.

First order of business: hire an intern and make him/her wear the Youppi costume and travel around the province for a series of impromptu photo opportunities. Second order of business: buy up the remaining unopened cases of 1991 OPC Premier and give out packs at hotels, tourism offices, hospitals, border crossings, forest ranger stations and with credit card bills at fine restaurants. Because really, card collectors already know of the majesty (and no-longer-valuable bounty) of the set, so saving them for hobby use is without merit. Really, a set of this magnitude needs to be shared by all.

Just how great was this set? Great enough that it's one of the best French Canadian exports of the last 25 years (definitely higher on the list than Celine Dion, herself a national treasure). Great enough that I still feel a lump of excitement in my belly every time I run across a loose card in a stack, like that card could somehow still be worth something, or its subject could come back to light up the circuit in one last go round.

It was unapologetically Canadian, with a boatload of Blue Jays and Expos. It was also unapologetically elitist, before that term really existed amongst manufacturers. It was high-class, with an elegant front, understated back and checklist to match. With only one or two rookies you could get your hopes up about (Kirk Dressendorfer, anyone?), Premier was all about second-year guys and superstars. Frank Thomas, Albert Belle, Bernie Williams, Kevin Maas, Mo Vaughn, Moises Alou, David Justice, Juan Gonzalez, plus most of the biggest names in the game (though no McGwire or Bonilla). With only 132 cards, the whole checklist had only two Brewers (Molitor and Yount), two Mariners (Griffey and Tino Martinez), two Phillies (Morandini and Dale Murphy) and one Pirate (Bonds). Oh, and exactly zero members of the Houston Astros.

The cards were thin, but printed on quality stock. They came seven to a pack (this at a time when packs had at least ten cards per) and cost an average of $1.25. Buck twenty-five in 1991! And I paid it gladly for a chance at Thomas, Belle and the others. And you know what? I don't think I was alone. This was a premium set that I could afford. And for someone who missed out on Leaf and couldn't afford Stadium Club, Premier was an attractive alternative.

So the next time you're flipping through a magazine in the waiting room at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire De Quebec, remember that if I had it my way you and the guy next to you with the broken nose would be bonding over a few packs of Premier.

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