1995 Leaf

This is a sweet looking set. The rainbow foil comes off the card really well. This might well be the best looking Leaf set to date. I can't say anything good about the foil stamped player name at the bottom, so I won't.

The 1995 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

9 John Doherty

35 Chris Gomez

63 Cecil Fielder

78 Kirk Gibson

113 Jose Lima

139 Greg Gohr

178 Lou Whitaker

207 Travis Fryman

224 Alan Trammell

248 Danny Bautista

254 Sean Bergman

278 Mike Moore

297 Chad Curtis

I only have one insert and it's fabulous. The best part is that the scan is about a million times better looking than the actual card. In real life, the border is a silverish looking color. But the scanned version actually makes it look like a 3D rainbow orange tiger skinish sort of thing, which totally rocks! Seriously, the card I'm holding in my hand looks nothing like the one pictured.

Cornerstones

2 Fryman/Fielder

1995 Studio

One cool thing about Studio is that they were always trying to do something not seen on cards before. These are no exception. Yeah, they're a little bit schlocky, but as a one-time issue I like 'em. The credit card motif works and lends itself well to the info on the front of the card like the debut year and birthday. 

The 1995 Studio Detroit Tigers:

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

53 Chris Gomez

70 Chad Curtis

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Alan Trammell

191 John Doherty

This is one of the few cases where the parallels turned out better than base set. Technically, they are not parallels, since they didn't do this for every player, but trust me, they're parallels.

The Gold and Platinum series were a no-brainer for something credit card related. I like the rounded corners and the gold foil hologram pops a lot more than the silver base set cards. Personally I would have like to seen an insert set along the lines of Past Due or Credit Declined, but that's just me speaking from personal experience.....

Gold

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

As Platinum cards typically designate something exclusive and hard to get, it should come as no shock that there were no Tigers in the Platinum set. (FTR is looks like about half the teams didn't land a single player in the Platinum set.)

1995 Donruss

I would be tempted to rank this as one of the best looking sets Donruss ever made. It could be right up there with '83, '84, and '93. It's got the great looking picture-in-picture similar to '83 Topps, except with an outstanding home plate frame bordered in team colors. But I can't do it, and regular readers will know exactly why. 

The silver foil absolutely ruins these cards. Making it even worse, the debossing of the team and player names makes them virtually unreadable. It's not hard to imagine how much better these cards would look if the ribbon was dark blue, with the team and player names reversed out in orange. Or vice versa. Instead it's all to easy to see how they add nothing to a fantastic design. What a shame.

The 1995 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

45 Lou Whitaker

82 Travis Fryman

109 Cecil Fielder

137 Jose Lima

154 Mike Moore

172 Chris Gomez

219 Chad Kreuter

249 Danny Bautista

257 Kirk Gibson

274 Milt Cuyler

309 Junior Felix

312 John Doherty

339 Tim Belcher

362 Joe Boever

407 Tony Phillips

434 Bill Gullickson

465 David Wells

502 Alan Trammell

506 Juan Samuel

537 Mickey Tettleton

Donruss issued a parallel called Press Proof, that looked just like the regular cards, except they were gold foil instead of silver, and had the words PRESS PROOF written across the top of the card. They did not look any better. 

1995 Fleer Emotion

One of the unsung joys I have received from blogging about Tigers cards is getting to see cards and sets that I completely forgot existed. For me, collecting from the mid-90's to the mid-00's usually meant going to a card store or two (when they were still around...) and sorting through common bins for an hour or two. I'd get home; crack open a beer; sort them all into the appropriate year, make, and model; file them away in plastic pages; and promptly forget about them.

This is one of those sets. I don't remember anything about these. Being a mid-90's set of course the front is all cluttered up with unreadable foil stamping, but the ghosted orange background really adds a nice original look to the set. I admit that the big lettered "emotion" printed makes checking them all out pretty good for a laugh. I've listed each "emotion" with the corresponding card. Enjoy. 

The 1995 Fleer Emotion Detroit Tigers:

41 Chad Curtis - MOVING

42 Cecil Fielder - MIGHTY

43 Travis Fryman - COMPOSED

44 Kirk Gibson - DELIGHTED

45 Bob Higginson - LEARNING

46 Alan Trammell - STEADY

47 Lou Whitaker - SAFE

See? Though ARE funny! And funny is an emotion! Get it?

1995 Fleer Flair

Not much going on here that's different from the other Flair issues, except they turned them on their sides. Here goes.

The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun

Van Halen - I'll Wait

Prefab Sprout - Cruel

The 1995 Fleer Flair Detroit Tigers:

37 John Doherty

38 Cecil Fielder

39 Travis Fryman

40 Chris Gomez

41 Tony Phillips

42 Lou Whitaker

255 Chad Curtis

256 Kirk Gibson

257 Mike Henneman

258 Bob Higginson

259 Felipe Lira

260 Rudy Pemberton

261 Alan Trammell

1995 Fleer Ultra

Quite possibly the least amount of effort ever put into a card design. 

You know what that means around here. Unfortunately I didn't listen to five songs today. Not much effort on my part either.

The 1995 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

44 Danny Bautista

45 Junior Felix

46 Cecil Fielder

47 Chris Gomez

48 Chad Kreuter

49 Mike Moore

50 Tony Phillips

51 Alan Trammell

52 David Wells

284 John Doherty

285 Travis Fryman

286 Kirk Gibson

287 Lou Whitaker

I only have one insert and it's a doozy. Nothing says cutting edge like a close up of a cleat or a batting glove. The background of this card reminds me of those little puzzles you could get at Stuckey's when I was a kid. You know, the one with 15 squares and one empty hole and you had to slide them around to end up making a picture of a map of the U.S. or some sort of wild animal? Yeah, those....

All-Rookie

2 Chris Gomez

1995 Fleer

One year after issuing one of the best looking sets of all time, Fleer gave the world this mess. This was the year they gave all the teams in each division a similar design. The funniest part about this is that the design of the A.L. East teams was probably the best of the bunch. (Yeah, we were once in that division...)

The 1995 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

44 Danny Bautista

45 Joe Boever

46 Milt Cuyler

47 Storm Davis

48 John Doherty

49 Junior Felix

50 Cecil Fielder

51 Travis Fryman

52 Mike Gardiner

53 Kirk Gibson

54 Chris Gomez

55 Buddy Groom

56 Mike Henneman

57 Chad Kreuter

58 Mike Moore

59 Tony Phillips

60 Juan Samuel

61 Mickey Tettleton

62 Alan Trammell

63 David Wells

64 Lou Whitaker

I've only got one insert card, and it's not bad looking. I like cards that incorporate newspaper themes. But would it have been that much trouble to maybe throw a Tigers headline or box score back there, instead of a Braves-Giants box?

Headliner

9 Cecil Fielder

The Tigers were well represented in the Update set. Unfortunately they were well represented by mediocre to poor players. (Bob Higginson notwithstanding)

17 Sean Bergman

18 Chad Curtis

19 John Flaherty

20 Bob Higginson

21 Felipe Lira

22 Shannon Penn

23 Todd Steverson

24 Sean Whiteside

1995 Bowman's Best

I have a hard time believing that anybody's "Best" set of cards could contain a card of Pat Ahearne. I actually have two of these, and if a certain high school baseball coach shows up for the Tigers series in Pittsburgh next month, the other one is his.

The 1995 Bowman's Best Detroit Tigers:

B20 Tony Clark

B30 Pat Ahearne

B49 Juan Encarnacion

R28 Cecil Fielder

R64 Chad Curtis

R70 Travis Fryman

1995 Bowman

Ah, I love the Bowman. I can totally overlook the piss poor design of any Bowman issue just to be reminded of the piss poor Tigers' prospects who graced these cards. And don't kid yourself, both were piss poor.....

The 1995 Bowman Detroit Tigers:

68 Justin Thompson

78 Cade Gaspar

127 Bob Higginson

167 Sean Whiteside

195 Matt Brunson

253 Tony Clark

302 Travis Fryman

340 Chad Curtis

375 Chris Gomez

416 Cecil Fielder

427 Jose Lima

Who was Sean Whiteside? Anybody?

1995 Topps Bazooka

I never realized until now that Topps issued the Bazooka cards this far back. This looks to be Topps first entry into really cheap cards for kids, but I don't remember enough about these to make that claim officially. Packs of Bazooka cards were always pretty cheap, but at 132 cards for an entire set, I'm guessing here that Topps sort of undershot the mark. What did it take, like $8 to build a whole set? I'm not complaining mind you, but why would anybody release a set of cheap cards with this few cards in the set.

The 1995 Topps Bazooka Detroit Tigers:

12 Cecil Fielder

59 Travis Fryman

101 Mickey Tettleton

1995 Topps D3

Another one I'd like to see in my ideal Topps Mystery set, this is yet another Topps gimmick set that I like. Nothing really innovative here, these are pretty much the same as the Topps Kelloggs 3D cards of the 70's. What separates these from those though are the great action shots, instead of a close up of a guy with a washed out background. Another one year wonder that Topps would never produce again, but a good one still the same. The scan doesn't do these justice. 

The 1995 Topps D3 Detroit Tigers:

30 Lou Whitaker

51 Travis Fryman

59 Chris Gomez

1995 Topps MB

As I sit here and ponder how to say what it is that I like about this set, and I do like it, I'm suddenly pondering something else, and I'll get to it shortly. But let me start with this set first.

I dig these a lot. For anybody who may not know, the "MB" is slang for embossed in the printing world. For anybody who may not know what embossed means, check this out:

Wiki definition of "embossing"

This gives the card a true three-dimensional feel and it makes for one very top shelf looking card. This is the Woodford Reserve of printing right here. Over the years Topps threw so many gimmicky cards at us, that a lot of the original ones fell into obscurity pretty quick. Such is the case with these. A great concept and a great design that Topps would never issue again.

Which brings me back to what I was pondering. Why doesn't Topps combine say six of these innovative type sets into one big set called Topps Mystery? Some other issues I would suggest would be things like the D3 cards, Gallery, Turkey Red, Finest, and maybe some other issue like Archives. They could issue 90 cards of each style (3 players per team) and make a modest 540 card set. Each pack would contain 9 or 12 cards of one design and each team would have 18 cards total. Then they could showcase all of their interesting designs in one easy to collect set. That way instead of issuing the same handful of players in all these small sets, they could incorporate a lot of cool stuff as well as a full team's worth of player into one nice set. And you'd never know which style of cards you were going to get in any one pack.

Oh well, something to think about.

The 1995 Topps MB Detroit Tigers:

42 Chris Gomez

50 Travis Fryman

76 Cecil Fielder

79 Tony Phillips

97 Lou Whitaker

121 Mickey Tettleton

1995 Topps Finest

Again, I take issue with a set called Finest that contains someone as horribly bad as Sean Bergman, but I'm willing to let it go. I'm not really sure why Topps decided to add the protective laminate. Did anybody ever peel it off knowing that they were decreasing the value of valueless cards? Can you even decrease the value of a Sean Bergman card? Maybe if you unpeeled it and it became a Mike Moore card.......

The 1995 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:

3 Chris Gomez

42 Travis Fryman

107 Mickey Tettleton

124 Cecil Fielder

153 Mike Henneman

203 Alan Trammell

212 Tony Phillips

220 Lou Whitaker

257 Bobby Higginson

263 Chad Curtis

306 Sean Bergman

329 Felipe Lira

1995 Stadium Club

Stadium Club. I don't like writing about them anymore than you like reading about them. Let's cut to the chase.

The 1995 Topps Stadium Club Detroit Tigers:

6 Travis Fryman

34 Mickey Tettleton

78 Danny Bautista

105 Cade Gaspar

154 Junior Felix

182 David Wells

208 Tony Phillips

250 Bill Gullickson

298 Alan Trammell

309 Cecil Fielder

329 Mike Henneman

383 Chris Gomez

460 John Doherty

481 Lou Whitaker

515 Cecil Fielder Extreme Corps

547 Chad Curtis

585 Felipe Lira

611 Bobby Higginson

There was some sort of parallel where they have World Series logos gold foil stamped on the front of the cards. Your guess is as good as mine. Someone feel free to explain.

Ok, so I have this one insert card of Cecil Fielder. I'm too lazy to look it up, or even if there are any other inserts, but if anybody wants to fill in the blanks then please go ahead.

1995 Topps

Oh, where should I begin? This is not a bad looking set. But it's ruined for me by the horrible font used for the player name, coupled with the name being in an unreadable gold foil. I still have to tilt these cards back and forth like a Sportflics card and hope to catch the light at the right angle to read these names. 

One thing I'd like to say, I'm a sucker for the multi-player rookie/prospects cards, and this one looks great, as long as I don't consider who is on it. I wish Topps, or Upper Deck for that matter, would do more of these, but with the bizarre rookie card rule that I still haven't figured out (mainly how Bowman gets away with printing cards of minor leaguers, but yet no one else can...) it looks like these have gone the way of packs actually being made out of wax. It's a shame, and I wish somebody would explain that rule to me. 

The 1995 Topps Detroit Tigers:

15 Lou Whitaker

40 Travis Fryman

68 Junior Felix

97 Mike Gardiner

125 John Doherty

153 Tony Clark

182 Milt Cuyler

209 Tim Belcher

220 Cecil Fielder

249 Bill Gullickson

277 Chris Gomez

307 Mike Henneman

334 John Flaherty

362 Chad Kreuter

434 David Wells

457 Joe Boever

474 Alan Trammell

492 Cade Gaspar

519 Kirk Gibson

541 Tony Phillips

557 Danny Bautista

576 Mike Moore

612 Mickey Tettleton

636 Sean Bergman/Shannon Penn On Deck

These even had a pretty cool quasi-parallel set. An all foil design (I know I've bitched about it, but these are ok) called Cyberstats. They look just like the base cards, but the backs have the '94 stats extrapolated as to what they would've done had the '94 season not been cancelled. I thought there were only a handful of these, since I only have a handful of these, but my research has found that there were a lot of these. My research also shows that Big Daddy was on pace for 133 RBI, which would have tied his career high. Mike Moore was on pace to suck even more than he did. Go figure.....

13 Lou Whitaker

32 Travis Fryman

123 Tim Belcher

124 Cecil Fielder

135 Junior Felix

136 Bill Gullickson

150 Chris Gomez

165 Mike Henneman

231 David Wells

242 Danny Bautista

252 Joe Boever

267 Alan Trammell

306 Kirk Gibson

322 Tony Phillips

350 Mike Moore

380 Mickey Tettleton

The Traded Set was issued in packs for the first time since '75. I remember buying a ton of these packs and still not getting the Nomo or Chipper cards. I do have all the Tigers though so I guess I should be happy.

16T Brian Maxcy

21T Chad Curtis

31T Todd Steverson

35T Bob Higginson

68T Felipe Lira

88T Pat Ahearne

107T Rob Gable (ok, I lied. I don't have this one. Who the hell was Rob Gable?)