Topps, Upper Deck & Michael Eisner Walk Into a Bar...

I don't really consider what I do 'baseball card punditry', as I'm really just a collector with a lot on his mind. I have noticed, however, that a number of people come to The Baseball Card Blog on a search for information on the sordid Upper Deck-loves-Topps, Topps-loves-Eisner, Joanie-loves-Chachi affair that has tortured our hobby for the past few months. Therefore, here's a list of every post on The Blog where any of it is mentioned.

These date back almost a year, starting with my post last summer 'Six Steps to Save the Hobby'. That post was written in July 2006 with a fantasy world in mind, though now it seems at least part of it is coming true. I've also included links about and my reviews of 2007 Topps and Upper Deck, for context.

Six Steps to Save the Hobby
New Topps Baseball
The Trouble with Topps
2007 Topps: Card Critic Weighes In
All Your Bazooka Are Belong to Eisner
Card Critic: 2007 Upper Deck Series 1
Interview with The Card's Michael O'Keeffe
Crain's NY Business article

Regional Bias in Card Distribution?

I've always been one to put stock in conspiracy theories, no matter how vast and improbable. All I need is a little outside encouragement to one of my hare-brained schemes and I'm off. That's why writing this post was the next logical step after receiving the following email this afternoon from Anthony in Houston, Texas:

"I currently live in Houston but am originally from San Diego, therefore a Padres fan. My son's newfound interest in baseball cards has us buying a pack or two (Topps or Upper Deck) every few weeks. I don't know how many packs it has been by now, maybe 20, but I cannot get a Peavy or Hoffman or any other Padre of relevance for the life of me! We have at least 3 team cards and recently got 1 Marcus Giles and Josh Bard. In the meanwhile we must have collected 4 Griffey Jr's! Of the last 30, only 3 were from teams west of the Mississippi.

This has me wondering: are cards sold in a regionalized fashion or not? I am thinking of having someone ship me some cards from California just to see if there is a difference."

My response? Funny you should ask... I'm in the boat (whether it's a raft or a cruise ship, I'm not sure) that believes card companies heavy up distribution of the local teams when they know where the boxes are going to be sold. You know, now that I see those words in print, it doesn't really make sense that Topps or Upper Deck would go to such lengths...does it?

I mean, there has to be another reason why I've opened more than my fair share of this year's Topps (Series 1 & 2) and have pulled two Jeter stunt cards but no Daisuke Matsuzaka rookies, right? It can't possibly be because I live in New York, surrounded by Mets and Yankees fans who don't want to be reminded of the Red Sox, can it?

Midsummer Night's Live Blogging

Nice night we're having, perfect for some pack-opening live blogging. It's 9.02 in the pm where I am, and I have a short stack of six-card packs from a Kmart big box of Topps Series 2 I purchased earlier today. Let's get right down to it.

Pack 1
First, before we get started, I want to say a little thing about box and pack iconography. I don't know when it stopped, but boxes used to have images of lots of cards from the set plastered on them. Take 1984 Topps. A huge picture of Steve Carlton on the box top with other guys like Jim Rice around the sides. For 2007 Topps has David Wright flashing his gigantic teeth and eyebrows wrapped up in an American flag on its boxes and packs of Topps Opening Day. For the flagship set it's Ryan Howard for Series 1 and David Ortiz for Series 2. I'm not complaining; those two guys are great but...wait a minute--I am complaining. I need there to be cards on the sides of the boxes so that I know going in what I'm getting myself into. Right?

So anyway...can't get Pack 1's wrapper open...stupid foil...foiled too tight...these cards are gonna fly all over the room when I get it open like a pack of M&M's...first card is...

Zack Segovia, Phillies rookie. Wow, this guy looks like he's at least thirty, kind of like Greg Oden...Also, he went 16 and 6 in 2006 in minor league ball. Here's another complaint, quickly: because Topps has big block letters announcing rookie status, there's no room for minor league stats on the back. I want to know where this guy's been.

Adam Dunn, Reds. Good to see Dunn was given a 2nd Tier number (#520).

Orlando Cabrera, Angels. If you haven't seen any of the Topps Series 2, a) you're not a collector of new cards and b) there are a few things that just don't make sense. The first thing is that there are many true error cards throughout the set. So many, in fact, that Topps had plenty of chances to correct a card that was actually screwed up instead of promoting a card that was screwed up on purpose. One of things that doesn't make sense are the team names. One such team is the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (nee California). They are listed as simply 'Angels.' It's backwards from how the Rockies are listed in the 2007 Fleer set (every team is listed by their nickname, whereas the Rockies are listed as 'Colorado Rockies'...it's like they're fucking with us just because they can)

Mickey Mantle Home Run #303 I hate this insert set. They should've done it by showing the Mick getting progressively more decrepit. Cards 1 through 100 could've been him in great shape, holding up a bottle of champagne. Cards 101 through 200 could be him smacking a home run, cards 201 through 300 would be him clutching his knees, 301 through 400 would be him drinking and glazed over, 401 through 499 him yelling at someone behind the scenes at a card show, card #500 at the Hall of Fame, and 501 through 565 gazing stoically into the distant. That seems more like a set I'd collect.

Chad Cordero, Nationals. Chad's got a nice clean signature.

Sean Casey, Tigers. I've always liked Casey. He's had a pretty good career, toiling in somewhat obscurity. If he'd had his peak years in a New York or Boston uniform, he'd be known by a lot more people.

Four good players, a Hall of Famer and a rookie.


Pack 2
Hector Gimenez, Astros rookie. Gotta love those rookies who've already had surgery.

Norris Hopper, Reds. Norris is my new favorite player. He's a true rookie; this is his rookie card. Plus, how great is this, they have his minor league stats--all nine years.

Manny Acta, Nationals manager. I thought Frank Robinson was the Nationals manager. Apparently not.

DiMaggio's Streak: Game 32 Here's another useless insert set. Again, this would've been great if it had been 56 cards of Joe counting his money.

Randy Winn, Giants. Can anybody tell me what Randy's first name is? Because I can't for the life of me read it in his signature.

Jose Bautista, Pirates. Jose's got his arm cocked at an angle that looks entirely unnatural.

One good player, one immortal Hall of Famer reduced to a boring insert, a rookie and my new favorite player, Crash Davis--sorry, Norris Hopper.


Pack 3
Brandon Morrow, Mariners rookie. Morrow's glove has a giant Nike swoosh on it.

Doug Slaten, Diamondbacks rookie. It's good to see that even career relievers get rookie cards in new sets. Used to be that you had to wait for the all-encompassing Bowman set for rookies of guys who may become the next Scott Linebrink or the next Jeff Nelson.

Angels team card. They look they're all in a boat together.

Ken Griffey, Jr., Reds. To quote Matthew McConaghey in Dazed and Confused, Alright, alright! Now we're talkin'! Big number 4-5-0. Good to see Topps is back in the business of Hero Worship.

Hit Parade: Gary Sheffield, Tigers. Not a bad looking insert, but the rainbow refractor shit is kind of annoying...and yet oddly soothing when you tilt it back and forth.

Tim Hudson, Braves. What's worse: the photo of Hudson's back or the fact that Hudson's win/loss has got progressively more mediocre over the years?

Two rookies, a team card, two great players and an insert of a lunatic. The best pack of the three, without a doubt.

...Two more packs to go...


Pack 4
Gavin Floyd, White Sox. Lots of photos in this set look like they were taken at a GlamorShots down at the mall. Too bad Floyd didn't opt for the fake bookcase, or even the forest; the charcoal doesn't work.

Brian Lawrence, Rockies. I know that on the back there's a quote that says Brian doesn't accept mediocrity, but damn that's a mediocre photo, the highlight of a boring-ass card.

Juan Encarnacion, Cardinals. I like that on the back Juan's stats are spaced real far apart because it's obvious Topps didn't have a block of text to include. He's been in the league for eleven years and they have the guy's stats presented like Phil Niekro.

Jason Bay, Pirates. Why is Bay checklisted at #411? He should at least be a 3rd tier number, like 445 or something. So this brings up a question: should there be such a thing as a 4th tier number? And if so, which numbers would be designated 4th tier?

Generation NOW: Ryan Zimmerman. What is with Topps and their inexplicable love of never-ending insert sets of cards that all look the same? I don't know if a company could be any lazier.

Checklist 2 of 3. I knew I wouldn't be able to go five packs without getting a checklist. They should've made checklists harder to find, like two or three a box. Then it would be more fun to put together a set, and make checklists more valuable to collectors.

Brett Myers, Phillies. How appropriate. Topps mentions Myers was an amateur boxer when he was a young teenager.

No rookies, one checklist, one good young player, an insert of another good young player and a lunatic Phillie.


Pack 5
Hideki Okajima, Red Sox rookie. Yeah, Okajima! Awesome.

Alex Rios, Blue Jays. Topps must've hired away all of Donruss' old baseball copywriters when they lost their baseball license. "For a stretch in early 2006, Alex was leading the league in hitting. In fact, he was batting .363 as late as June 3, and he made the AL All-Star Team. he later was sidelined by a staph infection, however." Fun.

Bud Black, Padres manager. Good old Bud Black, but where's the stache?

Mickey Mantle Home Run History #383. God, when will it end?

Opening Day: Mariners vs. A's. Jeez, another bad insert set. Topps is really hitting on all cylinders this year, huh?

Mike Sweeney, Royals. Like Sean Casey, I've always wanted to see this guy end up on the Red Sox. Even if he is always injured.

One awesome Red Sox rookie superstar middle reliever, one Hall of Famer on a dumb insert, two teams on one dumb insert, a star stuck on a perennially awful team, and Bud Black, one half of Black and Decker.


One hour, thirty-seven minutes. Five packs. Thirty cards. Four hundred eighty little colored boxes, five denoted rookies, nine stars, two managers, one team card, six inserts, one checklist, six commons and one brilliant card of immortal, career minor leaguer Norris Hopper.

Nice haul.

Insert Quality--On Every Card!

How did we survive the days before insert cards? If Classic had any say in it, we didn't. For their 1995 issue (which I have a few cards of, around here somewhere), they made each card look like an insert card, causing massive sensory overload. Seriously, has there ever been a phenomenon quite like inserts?

People went nuts for them and yet, supposedly in limited quantity, there seemed to be more inserts than regular cards produced in the mid-Nineties. I stopped caring about finding and coveting inserts after a few months for two reasons: a) they were literally everywhere, and b) most of them were glorified subset cards.

And I think that by 1995, while some collectors may have been chomping at the bit for an entire set that looked like insert cards, a few of us were generally sick of it. And frankly, a whole set that looks like inserts? And because you know that there were inserts in the insert-worship set, what did they look like? Regular, white cardboard cards?

The Beginning of the Upper Deck Era

Sometimes I get emails from readers; collectors as obsessed as me, who hold baseball cards and the act of collecting baseball cards close to their hearts, who know that without a placing a proper value on history we are doomed.

That's why it was exciting when I opened my inbox this morning and found these great scans from Reader Dave in Vermont.

(If you look hard enough, you can pinpoint the exact moment the pursuit of baseball cards broke my heart.)






Click images to make bigger

Countdown #57 to #54

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.

Baseball Card Article in Crain's NY Business

The following appears in this week's Crain's NY Business (June 18-24, 2007)


Topps this: the battle for an icon

By: Aaron Elstein

Growing up, Ben Henry spent whatever money he had on baseball cards, accumulating 160,000 of them until he stopped collecting in 1995. One of his favorites is the 1985 card of Eddie Murray, because he thinks the Hall of Famer's Afro, sideburns and moustache resemble a "never-ending Saturn ring of hair."

"It was a lot of fun to pay a quarter, tear open a new pack of cards and see what you'd get," recalls Mr. Henry, a 28-year-old resident of Forest Hills, Queens, who writes The Baseball Card Blog.

The days of 25-cent packs are long gone and so, for the most part, is the baseball card business itself. Sales have fallen about 80% in the past 15 years, crushing the fortunes of Manhattan-based Topps Co., the industry's most famous name. Indeed, as two firms compete for control of Topps in an increasingly heated takeover fight, the question is whether either can revive the storied brand.

"The business of baseball cards has really shrunk," says Scott Kelnhofer, editor of industry publication Card Trade. "There are fewer collectors, fewer trade shows. It's like all the growth the industry saw two decades ago never happened."

Topps has struggled for years as nightly televised baseball, video games and online sources of player statistics conspired to clobber its card franchise. Last year, it earned $11 million on revenue of $327 million, 43% of which came from candy sales unrelated to cards. In 1992, when frenzied collectors drove up sales, Topps posted profit of $54 million on revenue of about $300 million.

Staying power

Still, Topps remains a potent name. It survived the fallout from the industry's speculative bubble, ultimately forcing out rivals Fleer, Donruss and Pinnacle.

The takeover battle for Topps pits its last remaining competitor, Upper Deck Co., against a private equity group led by Michael Eisner, the former chief executive of Walt Disney Co. Their showdown represents what could be the last fight in a business that, though in decline, still evokes powerful emotions.

"I learned how to read with baseball cards," says Pete Williams, author of Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child's Hobby into a High-Stake, Billion-Dollar Business.

"Topps is apple pie and the American flag," Mr. Henry says.

Fittingly, the process of selling this icon is proving to be agonizing. The saga began in March, when Topps accepted a $385 million cash bid from the Eisner group.

Topps then decided to hunt for other buyers. Such "go-shop" periods are increasingly common among firms poised to be bought by private equity groups but seldom produce higher bids, because potential buyers are rarely willing to risk breaking up existing agreements.

Not this time. Upper Deck trumped the Eisner bid with an offer of $416 million. Topps rejected it, questioning whether privately held Upper Deck could finance the transaction, but agreed to negotiate.

Upper Deck sued, and last week a Delaware judge granted an injunction blocking a scheduled June 28 shareholder vote on the Eisner bid.

Ultimately, the Eisner group, which has said little publicly about its plans but intends to retain Topps senior executives, will have to at least match Upper Deck's bid to prevail.

"Nobody is going to be comfortable turning down a higher offer," says Joel Greenberg, a partner at law firm Kaye Scholer who has worked on deals involving baseball card companies. Topps' strongest case for rejecting the Upper Deck bid probably rests on antitrust grounds, he says.

Whoever wins Topps faces a bumpy road.

Decimated market

Wholesale revenues for all sports trading cards were about $270 million last year, compared with a peak of $1.2 billion in 1991, according to Card Trade.

The boom was partly driven by upstarts like Upper Deck, which launched in 1988 with a line of cards offering high-quality photography and holograms to discourage forgery. Topps responded with its own high-end cards, and the race was on to cater to collectors with elite merchandise.

Along the way, children, the bedrock audience for cards, were priced out. The cheapest Topps pack retails for 99 cents but contains only six cards. Other packs range from $2 to $5 or even $10.

In fact, in an effort to appeal to as many buyers as possible, Topps and Upper Deck produce 40 different lines of cards between them. That's a far cry from the days when kids waited to get first crack at the single line Topps unveiled each spring.

"The arrival of the new set of baseball cards used to mean a new season was here, and it was something kids looked forward to," Mr. Williams says. "The anticipation is gone, and so is the golden goose."

Countdown: #61 to #58

#61 & #60. 1992 & 1993 Triple Play
When we sit by the fireside, maybe in a few years, with a blanket wrapped around our legs, one hand poking at the fire with a long stick, the other matting down the last few strands of our hair with the spittle collecting at the corners of our mouth, what will we be thinking about?

Please, please please—let it not be these godforsaken sets, with their hideous renditions of orange and black. Let it not be silver lettered surnames, writ large and wide like proclamations, like billboards worthy of our time and energy. Nor let it be the emotionless action photos of crashes at the plate, or the scratch-off game cards that subliminally spawned the deep-seated-yet-hard-to-pinpoint-quite-
how-it-started-so-very-long-ago love for instant win lottery cards.

No no no—no more Roger McDowell in funny getups, doing funny things in funny situations. No more Phillie Phanatic rain dances on the dugout roof. No more cards from Paul Molitor’s gap-toothed grade school glory.

Let’s not think about these lame little brothers to Topps Kids and Upper Deck Fun Packs. Let’s remember that these set names shorten to TP for a reason. Let’s try to forget that we spent $15.00 at one point for a box of the 1993 version.

Yes, let’s hope that we’re watching TV. And not thinking about any of this.

#59. 1992 Fleer
Here’s another set I’d rather not have to think about ever again. And yet every so often, I find myself looking through that old Beckett from 1995 and I can’t help but search out my shoebox of cards from 1992, just to make sure for the thousandth time if I had any of those insert cards. And I don’t, though I did buy a Frank Thomas Rookie Sensation for fifty cents at a card show a few months ago. (Oh, how the mighty have fallen.)

Because that’s what this set had going for it: insert cards. You could argue that if Upper Deck brought inserts and autographs into the spotlight, the guys at Fleer kicked in the footlights, the fills and maybe even the houselights in the insert bonanza. Think about this. From 1986 to 1989, Fleer produced four straight years of 660-card sets, 132-card updates and 18 total insert cards. In 1990 they kept things cool at 660/132 and upped the insert total to 30. In 1991 they bumped the regular set to 720, kept the update set at 132, and took the insert total down to 22. But 1992? That year saw the regular and update sets stay at 720/132 and the number of inserts climb to 97. 97! That’s an unbelievable 441% increase from the year before.

And yet as ridiculous as that jump is, 97 individual insert cards is on par with almost every other product line for the year: Donruss had 67; Leaf had 24; Pinnacle had 135; Score had 124; Stadium Club had 3; Studio had 14; Ultra had 65; Upper Deck had 98 and Leaf and Topps had parallel sets.

The other thing that Fleer had was its Update set, one of the few sets in 1992 to have a card of Mike Piazza, the 1992 National League Rookie of the Year and a sure bet for the Hall of Fame. It also had first cards of mid-Nineties hobby superstar Kenny Lofton, Tim Salmon, Tim Wakefield and the immortal David Nied, the original member of the Colorado Rockies. (And for ten points: name the first Florida Marlin.)


#58. 1992 Fleer Ultra
1992 Fleer Ultra had to exist, so right away it’s set itself apart from many of those ranked before it. Why did it have to exist? For a number of reasons, the first being that the hobby had to find out if 1991’s Ultra was a one-trick pony or if it had legs.

And not only did Ultra have legs for the long haul—it’s still going strong today, sixteen years later—but it had four legs, as the marbleized 1992 design hoofed its way across baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Not only that, but it cemented the Fleer mothership in the somewhat uncharted waters of random autographed insert cards and cribbed a page from the Topps playbook on Hero Worship before Topps had a chance to capitalize on the idea. Case in point: by the time Topps got around to worshipping their forever-sober/strong-kneed version of Mickey Mantle in 1996, the idea seemed a little warmed over to the early Nineties generation of collectors, as Fleer and Fleer Ultra had, by that time, been playing the Hero Worship card for going on five years.

Why else did this set have to exist? Because it completely elevated 1991’s Ultra. More so that Upper Deck and Leaf, and with the exception of Pinnacle and Stadium Club, 1992 Fleer Ultra had some heft. It felt like what a premium card should’ve felt like: glossed up, with matrix-y computer graphics on the back. Plus that polished marble on the front and those little gold rookie flags around the fireball logo. And cards that Tony Gwynn autographed (and probably didn’t exist anywhere except as words on the box)

Yeah, it’s not worth jack now. Yeah, the graphics haven’t aged well. Yeah, it feels tired in the grand scheme of things. But to put it plainly, 1992 Fleer Ultra was the shit.


More Countdown coming soon…
By the way, if you answered ‘Nigel Wilson’—ten points to you!

2007 Topps Series 2: Another Error

Topps Series 2 will not be without its share of errors. As you can see from these scans, Yuniesky Betancourt and Jose Guillen are the same person. Yet unlike the Derek Jeter error from Series 1, this gaffe will most likely end up a UER (uncorrected error). I, for one, hope that this will give Guillen and Betancourt license to play twin brother practical jokes, even though they look very little alike.

(from Jon in Chicago)

Card Sharks & Countdown: #65 to #62

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

1990s Countdown #69 to #66

#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

The Baseball Card Blog Interview with Michael O'Keeffe

If you haven't already heard about it, picked it up, or read Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson's new book The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card, you're missing out. It's a great, comprehensive and controversial read about the hobby's most prized possession (the former Gretzky/McNall T206 Honus Wagner) and the many men who made it that way. Michael O'Keeffe answered The Baseball Card Blog's questions about the book and his take on the state of the hobby.


BBC Blog: Tell me about yourself.

O'Keeffe: I’ve been writing about sports cards since the late ’90s. This has never been a full-time pursuit, but sports collectibles is one of the beats I’ve followed and written about since I joined the Daily News. I did collect baseball cards as a kid, and to a lesser extent, football cards. But I gave all that up by the time I was about 13, 14 years old. I have very fond memories of collecting, trading and flipping cards, and at least indirectly, those memories did play a role in the writing of the book.

BBC Blog: So much of the hobby has built on the intrinsic value of one word: authentic. Does this word have any meaning?

O'Keeffe: I’m not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about “authentic” in terms of a grade from a grading company? Or “authentic” from a memorabilia authenticator? “Authentic” cards are cards that are lower value because a grading service said they were genuine but trimmed or altered. “Authentic” memorabilia means simply [that] some authenticator said it is what a consignor or auction house says it is.

I think the word has meaning when it comes to cards – at least you know what you’re getting, even if it was trimmed or altered. I don’t think it means a great deal when it comes to memorabilia – there are so many unqualified and unscrupulous authenticators.

BBC Blog: One of the questions I ask myself from time to time is, Did Topps invent Mickey Mantle or did Mickey Mantle invent Topps? You could make a pretty strong case that were it not for Mickey Mantle anchoring every Topps set 1952 to 1969, the company would be in a very different position today. But also, were it not for Topps, would 'Mickey Mantle' be synonymous with 'baseball', 'nostalgia' and 'Americana'?

O'Keeffe: I think he was such a phenomenal talent that he would have been a star regardless of baseball cards. He was not only a great ballplayer, he was the right man for the right time – a big, strapping, handsome, easy-going hero for a generation that wanted to return to normalcy after the violence and uncertainty of WWII, Korea and the Cold War. I think he would be an iconic figure regardless of baseball cards, although cards certainly played a role in his fame.

His image certainly helped Topps maintain its monopoly for many years and you’re right, it’s something they can go to every so often to gin up consumer interest and press coverage.

BBC Blog: Similarly, Bill Mastro seems to be the man behind the curtain in the hobby's secondary market; is this a fair assessment of him, or is he just a product of the industry? If not for Bill Mastro, would card and memorabilia collecting be where they are today?

O'Keeffe: As far as Mastro goes, I believe he has played a vital role in the industry’s evolution. He’s a smart and aggressive businessman who has brought a lot of innovation to the hobby. He’s also a very personable guy, and his larger than life personality has attracted a lot of collectors into the hobby. He’s got a lot of critics, too. We compare him in the book to George Steinbrenner – some people love him, some hate him, but you can’t deny he’s played a big role in collectibles.

BBC Blog: Do you think Ray Edwards and John Cobb have gotten a fair deal?

O'Keeffe: Not really.

I can’t say if their card is real or not. It probably isn’t, if you look at the numbers – there are only a few dozen real wagners still in circulation, but thousands of reprints still exist.

To me, their story is interesting because of the lengths they have gone to to prove their card is real. It’s like that Lucinda Williams’ line, “June bug vs. hurricane…” The hobby has jumped on these guys with a viciousness that is frightening. A paper expert and a printing expert have both said their tests indicate it is consistent with a 1909 card – that raises interesting questions to me. Many have ripped their card without ever seeing it or examining it in person. Why should industry executives be the final word when the industry has so many ethical lapses, when authenticators typically spend just a few seconds examining the average card, when the grader/auction house relationship is so fraught with conflicts of interest?

I was pretty horrified by the way collectors and dealers attacked Ray and John on Network 54. The overt and suggested racism in some of the posts was pretty disappointing. The hobby is dominated by white men, and in reading some of those posts, you get the feeling the only way a black guy would be welcome in the club is if he is a superstar athlete or a waiter. If the Cobb/Edwards card is so obviously a fake as Network 54 members say, why get so angry? Why rant on and on about two guys who will probably never sell that card, at least for not more than a few bucks? Why call them “Stimeys?” With all the problems in the industry, why pick on a couple of working guys from Ohio?

BBC Blog: Could the sports memorabilia and vintage card secondary markets survive if Mastro admitted to trimming the Wagner, and PSA admitted to knowingly rewarding a trimmed card with an 8 NM-MT?

O'Keeffe: Yes, I think the markets would survive. I’m not sure much would change. I get a lot of calls from collectors who say this auction house ripped them off or that authenticator made a mistake and I should write a story exposing them for the crooks they are. I always ask this question: Why do you buy this stuff if the hobby has so many problems? “Because I really need it, because I don’t want somebody else to get it…” is usually the reply. It’s a joke.

These guys act like vintage cards or old jerseys are as vital as food and water. Some people might drop out of the hobby but many won’t. Some collectors are like junkies. I think it’s rather sad that so many people tie their happiness and identity to an old cardboard card.

BBC Blog: Should we be more worried about the demise of Topps?

O'Keeffe: It doesn’t keep me up at night. But it would be a shame if a venerable old company many of us grew up with would be swallowed up by Upper Deck. UD strikes me as a sterile, soulless corporation; at least Topps has a great history.

BBC Blog: Nearly all of the available writing about the baseball card hobby is resoundingly positive in nature, even though by many accounts what has happened to it over the past twenty-five years or so has been negative (per-pack and per-card prices driving young collectors away, too many sets and a rapidly shrinking list of national manufacturers). It's almost as if collectors, dealers, publications and auction houses have their heads in the sand when it comes to the state and future of their hobby. Why do you think the hobby is like that? Is it really all about the money?

O'Keeffe: It is really about the money. Collectors and dealers are heavily invested in the status quo; if a grading company is exposed as chronically sloppy or incompetent or corrupt, the cards it has graded become suspect and the value of those cards becomes uncertain. The hobby publications are more interested in advertising dollars than real, honest coverage. The mainstream press is not interested in educating itself about the problems the hobby faces; it’s easier to write a “gee whiz, isn’t it crazy that a baseball card sold for $2 million” than do real reporting. Still, I’m encouraged by a lot of the coverage I’ve seen in recent years. The collapse of Topps, the rise of Upper Deck have sparked some good stories. Pete Williams' Card Sharks, although over 10 years now, is a vital read for anybody who cares about the hobby. Kevin Nelson’s book Operation Bullpen is also quite good.


BBC Blog: Could the Wagner phenomenon happen with any other card?

O'Keeffe: I don’t know, but certainly the Gretzky T206 Wagner benefited from the perfect storm.



The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card is available through online retailers and at bookstores around the country.

Early Nineties Countdown: #77 to #70

The checklist is complete. The sets have been ranked. And while I originally thought there were 76 sets from 1990 to 1994, I recounted and found there to be 77, so that’s the figure I’m sticking to.

A few more notes before we begin. Like the Eighties countdown, the worth of an individual card or set will not be considered when ranking these sets, but may be mentioned anecdotally in describing a set. Also, I am going to say that my personal favorites of the years in question will not get preferential treatment, but we all know that that’s a very tall order to fill and I may stray from that rule. Also, I recently came across an old Beckett from November 1995, and will be referring to the stuff in it on more than one occasion. For starters, let me say that I forgot how big a deal Kenny Lofton was; his 1992 Fleer Update card is high column listed at $32.00! Are you kidding?

Finally, what makes a countdown like this so great to me is that thinking back on all these sets, I was able to come up with good things and bad things about almost all of them. There were only a handful that I had no recollection of collecting, and almost none where I couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve decided that the sets that fall into this category, those that are so boring and non-descript that even I can’t think of one good or bad thing about them, were boring because they simply had no reason to exist. I’ve put these sets at the bottom of the list, but really they shouldn’t even be in the countdown.

In no particular order…

#77 1994 OPC
#76 1993 OPC
#75 1993 OPC Premier
#74 1994 Triple Play
#73 1994 Sportflics

Now, let the countdown begin.

#72. 1991 Leaf
Let’s start with some easy multiple choice. Let’s say that you’re in charge of Leaf, it’s 1991, and you’ve just come out with one of the great sets of 1990: a set with a perceived limited production run, chock full of rookies, plus a great design and loads of star cards that everyone, young and old, want to get their mitts on. How would you follow this great success? Would you a) put out another great set following the same principles, b) take in a ton of advance orders and then split for the border with the cash, or c) over-produce, strip the base set of important rookies, stuff them in an insert set that no one will ever be able to complete, commission and greenlight a shitty design and then laugh all the way to the bank? If you answered ‘c’…congratulations, you’re correct.

Seriously, how did Donruss and Leaf screw this up? A company simply doesn’t abandon a winning formula, especially at a time when there are a thousand competitors in—let’s face it—a niche marketplace. Why, why, why didn’t they include important rookies in this set? Why did they only include them in the Gold Leaf Rookies insert set? If Leaf had included a Jeff Bagwell rookie in the base set, this would have been a monster in the early Nineties. Instead, it was the hobby’s biggest joke; one from which Leaf would never recover.

#71. 1990 Fleer
I’ve given this a lot of thought over the past few days: Were it not for the colossal let-down that was 1991 Leaf, 1990 Fleer would be the worst set of the first five years of the Nineties, and for a variety of reasons, none so prevalent as it simply had nothing to offer. You’d think that 1990 would’ve been a stellar year across the board for baseball cards, as 1989 had so much going for it and the hobby was experiencing a boom larger than it had ever seen. That was simply not the case. While other sets figured out a way to capitalize on the hype, a few didn’t (Fleer chief among them).

This is not to say that they didn’t try new things with this set; they did. In addition to the requisite combos and doubleheaded rookies, they included 'Players of the Decade,' a new subset of stars of the 1980s. Fleer also led the way with three insert sets: All-Stars, League Standouts and Soaring Stars (after a 1991 hiatus, this insert set was renamed Rookie Sensations for 1992).

But they took more than a few bad turns. For some reason their design team (which was in the middle of putting together an unprecedented four straight years of bad design, 1989 to 1992) approved a bland white border and bland red, white and blue back—virtually guaranteeing that collectors would confuse them with novelty deck-of-cards sets you could buy at Circle K, Kmart and other fine drugstore and discount department store chains. They then proceeded to miss out on the key rookie of 1990, Frank Thomas. Oh, and like most of all the other manufacturers that year, they printed 1 billion cards.

It’s not so much that they printed so many cards. It’s that they printed so many cards and none of those cards was of Frank Thomas. Taking nothing away from Juan Gonzalez, David Justice, Marquis Grissom, Ben McDonald, Larry Walker, John Olerud, Delino DeShields or even Sammy Sosa, Thomas was hands-down the best of the bunch. So to come out with a set that doesn’t have a card of him? What’s the point of that? Exactly. There is no point. You’re just killing time until you have a chance to show the world you realize you screwed up and pray that collectors are completist enough to hold out and buy your lousy Update set at the end of the season, where not only will there be Thomas, but Olerud, Carlos Baerga (was there ever anyone bigger than Carlos Baerga was in 1993?) and Travis Fryman too.

Too bad by the time the Update set came, nobody really cared about it, either.


#70. 1990 Bowman
OK, so I didn’t mean to set up Frank Thomas as the savior of baseball cards. In reality, he was a standout from the many that made up the great, overlooked rookie class of 1990. And while it’s a good thing that Thomas is in this Bowman set, it’s also true that this set is not a classic simply because it has a card of Thomas in it. Far from it.

1990 Bowman must be viewed as a transition set between the 1989 and 1991 Bowman sets. 1990 was the first year to use the modern card size (1989 was the same size as the 1950s issues, just slightly taller than what is considered the ‘modern’ card size that began with 1957 Topps) and really the first Bowman attempt to fashion itself as the ‘Home of the Rookie Card,’ something it would achieve with the 1991 set. So where does that leave this set? Well, it’s got a lot of rookies; all the big names are here, all in the one series, which is nice. Plus the front was one big color photo with a tiny white border along the bottom with team and player names (also nice). But that’s where the niceties stop.

Those minimal fronts became a big sea of boring faces as the set progressed. Also, what was with the backs? Who was it at Bowman/Topps that decided a grid-like breakdown of the past year’s stats would be a good thing? Granted, it was something that set Bowman apart, but for the worse. I could never make heads nor tails of the stats on the back of a Bowman card from 1989 to 1991.

There nothing really that bad about 1990 Bowman, it’s just boring. Minimal design is one thing, but boring? 'Boring' is never going to cut it in baseball cards. C'mon Bowman, you know that.


#69 to #65 Coming Soon