The Joy of Junk Wax - 1991 Upper Deck

You know how the older you get the more you come to appreciate certain things? This is how I feel about some early 90's baseball cards sets. I was new to collecting cards when many of these junk wax sets were released. While I knew of a handful of players, I wasn't watching baseball on TV or following the sport as closely as I do now. In my youthful excitement of opening cards, I would gloss over many of the cards. I didn't appreciate the photography featured on the cards like I do now.

I recently purchased a jumbo box of 1991 Upper Deck. I chose this set for several reasons.

1) I have always loved the base design of the cards
2) It represents a time when first started collecting cards
3) Upper Deck always had some of the best photography
4) Ths jumbo packs contained a Silver Slugger card in every pack
5) "Find the Hank" Baseball Heroes set

As I opened the box the other night, I just started taking pictures of random cards that stood out to me in some way. For this post I decided to try and group them together into different themes. Enjoy.

Rest In Peace

Hall of Famers

Young Talent

Is that a young Sammy Sosa sitting on the bench beside Frank in the background?

I'm Seeing Three

Photography

I love "aerial" action photography.

Card Back Photography

Action in the dirt.

While I don't care for Sosa, I love the Angels players sitting in the bullpen in the background.

Cal kickin' up some dirt sliding into home. General goofiness from Jose Lind w/ Mike LeValliere.

Play at the plate cards are always cool, even if the picture is on the back of the card.

Just Because...

David Justice was the first player that I had poster of on my wall as a kid. There was just something about him that I was drawn too. I have always found this card of his to be iconic in a way. Hershiser was one of my late father's favorite pitchers. Anything that reminds me of my dad is aways special. 

Julio is one of my Player Collections and I don't believe I had this card before the other day. Not sure how Bip showed up...

Team Cards

I could have taken pictures of many more of these as the artwork on many of them are beautiful, but this card of the Tigers bomber, Cecil Fielder was one of the better ones.

Hank Aaron Baseball Heroes

Does this card above not look like Al Roker from The Today Show?! When I was a kid, I thought these Baseball Heroes insert cards were awesome. I still find myself drawn to these and now I can't wait to complete this set for Hank Aaron.

I still have not taken the time to collate the cards and put together a want list. The big stack you see in the bottom right corner is my stack of 700 cards. At first I thought the collation was just really bad (and it was), then I realized the box I bought was a combination of the low and hi series. I may end up buy box of the low series to see if I can round out the set some more...or I may not. Regardless of what I end up doing, it was a blast sitting at the kitchen table opening the packs and looking over each card. Am I the only one that gets a kick out of opening junk wax?

The Joy of Junk Wax - 1992 Pinnacle

Running a baseball card blog can be a lot of work. I'm always trying to think of posts I can do that doesn't revolve around scanning a new card or talking about a trade (not that there is anything wrong with those!). Lately I've seen a few people going back and trying to build by hand older sets. Everyone has their own reasons for the sets they decide to tackle. This got me thinking about some older sets that I was first introduced to when I was younger and just getting in to cards.

I started collecting in 1990, the beginning of the junk wax era. I don't have most of the cards from back then (minus cards in my Braves collection and various PCs), but I've grown to respect some of these sets more as an adult. I recently decided to go back to the early 90's and pick a few sets that I really liked to try and build the set. Thankfully many of these boxes can be had for under $20 and in some cases are still sealed. I first thought of Upper Deck...and that will happen soon, but up first is 1992 Pinnacle.

This was Score's first entry into the "premium" baseball card market. Competing with the likes of Fleer Ultra and Upper Deck. I grabbed a sealed box of both series 1 and 2 for $10 on eBay. I kinda wanted the jumbo packs for the 1:1 inserts, but how can you pass up a cool (sealed) box of cards for $5? If you follow my Facebook page then you would have seen I broke open the series 1 box while down at Myrtle Beach for the Memorial Day holiday.

I always loved the sleek, clean look of this set. Yeah the black corner area on the card takes away from the background of the photo, but it's done so nicely. Even 25 years later this design, in my opinion, holds up well.

I'm not a numbers person so I don't care if a baseball card back has complete stats or not. There are enough other sets each year that will feature all the players stats so if I really want to see a certain stat from a certain year I can find it elsewhere. I like the little write ups on the cards. This John Smoltz card is a perfect example of what I'm referring to. 1991 didn't start off too kindly for John. He had a horrible 2-11 record going into the All-Star break, Had Braves manager at the time, Bobby Cox, not been so stubborn, John would have been pulled from the starting rotation for the second half of the season. However Bobby stuck with his guy and was rewarded. As the card mentions, John went 12-2 with a 2,63 ERA after the All-Star break. He would pitch against one of his idols, Jack Morris, in game 7 of the World Series. Even though the Braves fell short of winning it all that year, it remains a remarkable turn around story for John and the Braves.

Insert cards were just starting to be randomly inserted into packs in 1991, however subsets just kept getting more inovative during this time. 1992 Pinnacle had a few, such as Shades and Sidelines. Shades is just a goofy subset featuring a close of up the player wearing stylish sunglasses with a reflection of himself in the lenses. Sidelines featured the players off the field with the spotlight on other hobbies they had. In this case Robin Yount liked to dirt bike. Perhaps this is where Madison Bumgarner got his inspiration from?!

One of my favorite subsets from this set was The Idols. It features a small color image of a then current player, super imposed over a larger sepia colored image of a player they look up to. Here we have the Kid, Ken Griffey, Jr. and his idol, Rickey Henderson. Simple concept and design, but works on all levels.

I mentioned that insert cards were just coming into popularity during this time. I ended up pulling one of the Team Pinnacle cards from the box. These were randomly inserted with odds of 1:240 packs. I don't recall ever seeing a card from the set before I pulled this one. It's a nice double sided card with great artwork. I scanned eBay and COMC cards over the weekend to see if the other 11 cards in the set were cheap or expensive as this set could make a nice bookend to the base set.

In the end I ended up only missing 13 cards from the first series. Oddly enough most of them were in the 90s. One fellow blogger has already chimed in that he had several that I'm missing so I'm already off to a great start. I still have the series 2 box to open next. Once I'm done with that I'll look at making and posting a want list of the commons I'm missing and any inserts I may decide to chase.

The best part of this was sharing the time with my daughters, especially my oldest. She enjoyed opening the packs and I got to explain to her who some of the players were and how I was collating the cards to get them in order. She helped with the collation part which was I was glad as their was a lot of cards and dupes in that box!

If anyone is interested in any players or teams from this set let me know. If anyone else by chance is building the set too let me know as I have plenty of cards you can have.

Vintage boxes Target?

Finding older discounted blasters @ Target is nothing new, but a vending box of '88 Topps?!  I made the obligatory stop by the card section the other day while running some errands for work only to find 3 boxes that seemed out of place.  One was the aforementioned vending box of 1988 Topps.  The others were 1990 Pro Set football and 1993 Classic Draft Picks Basketball.  Each were marked with those large green $9.99 stickers.

I stopped by this same Target today and the Pro Set box was gone.  Guess with the NFL playoffs in full force someone was jonesing for some old school football cards.

Have any others found something similar at your local Target stores?