Great Card Design Continued: Topps Stadium Club

Yesterday I wrote a post asking which card designs you like best or preferences you have for how a card looks and is laid out. I won't lie, I'd love to get more feedback. What works? What doesn't? What do you love, and what do you hate?

Today I'm going to continue a little bit more on the theme of card design. I spent the better part of this afternoon going through 4 huge plastic tubs filled with baseball and football cards from my youth (late 80s and early 90s). I bet a saw over 100 different card designs as I opened cardboard monster box after monster box.

Very quickly I realized the best sets I saw today were the early Topps Stadium Club sets, and the early Upper Deck sets. Both the football and baseball sets are equally top notch for both products. I can't stress this enough. Glossy is good.

On the flip side, ToppsGold, whatever the heck that attempt was, is terrible. Foil is terrible. You got that? FOIL IS BAD. You can't read it and it doesn't present well. I kind of wished I'd scanned a ToppsGold card. Wait, this is the internet, let me go grab one. This scan is courtesy of 25 Years of Baseball. Steve writes a good blog so check it out.



Again, people, foil is a horrible thing. I stand by that. I'm not a designer, and I'm not very artistic, but those two things I'll stand by.

Now let's go back to Topps Stadium Club. 1991, 1992, and 1993:



Even if the design element didn't change much from year to year, the pictures are great on these cards even 17-19 years later. It's no secret this set was designed to compete against the new Upper Deck cards which were high gloss with color photos on the back.

As I said, I saw a lot of different card designs today, and many were and still are terrible. I wish I could properly capture with words the visual vomit that was being put out by the one thousand or so people making football cards in the early 90s. That's probably another story for another day on another blog though.

White Sox Cards & CTBNL Trade

This is exactly how much catch-up I'm trying to play, this trade for cards to be named later came in from Steve over at White Sox Cards in mid-February. I haven't forgotten Steve, I swear.

I originally promised to send him some Sox 2009 Topps T206 cards that I had from his want list, but I see they've mostly disappeared except for AJ Pierzynski and Jake Peavy. Now, I know I have Jake Peavy, but I do have a love affair with the man. See, it's right here.



So it's either part with Peavy or scour his want list for something new. I'm sure I'll make a decision quickly this week to close the book on this trade.

Steve did send over 16 cards I needed from my 1992 Topps Stadium Club want list. This side project started sometime over the winter when I realized I had about half the cards from Series 1. I really liked the idea of the rookie card image in color on the back of the cards. In fact, I can actually remember buying these packs when I was 15 or so and really liking the glossy photo paper. Very high end for its day. Here's a shot of some of the cards he sent over.



These cards bring back great memories. My friends and I used to heckle Chili Davis and Tim Wallach (not pictured here) unmercifully at Third World County Stadium when they came to town to take on the Brewers. I'd go so far as to say with the light crowds at the start of the 1995 season (remember they were going to use scabs to start the year but pushed the dates back instead once they reached an agreement?) that Tim Wallach could hear every word we shouted at him. Chili Davis too. You could basically sit anywhere you wanted in that park it was so empty. Don't get me wrong, it was empty to begin with but even the ushers didn't make you leave the "nice" seats in the beginning of that 1995 season.

Here are a few more including one of my favorites to watch in that era, Jay Buhner.



I'll do my best to update my list of Series 1 needs from the 1992 Stadium Club set. Also if you have anything to trade from Series 2, I don't think I have any. Although I did find a real cheap set of Series 3 back in December. But that's another post for another day - or just later tonight.