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.

Trade With Baseball Dad

Very surprised and excited that someone was following my estate sale finds which included a group of 1993 Topps Stadium Club master photos. I was informed by a reader that these were done as a mail-in redemption that year.

Baseball Dad over at All Tribe Baseball offered up a deal I couldn't refuse. In exchange for the Mark McGwire he'd send me a Will Clark. Done!

Welcome home Will, we've been waiting for you. I also netted a few other Clark cards in the deal and hopefully I'll have a chance to scan and post those as well. McGwire should show up in Ohio today along with a couple of friends I packaged up.

The Man, The Myth, The Master Photo

If there was a trophy to commemorate the craziness that went on this winter, I'd hope that this photo would be etched into the trophy.

It appears as if Bip is Superman, flying into home plate, bringing you a sack full of crappy cards you've got no use for.

That concludes my most excellent estate sale find. I was happy to be able to get a string of posts in again.

With funds being held in check, I'm laying low until the A&G release and taking a stab at the Ginter Code again this year.

George Brett 1993 Stadium Club Master Photo

Quick post to try and make good on my promise to show all 6 quickly. Didn't see as much free time over the weekend as I would have liked.

I like this one quite a bit!

Only 1 remains!

1993 Topps Stadium Club Master Photo #4

Another Oaktown masher. Mr. Ruben Sierra to you. I had the utmost respect for Ruben as a player. I felt like he was a solid athlete with good to great power. Injuries started to derail him right as he hit his prime and he also was plagued with a normal person's player arc. Oh what roids could have done for Ruben.

He was 2nd in the MVP balloting in 1989 and was only 23 years old. This kid had a bright future. He still managed to play for 20 years and smacked over 300 HRs. He played with a ton of teams, but I'll probably most remember him as a Ranger or Yankee.

1993 Topps Stadium Club Master Photo #3

Since Blogger decided to not let me post with pictures last night, I'm going to make up for lost time and post the 3rd of 6 cards I came across this weekend.

None other than the embattled Bash Brother himself, Mark McGwire. I won't say I feel bad for Mark, because I don't. And I won't say he belongs in the Hall of Fame, because he doesn't. Did you know that BJ Surhoff has more hits than Mark McGwire? Other than the lofty HR numbers, he wasn't anything special. Although I do believe he knew/knows how to hit. I see a lot of current players crediting him with helping them.

Most recently it's been Bobby Crosby. Another guy that broke my fantasy baseball heart.

1993 Topps Stadium Club Master Photo #2

Blogger decided to be a pain in my butt last night and not let me upload photos. As promised, number two in my series of six 1993 Stadium Club Master Photos that I purchased from an estate sale this weekend.

I've actually got quite the soft spot for Delino DeShields. He was a staple of my early 90s fantasy teams. I loved his speed and bat at second base. Paired up with Marquis Grissom in Montreal it was fun to watch that team run.

Delino went on to have a nice little 13 year career with his best season coming in 1997 with the Cardinals.

And since a couple of you emailed asking me . . . yes I'll consider trading these if you come across something you like. Of the six, there's probably going to be one that I'm going to have to keep.

Estate Sale Treasure Hunting

One lousy post per month since the new year? Terrible.

But wait, I've got plenty of excuses. However, they entirely revolve around waiting for a baby to show up. Just a momentary shift in priorities, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.

So anyway, back to the story. I was out this weekend with my wife, running some errands and she saw a sign for an estate sale. She loves going to these things, looking around for random things.

I took a quick tour of the house. The sale had been going on for at least a day and things were picked over pretty well. I ended up in a room with a ton of 1987 and 1991 Twins gear. Sweatshirts, Wheaties boxes - all the standard stuff you'd expect to find just outside of Minneapolis.

I almost didn't notice a small cardboard mailer with what I thought at first were just baseball photos. Turns out they were Master Photos from the 1993 Topps Stadium Club set. I don't want to ruin the surprise, because honestly, this is going to get much cooler than former Yankee Sam Militello.

As a second side note, the scanner didn't do these cards justice. My goal is to rattle off the 6 "cards" I found over the next 6 days.

In the meantime, has anyone else every seen these? From what I can tell, it looks like they were mailed from Topps to the previous owner sometime back in 1993. I'm very curious to hear if anyone else has some of these photos and the story behind them.