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?)

1994 Upper Deck SP

I didn't blog about '93 SP because I don't have any. I'm only blogging about '94 SP because I do. It looks like Upper Deck finally joined the all foil club here. I said all I have to say about that. I never knew what the SP was supposed to stand for, but if stands for shitty product, I would not be surprised.

The 1994 Upper Deck SP Detroit Tigers:

176 Cecil Fielder

177 Travis Fryman

178 Mike Henneman

179 Tony Phillips

180 Mickey Tettleton

181 Alan Trammell

You know, if you can't at least make a set of card with at least 9 players per team represented, you really shouldn't even bother.

There were two insert sets called Holoview. Both contained the same players. One set was blue and one set was red. Oh boy....

7 Cecil Fielder

9 Travis Fryman

1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice

Collector's Choice was Upper Deck's foray into superoverproducedcardsforkids, and as with most other issues of this type ended up outdoing their base set. There are ever so faint gray pinstripes on the cards, and the line art in the bottom corner obviously pays homage to the '75 Topps set. This was pretty much a no frills set, but sometimes no frills sets are ok with me. This is one of them.

The 1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Detroit Tigers:

27 Matt Brunson

56 Tom Bolton

100 Cecil Fielder

110 Chris Gomez

118 Bill Gullickson

132 Mike Henneman

167 Chad Kreuter

230 Tony Phillips

275 Mickey Tettleton

291 Lou Whitaker

352 Tigers Team Card / Cecil Fielder

364 Junior Felix

375 Travis Fryman

403 Kirk Gibson

421 Scott Livingstone

442 John Doherty

459 Mike Moore

474 Alan Trammell

499 David Wells

557 Danny Bautista

561 Tim Belcher

563 Eric Davis

There were a couple of inserts:

Home Run All-Stars

HA4 Cecil Fielder

Team vs. Team

13 Cecil Fielder

Then there were the parallel cards. Someday I'd love for someone other than me to take the time to delve into the history of the parallel card. It would be great for someone to explain to me their purpose other than to drive obsessive-complusive collectors into buying every pack they could find to try and complete these next to impossible to complete sets. Perhaps, I just answered my on question. 

But I think it's pretty clear that two parallel sets in one issue is a bit too much. Especially when the gold cards were seeded 1:36 packs. IF you didn't get any doubles, you would have had to purchase 24,120 packs of cards to get a complete set of 670. Ouch. Sometimes I think these card companies are just out to make money.......

I hope that I have been able here to demonstrate just how ridiculous parallel cards are. Since I think I have done so, I promise never to mention them again. 

1994 Upper Deck

Ok, so next to my computer sits a little table where sits the album of Tiger cards that am blogging about. For the last 6 weeks I have stared at '94 Upper Deck trying to come up with something, anything, to get through this set and continue moving along. 

Tonight I give up. 

These cards sucked. These are easily the worst Upper Deck base set ever. The inserts sucked. The parallels sucked. After tonight I hope to never see them again.

The 1994 Upper Deck Detroit Tigers:

37 Travis Fryman

51 Travis Fryman

56 Tony Phillips

93 Chris Gomez

179 David Wells

201 Alan Trammell

220 Cecil Fielder

247 John Doherty

261 Eric Davis

286 Cecil Fielder

296 Matt Brunson

301 Mickey Tettleton

316 Mike Moore

321 Mike Henneman

345 Travis Fryman

364 Tim Belcher

392 Chad Kreuter

414 Lou Whitaker

458 Bill Gullickson

547 Matt Brunson

You know a set sucks when Matt Brunson is in it twice.

I only have one insert, which apparently was released regionally in packs. (I thought they didn't start that until '95, but I'm too lazy to look it up?) Anyway, this is from the "Eastern" region.

E4 Cecil Fielder

Whew, I thought I was never going to do this again. I'm glad this is over.

P.S. Thanks to the two regular readers of this blog for contacting me in the last couple of weeks asking me if I was ever going to continue. The answer is yes. Thank you for your continued readership.