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AIR Hall of Challengers

A look back at the field of 32 in this, the AIR Hall of Challengers.

Airbrush Invitational Rodeo Results

EAST Bracket

Round 1
1. 1986 Dick Williams OVER 16. 1978 Terry Forster, 22-20
2. 1978 Dave Kingman OVER 15. 1975 Bill Hands, 444-327
14. 1975 Chris Cannizzaro OVER 3. 1978 Mike Paxton, 21-17
4. 1975 Rudy May OVER 13. 1978 Mike Phillips, 62-4
5. 1976 Tom House OVER 12. 1975 Bobby Murcer, 26-2
11. 1977 Dick Pole OVER 6. 1975 Elias Sosa, 23-5
7. 1975 Billy Grabarkewitz OVER 10. 1986 Tim Lollar, 39-27
8. 1978 Jose Cardenal OVER 9. 1978 Darold Knowles, 15-11

Round 2
11. 1977 Dick Pole OVER 14. 1975 Chris Cannizzaro, 22-18
4. 1975 Rudy May OVER 5. 1976 Tom House, 37-22
1. 1986 Dick Williams OVER 8. 1978 Jose Cardenal, 32-19
7. 1975 Billy Grabarkewitz OVER 2. 1978 Dave Kingman, 38-25

Round 3
4. 1975 Rudy May OVER 1. 1986 Dick Williams, 7-2
7. 1975 Billy Grabarkewitz OVER 11. 1977 Dick Pole, 9-5

EAST Final
4. 1975 Rudy May OVER 7. 1975 Billy Grabarkewitz, 141-58


WEST Bracket

Round 1
1. 1976 Juan Beniquez OVER 16. 1975 Sandy Alomar, 6-5
2. 1978 Greg Minton OVER 15. 1978 Oscar Zamora, 27-2
14. 1978 Lyman Bostock OVER 3. 1989 Brady Anderson, 307-11
4. 1976 Oscar Gamble OVER 13. 1978 Jim Todd, 39-4
5. 1980 Bert Roberge OVER 12. 1975 Darold Knowles, 30-14
11. 1978 Jim Dwyer OVER 6. 1987 Frank DiPino, 16-3
7. 1976 Don Kessinger OVER 10. 2007 JD Drew, 18-3
9. 1974 Willie McCovey OVER 8. 1986 Tom Seaver, 19-16

Round 2
2. 1978 Greg Minton OVER 7. 1976 Don Kessinger, 23-5
14. 1978 Lyman Bostock OVER 11. 1978 Jim Dwyer, 12-9
4. 1976 Oscar Gamble OVER 5. 1980 Bert Roberge, 31-2
9. 1974 Willie McCovey OVER 1. 1976 Juan Beniquez, 22-12

Round 3
14. 1978 Lyman Bostock OVER 2. 1978 Greg Minton, 256-126
9. 1974 Willie McCovey OVER 4. 1976 Oscar Gamble, 234-115

WEST Final
9. 1974 Willie McCovey OVER 14. 1978 Lyman Bostock, 169-37

AIR Championship
1975 Rudy May OVER 1974 Willie McCovey, 1337-1033

AIR FINAL

And the winner is... 1975 Rudy May.

We saw some great matchups in this, the First Ever Airbrush Invitational Rodeo, but none more heated than tonight's. The final score was a mind-boggling 1337-1033.

Makes one think Rudy May himself is sitting in front of a computer somewhere, madly clicking his name, over and over again.

Now I just have to find a spot for May to live on The Blog, so that we all may bask in his reflected glory.

Errors in My Heritage

It's funny really. For all their bluster about special Smoltz and Santana variations, 2008 Topps Heritage has its share of actual errors. Take Edwin Encarnacion and his identical twin, Juan Encarnacion.


Or the two Jerry Owenses. To quote the newest inane Bud Lite ad: Dude. I mean, c'mon Topps, this is pathetic. You want give me two different cards of a player? Then give me two completely different Jacoby Ellsburys or Pedro Martinezes. Not two Jerry Owenses. (And yes, the Owens backs are almost entirely different.)

Card Back of the Day: 1973 OPC Dock Ellis

 

I do not own this card. 

1990 - 1994 Countdown: 14. 1991 Fleer Ultra

What says ‘premium’ to you? A) Super-glossed, full-bleed photography, B) Snazzy graphics, foil stamping and serial numbers, or C) Gradients and metallic ink? If you answered ‘C’, then welcome to Fleer HQ, circa 1991.

As the second company to go premium (Donruss was first with 1990’s Leaf), and soon to be overshadowed by far superior Topps Stadium Club, Fleer’s inaugural Ultra set wasn’t bad. In fact, for a set that seems in hindsight like a calculated risk, you could say that it was better than you’d expect, especially when you consider the kind of crap Fleer was producing in the three years leading up to it. It’s almost as if they sequestered their best and brightest designers and asked the others not to speak to them until Ultra was ready to ship.

I say ‘calculated risk’ because there had been very few ‘premium’ sets made before Ultra. Upper Deck in 1989 and Leaf in 1990 proved that there was a market for a better card, and it was really only a matter of time before the other companies would follow suit with their own higher quality sets (Topps would debut Stadium Club that same year, with Score releasing Pinnacle in 1992). No matter what, it was imperative that Fleer release some sort of premium, before they found themselves lagging too far behind the rest of the pack. And Ultra wasn’t just a pre-emptive strike against the competition: it wasn’t a big secret that a premium brand would also mean perennial premium dollars for Fleer. But there was risk involved. What if it was a bad set? Had a weak checklist? Got approved with an ugly design? And what if collectors refused to pay the suggested pack price?

Lucky for Fleer, their best and brightest came through with a nice design, complete with a crowd-pleasing coat of silver ink, and a price that collectors accepted as justifiable given the quality of the card and set.

Ultra wasn’t the first set to incorporate metallic ink, but it was the first set to practically dip its design in it. Where other sets used black, Ultra used silver, and the design wasn’t necessarily the worse for that decision. The fronts were clean, featuring what is probably the best photography ever seen on Fleer cardboard. Take this image of Old Man Dave Winfield: you can see that he’s looking for the Eephus pitch. In previous years, the photography was sometimes so muddled that you could barely make out his face.

The backs forwent with a traditional player-in-background action shot and silhouetted him twice (once in the field, once at the plate) and as a large headshot outlined in an elemental shape that lords over both. It makes for a bizarre design—the headshot brings General Zod trapped in his hologram to mind, flipping through space forever. In fact, the backs would’ve worked much better had the Fleer photographer slipped each player a twenty and asked him to bug his eyes out and do his best ‘Mime-Trapped-In-A-Box.’

Who knows how much Fleer banked on the success of Ultra, but had it failed, the decadent years that followed would have played out very differently.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #15. 1994 Collector's Choice

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.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #16. 1993 SP

I didn’t know how to approach SP. Not in writing about it and its historical significance for a company like Upper Deck (I happen to believe that it redefined the company and together with Topps Finest pushed The Hobby at large down the deep, dark, foil-stamped, holographic tunnel from which it’s never re-emerged), but when I first saw it on the shelf at my local card shop. Don’t get me wrong; I like this set. It intimidated me to no end when it originally came out, but I’ve warmed to it as card prices in general have inflated over the last fifteen years. It’s just, well… When it comes to owning baseball cards, I have a bit of an inferiority complex.

Let me re-phrase that. When it comes to life, I have a large inferiority complex. I can’t tell you why… but I want to thank all those collectors who’ve loved and destroyed the crap out of their cards. Without you there would be nothing out there for me to buy.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I love creased, dinged and frayed cards. Cards that show a lot of wear have always been friends of mine. Just this afternoon I re-sorted my vintage notebook and I’d have to say that about 90 percent of the cards in the book have paper loss, noticeably chipped corners, creases and/or sun damage. A personal favorite is my copy of Jim Bouton’s 1966 Topps Venezuela card: it’s covered in scribbles from the previous owner plus I can fold it twice and it doesn’t snap to pieces. And that’s one of the better cards in my collection.

The writing was on the wall for me when Score came out in 1988; that set did a lot of things that Topps, Fleer and Donruss weren’t doing at the time (full-color backs, photos on the backs, printed on a nicer, cleaner card stock, poly-bagging packs), and really it was only a matter of time before there would be a new set with packs that I couldn’t afford. That came sooner rather than later with Upper Deck the next year. After that it was Leaf in 1990, Stadium Club and Ultra in 1991 and so on and so forth until I could barely afford any packs by the time I stopped buying new stuff in 1995. But I digress…

Of the three ultra-premium sets that debuted in 1993, SP was the most subtle and most delicate. Maybe it was the etched copper foil stamp, or the simple two-color block pattern along the left edge —for me reminiscent for some reason of nautical flags and tags of preppy designer clothes. Or maybe it was ikebana design of the thin, circuit-like metallic ink line that traveled up the right side of the front to provide underscore for the team name along the top. (The light bulb filament-like bob and weave shape of the line would also lend visual cue to the die-cut edge of the Platinum Power insert set. See what they were doing there? It’s a nice touch that ties the insert and base sets together without working too hard.)

But most likely, it earned this distinction because instead of using the Upper Deck and individual teams’ logos, the company name and team names were spelled out in the same copper metallic ink. Because of the omission of these graphics, the SP aesthetic wasn’t piecemeal, and the designers had control of the entire layout of the card. (If you need a refresher course in ultra-premium card design in 1993, take a look for flaws in Topps Finest and Fleer Flair: Finest uses the same Topps logo as the company’s other brands, while Flair’s otherwise elegant design is taken down a few notches by the mostly-harmless-but-by-no-means-elegant team logos, positioned in the upper right hand corner on the back.)

With nine players from each team represented and a total checklist just shy of 300 cards, the make-up of SP was strong, and on the strength of design, overall checklist and availability was able to turn a relatively weak rookie class into desirable cards across the board. Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon (on his only rookie from 1993) lead the pack, but am I wrong or did Beckett have the Chad Mottola card somewhere around $5 at one point?

1993 saw Upper Deck grow up. Not only did the company successfully transform its flagship from a fun-loving, cartoony, young-person’s baseball card set to a mature, classy, young-adult’s baseball card set, but it birthed a brand that gave the company a strong foothold in the rapidly expanding ultra-premium market. If I thought I was intimidated by SP when I first saw it, what about Topps and the other Upper Deck competitors?

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #18. 1993 Flair

If anything, it takes guts to recognize and react positively to change. Considering that baseball cards were relatively stable in their manufacture and presentation (two-color back, no gloss, cheap cardboard stock) for the 100 years leading up to 1986, it only took the big three companies at the time (Donruss, Fleer and Topps) between four and five years to change at least one of their products to more along the lines of what we expect from cards today: foil-stamping, bleed photos, full-color backs and varying degrees of coated stock. In the grand scheme, that’s no time at all.

1991 Fleer Ultra deserves all the credit for giving the company a significant presence in the then-new world of ‘premium’ cards. Collectors responded to the classy look and feel of the cards and felt privileged to be able to buy them, like they were making an investment. Ultra laid the groundwork not only for other premiums that followed, but for the maturation of Fleer’s flagship for the rest of the decade.

The only problem was that Ultra, despite its quality (no whiteout scribbles on these!) and marbleized grandeur, was kind of ugly. Sure, the cards briefy had value, and I salivated over them as much as the next kid, but I always felt like something was missing, design-wise.

Someone at Fleer must have agreed, because not two years later Flair debuted as the company’s ultra—no pun intended—premium card set. And ultra it was. Each card was a little piece of art and each pack resembled an Art Deco cigarette case. Buying a pack of Flair for $3 netted you a stack of shrink-wrapped cards, thicker than any kind of card I’d ever seen (even thicker than Sportflics) that were, in a word, beautiful. Delicate gold leaf names on glossy stock and a mix of veterans on a simple checklist. Looming action close-up ghosted in a Field of Dreams, Riders on the Storm kind of way behind a studious action shot. A great first step in building a reliable brand.

Growing up outside Boston, I always thought that when the guy down at my local card shop said 'Fleer Flair' real fast he sounded kind of dumb (Flee-ah Flay-yahh). Despite the regional patois faux pas of name choice by Fleer, Flair seemed more like an actual set than its competitor, Topps Finest. Finest felt more like it was for high rollers, like you needed a key to the Playboy Club before you could buy a pack. It was certainly not for a pimply high school freshman like me.

But Flair… though I didn’t quite see the point of paying so much for a pack of cards, at least I had the money to do it. It was within my reach. In the end, I bought only one pack of this set, no matter how many times that card store guy tried to push it on me.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #21. 1991 Score

Note: Because I caved at the last minute and re-ranked 1994 Upper Deck SP at #17, I've gone back and ranked this set at #21.


I have some good news and some bad news about Score’s set from 1991. Good news first.

I have many fond memories of this set. It was really the first set of the decade with a proliferation of subsets original enough to migrate outside the base set and into standalone inserts, which is exactly what happened with Score as the Nineties progressed and The Hobby expanded. All Stars, Master Blasters, Dream Team, one-offs like ‘Reds October,’ ‘The Griffeys,’ ‘Bo Breaker’ and ‘Man of the Year’ (by the way, you know what would make a great offbeat collection? Collecting cards of players wearing a tuxedo. You’d have at least one card of Nolan Ryan, the Sandberg from this set, Piazza and Bonds from when you bought a box of Ultra Pro pages—I’m not sure Scott Erickson, Ultra Pro’s other spokesman, was ever shown in tux—and a handful of others, like Darrell Walker’s 1991-92 Skybox basketball card. Maybe this is something I should start collecting…), and those hideous border colors. Seriously, where did the designer get the inspiration to use blue, white, yellow, teal and purple? On a trip to the doctor’s office? Bad bad bad. And yet unexpectedly lovable (at least to me), especially since the set ends on such a high note with that last round of black-bordered cards.

But maybe the best part of this set is the ‘oh shit, we forgot…’ moment at the end of the set. After 30 subset cards (the stellar Franchise subset and award winners), the checklisters squeezed Damon Berryhill’s regular card in before the start of the Dream Team cards. Either they were playing a game with us by swapping out Berryhill from the end of the first series with the Canseco ‘Wild Stallion’ Dream Team card or they experienced collective brain freeze and really almost left Damon snacking in the Green Room for the duration.

Now for the bad news: I never really actively collected this set; I bought the factory set from the drugstore. Sure, I got the Cooperstown Collection factory set inserts, but in hindsight I feel shamed for never having experienced the joy (and pain) of fruitlessly opening hundreds of packs to complete this endless set. Which reminds me: have I used the term ‘bloated mess’ in this countdown before? I have? Well, then it should come as no surprise that more than one set qualifies for that description. It’s not that 1991 Score is so much of a mess—it’s more that it’s bloated beyond belief. I think there were over 7,000 cards in the checklist (actually 900 or so). The reason this set stands out is because of a handful of excellent cards, like Chipper Jones’s and Mike Mussina’s rookies, the aforementioned ‘Wild Stallion’ or ‘Steroid Stallion’ shirtless Jose Canseco Dream Team card, and others like Doug Jones’s Dream Team card (the best of the bunch, and the best card of Sam Elliott, if you ask me), Bob Welch’s shadowed split-finger, the big-headed All Stars (funny how life imitates art, huh?) and a few others.

This set could easily have been 100 or even 200 cards less and would’ve been better. I know that bloat was hip in the early Nineties, but… I had this set in pages for a few years there, but I felt like I was on seek-n-scan to find the cards I liked, or fast forward to the end for The Franchise and Dream Team. You don’t do that with great sets. You do that with bloated, watered-down ones.

John-Ford Griffin: What Price Glory

Sorry for the allusion, but seriously, what does a guy have to do to get his own photo on his card? Paging Juan Lebron, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, Aurelio Rodriguez, Jose Guillen and Yuniesky Betancourt...

OK, so can you pick John-Ford out of a lineup?


Thread (Thanks Dave for the tip)

Separated at Birth

Going through a few boxes of 1981 and 1982 Topps tonight. So far I've pulled about 30 Mets and Dodgers for trades and a great card of Butch Hobson looking pissed off (could he show any other emotion?), but the real winners tonight are Timothy Dalton and Amitabh Bachchan... excuse me, Chris Speier and Tippy Martinez.







Seriously, maybe that's why Martinez was so popular with O's fans. After all, what else would you expect from Bollywood's Greatest Hero? By the way, I loved Speier as the villainous Mr. Skinner in Hot Fuzz.

Card Critic Review: 2008 Topps Heritage

Before I get into how much I like 1959 Topps (it’s by far the most brilliant Topps design of the early years, embracing jazz, beat, and a post-modernist pop culture sensibility within the staid, confines of baseball; plus it’s one of the few American card designs that was blatantly copied for a Japanese card set (1967 Kabaya Leaf, image shown from Rob's Japanese Cards)), I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: if it were up to me, this would be the last edition of Topps Heritage.

I have a few reasons. First, what does the word heritage mean? My cheap-ass dictionary has its meaning as valued objects and qualities such as cultural traditions, unspoiled countryside, and historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations. So then by this definition, when exactly does the ‘unspoiled countryside’ era for Topps end? I think it has to end with 1959 (that’s when Fleer came on the market and stole Ted Williams). You could make a case that Fleer showing up in ’59 meant the same thing to Topps as the Bowman competition from 1951 to the buyout in 1955, but Topps/Fleer didn’t end the way Topps/Bowman ended and besides, Fleer is now owned by Upper Deck. You could also make the case that Fleer showing up really didn’t (and shouldn’t) mean very much when we’re talking about Topps Heritage, but I think that simply because there was competition (and that Topps doesn’t now own that competitor), no matter how hard Topps tried, their countryside was no longer unspoiled.

Second reason: If Heritage doesn’t end with the Fifties, it’ll end up being a runaway train. I’m a big fan of Topps design from the Sixties all the way up to 1978, but will collectors really want to go for Heritage ’78 in 2027? Maybe I’m in the minority, but I want Topps to be more original than Heritage by then. As a rejoinder to this point, there was an oft-maligned brand a few years ago called Upper Deck Vintage. These sets came out right when Heritage debuted, with Upper Deck pilfering the Topps design vault for three years worth of sets: 1963, 1965 and 1971 (and there was a fourth set, in 2004, but now I can’t remember what that set was supposed to emulate). The point of adding this is that you’ll get no argument from me that Heritage sets featuring these three designs wouldn’t be gorgeous, but Upper Deck’s beaten them to the punch. If anything, Topps should retire the name ‘Topps Heritage’ and call the remaining sets ‘Topps Classic.’

Third reason: A set like Heritage has to toe the line like other sets in today's variation-crazed environment. The intentional misprint and variation are enjoying renewed popularity these days at One Whitehall Street. No brand or set is safe, and Heritage is no exception. Black backs, misspelled names, alternate team uniforms—it’s a lot to pay attention to, especially in addition to the requisite Chrome, Refractors and black-bordered Chrome parallels, plus all the other inserts. And the short-printed cards, mustn’t forget about those… In the end it’s all so tiresome, you know? It almost feels like you have to peel away all these layers just to get to the set.

And that’s the rub: Heritage should first and foremost be about the set, but because it’s Topps (which is almost approaching a mid-Nineties-Fleer level in terms of number of different inserts competing for attention), and because it’s been created and released in the company’s current bells-and-whistles-and-hidden-shit environment, it’s not about the set.

Out of the four shrink-wrapped boxes sent over from Dave and Adam’s Card World (part of the D & A agreement with The Blog), I’ve opened three. Do I have a set? No. Should I? You’re goddamned right I should. 72 packs in and I’m missing at least 50 cards, plus God knows how many untold variations. And that’s just the base set. What’s the deal with that? For set builders, getting an insert in a pack means getting one less card towards completing the set. Add in a healthy amount of doubles and triples—anybody need a Russell Martin?—and very soon you’re in my position. In any case, even if this isn’t the last set we see out of Topps Heritage, it’s definitely the last new set I’ll collect.

It’s good to end on a high note, you know? For all the crap I just spewed about the inserts, the base Heritage ’59 set holds high notes in spades: The classic design; the checklist homage; the team card checklists; the titles of the combo cards; the color spectrum on the fronts; the return of the facsimile autograph; the stealth airbrushing; the rookie parade; the modern green on red (and even black on red) of the backs; the cartoons; the curves and e.e. cummings sans serif Helveltica typography in the spotlight on the front; the squares and straight lines dominating the backs. Even the photographs (usually a Heritage low point) are consistently sharp. The only noticeable drawback for me is the Heritage logo on the front. It seems larger within this design than it has in years past. It’s too bad they couldn’t have relegated it to the back or done it as a watermark.

I also like that the Topps photo editors didn’t shy away from going with photos that show just how pissed off, high or completely out of it a given player is, which rings true to the original photo choices made in 1959. A large number of players squinted their eyes and contemplated the universe in the original, while today's players all seem to be thinking You want me to stand look/stand where? It's great.

Tonight I re-read my review of 2006 Heritage, and while I had high hopes going in for that set and came away disappointed, it thrills me all the more that this year’s set is a winner. It’s a perfect way to retire a brand.

1990 - 1994 Countdown: #19. 1993 Score

The Baseball Card Blog would like you to welcome our first major hobby advertiser, Dave & Adam's Card World, to the Blog.

Now, back to the 1990 - 1994 Countdown.


If not for the following year's soaring, majestic rhapsody in blue, 1993 Score might be remembered as the brand's most mature design. Instead it was lost in a sea of premiums, The Set That 1993 Forgot.

And though equipped with a strong checklist, gorgeous design and striking inserts, Score shook up its distribution blueprint in 1993 by not doing a factory set. I've always wondered the reason they didn't do factory sets in 1993 and 1994. By paring down the base set and re-purposing many of the most memorable subsets from 1990 through 1992 as harder-to-find inserts--and not releasing factory sets, as they did for those same three years--the company, while trying to reincarnate itself as more sophisticated brand, essentially lowered its profile with collectors.

As was the case with the flagship template in 1992, Score's 1993 design took visual cues from its sister set Pinnacle: a large, unobstructed action shot complemented by a thin frame (Pinnacle, black; Score, white). Following 1992's lead, the backs were vertical, featured a full-color headshot and full career statistics (and looked a helluva lot like the backs of Fleer's flagship from the next year, 1994). Finally, 1993 Score was the last company issue free of any type of gloss coating, UV or otherwise. (And as a sidebar, yave you noticed that those sets with a thin uniform gloss are actually hindered by it, and that because of it the cards block up and stick together? I've noticed that when I'm finally able to pry them apart(usually with the aid of a stick of butter), they feel much cheaper (and more buttery) than I remember. I wonder what kind of half-life the gloss coating has... That's something you always forget about: cards were made out of cardboard not only because it was something sturdy for cigarette and gum packaging, but because it was cheap and disposable. Nothing really changed the overall quality of cards until Kellogg's came along in the Seventies, Sportflics in 1986, Score brought full color to both front and back in 1988, Upper Deck upped the ante with large front and back full color photography in '89 and Topps Stadium Club brought its glossy A-game in 1991...)

I've always liked this set. And while this time period saw just about every brand make a conscious effort to gussy up and cater to a more discerning collector, I could never quite take Score seriously in its pursuit, no matter how many gold foil-encrusted Dream Teamers (like this one of Pudge in his trendy hoodie sweatshirt... is that B.U.M. Equipment? Tres chic, Ivan) I sent away for.