Blog Bat Around: [Overproduction Preferences]

Time to jump into another Bat Around.  This one was perpetuated by three of the all-time top bloggers.  DimeBox Nick started it in 2023 with a post called Junk Is Junk, then Night Owl put a more positive spin on it, and just this month, San Jose Fuji contributed his take.  And that's where I saw it.

All three guys set their lists at six or seven choices.  I've only collected around 15 sets from that era in total.  I've (over)stated many times that I wasn't active with cards back then ('87-'94), and actually skipped everything from '85 to '03.  (Including '84 Fleer update, which I regret now.)  So I have really no nostalgia to go back to when ranking these products.  Instead, I made two lists of the sets that appeal to me (and I completed).  The first was in order of the most to least graphically appealing design.  The other was in order of how memorable it was building the set (many years later), and/or how much of it I still deal with it as far as trading, buying and selling.  Like how some sets I still handle all the time, and others were forgotten once I finished them.  I then combined the two lists to get the rankings you'll see here.  I'll do my Top Ten and a few Honorable Mentions in reverse order.

I could do a supplemental post about how the complete/factory sets have sold on eBay for me in the last year on top of all this.  I'm shocked any of it sold at all, but let me know if you want to hear about how they moved out.

So here we go.

Honorable Mentions - just outside the Top Ten are these sets that I liked but didn't make the cut.  All the rest that aren't shown here somewhere have never had much of any appeal to me.  You'll notice some omissions that are popular elsewhere.  Leave a comment with the ones you expected to see.

1990 & 1994 Leaf

'90 Leaf is one of the more simple but elegant designs.  I didn't own a set until a couple years ago when I bought one at a shop.  Singles of this set are scarce in the wild in my experience.  Again, the history of this set and it's "eliteness" is lost on me.

'94 Leaf is a nice visual with the marble swoosh and foil logo, but it's the opposite of it's '90 counterpart in that singles are all over the place.  It's probably the default set that makes me think "Don't need any of those" the quickest.

1990 Fleer

 I like the look of this one a lot too.  Simple but colorful enough (frames are several different colors), easily readable, with team logos.  I think this was one of my Summer/National week projects in the 2010's where I'd build a set from the OVP era for cheap with Stuart from SR75's help.  Either way, I got the bulk of it from him, so it didn't take long.  The Canadian flavor would be interesting, but I don't think there are any radical differences from the regular one like '77 OPC vs. Topps.

1994 Triple Play

Yep, I'm going outside the Big Six with this list.  Since I'm coming from such a late perspective, everything from this era is basically the same for me.  The Fire Red premiere of TP is over the top, but I like the other two incarnations a lot.  Distinctive logo, nice treatment of the name, and prominent team logos.  Maybe a thin line on top of the name with the postition would have been nice, but these are still cool.  I have no memory of how I built this one, so it falls short.

1988 Topps

Simple graphics with overlapping photos - always a plus.  The minus - everyone's got six tons of this in their extra stuff.  Love the variations.  There's not much more to them when you think about it though.  One of the least represented in the Heritage/Archives/Flagship tribute cycles.

Now the winners:

#10 - 1994 Pacific

I am the King of 1994 Pacific.  SR75 convinced me to buy a huge box of packs back in the summer of 2008.  I opened them all up and sorted them into a few sets.  Still searching for some of the inserts and very elusive checklists.  My extras box has finally shrunk to two rows instead of three.  Quite often I'll trade someone a whole team set at a time.

#9 - 1990 Donruss

Yep, that's right.  I LIKE 1990 Donruss.  The speckle and line design isn't the most fantastic, but it's more about the error quest and all the other peripheral sets that go with these - Aqueous Tests, Bonus MVPs, Grand Slammers, Best of AL & NL, Learning Series, and The Rookies, and Pack border vs. Set borders.  Not to mention the quasi-nostalgia of 2016 Donruss football, that improves the look.  I'm casually after the Master Set - but that doesn't include the "INC" vs. "INC." variants.

#8 - 1993 Stadium Club

I'm not sure which of the first few SC sets I actually have right off the top of my head, but I chose this one to represent the brand in general, really.  The red bar behind the name gives just a little more presence to the text than in the other sets. 

#7 - 1994 Pinnacle

Another fairly simple design, it's just the name badge - cool use of gold on black - and the team in a half circle underneath, that can go unnoticed.  I have memories of building this one for a while.  This set exemplifies the move to more sophisticated designs beyond the junk period.

#6 - 1993 Studio

Love the use of logos for the backgrounds.  Brings the graphical elements to another level.  Making them hat logos is cool too.  Studio is one of those secondary star-only sets, but I think they are consistently more elegant than regular cards.  Portraits can be lame, but Studio makes it classy.

#5 - 1989 Topps

As I mentioned before, I stopped building sets after 1984 until 2003, but I bought two boxes of '89 when they were out just to see what cards were like right then.  (Ironically, I have four wax boxes of '89 in the sale lot that could recreate the experience.)   Surprised these calculated out to be so high on the list since of the ten sets I had for sale, four of them weren't actually complete.  So now I have to trade for some singles, including Pete Rose.  That's points off, but I almost have them all now.

#4 - 1991 Studio

Yep, going there again.  This was the premeire issue of this portrait product.  The black & white gives it more sophistication, and the border color is neutral enough not to draw attention away from the image, but rich enough to be distinctive.

#3 - 1993 Triple Play

This product combines a few of my favorite elements in one.  Black borders, overlapping photos & graphics à la '88, distinctive team logos, and specialty cards (most of which you had to read the back to understand, though).  It's not the most beautiful design, or the most memorable, but there's just something I really like about '93 Triple Play.

#2 - 1987 Donruss

Black borders and big team logos again, and this time, a very balanced design.  I like the gray band of baseballs with the yellow edges, and the varied colors in the name strip.  Even the company logo looks good.  (And kudos to Donruss for consistently putting the year on the front so you don't have to check the back for copyright date.)  I bought my set for like $3 at the LCS that I frequented for decades.  I've finished the matching Leaf set too.  The Opening Day set is even nicer in dark red. 

#1 - 1988 Score

It's not because I'm still trading for the remainder of my original damaged set, or that I had 48 factory sets for sale at the beginning of the year (now down to half that).  But all that contributes.  The color choices are great, and there's six of them.  These just stand out over and above anything else in that year, much less that time period in general.  They're simple enough to blend in with the other sets, but appealing enough to me to set them apart.  '89 was decent, but a downgrade, and Score went to hell after that until 1996.

 

Don't flame me for the ones I left off (and don't especially like), but do leave me comments so I can tally up the votes for those I suspect you'll say.  Let's see if floating letters beats woodgrain, if you know what I mean...

Aspirations

A co-worker gave me a factory set of 1991 Classic Best minor league cards a while ago.  It's a 450 card set that comes in a custom box with each block of 100 cards wrapped in cellophane.  This set had sort of a defect in that two of the blocks were of the 200 numbers, so I was missing the 100's.  I put them on the Trading Card database and they've come rolling in.

There are many players who went on to have significant major league careers.  Like these two:

But some of the others who didn't quite make it have similar names to those that did.  Though not all of the successful people made it in Major League Baseball.  

Cristobal Colon only played 14 games for the Texas Rangers.

He could have been Bartolo Colon!

Steve Rolen never made it beyond A+ ball. 

Scott Rolen has been on the HOF ballot.

Fred Russell was "straight outta Compton" but only had a few years at A level.

Bill Russell was a staple for the 70's and 80's Dodgers.

Oscar Munoz pitched ten games for the Twins in 1995, going 2-1.  

If he was Anthony Munoz, he would be a Hall of Fame lineman.

Jeff Jackson played from 1989 to 1998, but didn't go higher than AA.

Everyone knows what Bo did in two sports.

Some guys just weren't meant to be athletes.  Paul here actually appeared in 18 games for the Orioles in '93, with a .213 batting average.

As Harry Caray, he would have had a long career in the broadcast booth.  (Not to mention tributes by Will Ferrell.)

Freddie Davis, Jr. went five seasons in various levels up to AA with a total record of 12-11.

Sammie Davis, Jr. has been called the greatest entertainer in the world.  He started in Vaudeville at age three, was part of the Rat Pack with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, and was in show business until his passing at age 64.

Rod Bolton was called up a couple times for the White Sox in '93 and '95, but only amassed a record of 2-8 in 156 innings.

Michael Bolton started as a hard rock singer in 1975, but switched to adult contemporary in the 90's and had nine #1 hits among 24 albums.

Kelly Lifgren was 28-44 from 1988 to 1993 with a 5.13 ERA.

Nils Lofgren (left) has been a musician since the late 60's and is a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band as well as Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

Donovan Osborne actually played nine years in the majors, but over a 13 year span.  He did not play in 1994, 2000, 2001, and 2003.   His career ERA is a respectable 4.03 with 558 strikeouts.

But he's not the Prince Of Darkness!

Oh, what could have been!

PWE = Pretty Wacky Experiences

Chugging along with the Database entries and more trades.  Most of them are PWEs like I mentioned before.  Got another one that arrived completely intact, but looked like it had been shot with a shrink ray.

Those are standard size card pockets, but no, the cards are supposed to be that way.  Those are the Topps Micro versions from each of the three years they were made ~ 1991 thru 1993.  These just about complete all my player collections except maybe Carlton Fisk.

Also last week, I got a return envelope from somewhere I've never sent cards before. 

This was the inside wrapping around the plastic page that held the cards.  The envelope actually had a return address of New York, NY, but I sent to Israel.  That was pretty cool.  Only cost me a bit over $3 for First Class International.

Then Friday, I got a major mailday:

One bubble mailer and four PWEs.  You can see the different postage on each one.  The butterfly stamps are equal to one regular first class stamp plus the extra ounce / non-machinable extra charge.  The bunnies are the extra oz./non-mach by itself.  So if you have a two ounce envelope that is rigid - it's one of each.

After depackaging, this is what I ended up with.

Here's a sampling of what was in those trades.

My last base (SP) from the latest Ginter set.  The Ohtani is a duplicate, because I didn't have any of the Banner Seasons on my want list.  I think I missed updating the database after buying a bunch of '22 Ginter at Chantilly.  That's the downside of keeping two sets of wantlists.

Love all the special Cal Ripken sets and subsets.  Though I figured no one will be trading things like this, so I ended up buying this on and one of the Skybox E-Motion ones too.  This one's got an issue with the foilage, as you can see it's a different shade in the left section.  Hopefully the one I bought is consistent.  This one is available cheap when that one gets here.

Some "A-list" retro stuff from a couple different trades.  The Aaron is from the '94 Archive set, and Abreu is one of three '07 Heritage SPs that I knocked off.

I picked this 2020 Archives Robles just to add to the random cards of his I occasionally pick up that generally get added to sets of the same year and not a player collection.  I actually ended up with two of these - the database will repeat a match between two traders for some reason and I didn't catch it.  Mostly because I don't analyze my trades that closely since my main goal is to move out as much stuff as possible.  I know it makes people feel better if they have a couple more to match up when I'm sending twice as many.  Not sure that was the case here, but either way I have one available...

A couple that look like pure Overproduction era commons, but upon closer inspection, you'll realize that the '90 Donruss checklist is the factory version with a different range of numbers, and the '91 Comstock is the Mariners version (vs. the Cubs version which is blue bordered.) I had a notation about lines in the bottom right corner being extended, but I can't find the reference to it, so I crossed it off since it definitely isn't the Cubs version.

Down to Pat Benetar for my series 2 set of ProSet MusiCards!  Metal horns up! I'm not building the entire set, just the hard rock acts and a few awesome females.

Some foil-stamped football from various years.  These are 1997 Upper Deck and 2015 Prestige.  I think the Prestige card's scan stretched at the end.  The extra glossy (and usually shiny) ones tend to do that in my scanner.  I've also been getting a lot for my builds of '97 Stadium Club and this set...

...from two years before.  There's a lot of rainbow foil on these.  The logos for the first season's of NFL in Carolina and Jacksonville are cool.  The foil doesn't scan well, of course.

And finally, one of my favorite products to get in trade (or find cheap for sale) is Fleer Action Football.  These killed off half my 1986 wants.  I also got one of the two Washington stickers from this set, but odd size stuff won't feed through my scanner.