Oh sure, I’ve looked.  I feel like I’ve looked everywhere.  They’re just gone.  What really steams me is that I checked them off my list.  I’m not supposed to check them off until the cards are in their box.  Of course, I’m supposed to do a lot of things.

So, here I am looking for these two stupid cards.  They only set me back $1.50 for the pair, so it’s not some huge financial hit.  Still, it will gnaw on me.  I’m the woman searching for her lost coin.

Officially, I’ve already called of the search.  I’m not looking for survivors anymore; this is a recovery operation.  Rest assured, they’ll turn up.  They’ll be in my tax return file.  Or maybe they’ll be stuck in with the wrong set.  Maybe they’ll be under the couch.  I won’t know whether to be happy or angry.

Stats

Normally I’m pretty good about keeping track of how many of each card I get from a box.  This time, since it’s box #3 of 1990 Bowman, I got a little lazy.

Base cards

The base cards of 1990 Bowman haven’t changed over the past two weeks, so there isn’t much point in showing a bunch of them again.  One card did catch my eye.  It was less about the card or the picture and more about the name…

333 Joey Belle

I wouldn’t have guessed that Albert Belle went by Joey at one time, but who am I to question 1990 Bowman?  I looked it up on Baseball Reference.  They know Albert goes by Joey.  I guess I’m just not in the loop.

Surprise

I promised a surprise, and here it is.  The top of this box had a folded advertising poster.  I’m not sure how common these things are.  Maybe every box had one.  All I know is that of my three boxes, only this last one had a poster.  It is about 10 x 14.  The ball point pen gives you a feel for the size.  It’s nothing fancy, but it made the box a lot more interesting.  The cards featured on the front are Rickey Henderson (left) and Will Clark (right).

Conclusion

The real purpose of this box was to see if I could get close to finishing the set.  After two boxes I had 451 different cards in the 528-card set.  Once this box was done, I had 513.  Box #3 gave me just about as many new cards as box #2.  It shouldn’t work that way, but that’s what happened.  At just 15 cards shy of the full set, I’ll probably finish it off with a trip to Sportlots.

“The 1998 Sports Illustrated Then and Now set (created by Fleer) was issued in one series totalling 150 cards and was distributed in six-card packs containing five cards and one mini-poster with a suggested retail price of $1.99. The fronts feature color photos of active and retired players plus 1998 rookies and prospects. The backs carry ratings for each player in key skill areas. The set contains the topical subset: A Place in History (37-53) which displays statistical compairson between current players and retired greats. Notable Rookie Cards include Magglio Ordonez. An Alex Rodriguez checklist mini-poster was randomly seeded into 1:12 packs. In addition, an Alex Rodriguez promo card was distributed to dealers and hobby media several weeks to the product’s release.“

Box Contents

24 packs with 6 cards per pack

Cost

$13.35 on eBay ($9.36 auction with $3.99 shipping)

Description

Here is Fleer’s shot at a pseudo-vintage set.  It actually took two recognized names to put out this product – Fleer and Sports Illustrated.

The foil packs follow the lead of the box.

Insert / Parallel List (taken from Beckett)

Art of the Game – 8 cards – 1:9 (insert)
Covers – 12 cards – 1:18 (insert)
Great Shots – 25 mini-posters – 1:1 (insert)
Road to Cooperstown – 10 cards – 1:24 (insert)
Extra Edition – 150 cards – 1:24 (parallel)

Comments

The year 1998 marked my (brief) return to buying modern cards.  I was mostly into Topps, but I did pick up a few packs of SI Then and Now.  I remember these cards as being a notch or two above the Topps flagship cards – very thick and very glossy.  To my 80s cardboard eyes, these cards were very impressive.  I’m looking forward to tearing into this box.  I think getting this box for under $15 is pretty good.

In the past week I’ve opened two (soon to be three) boxes of 1990 Bowman.  These cards have been great.  While going through them I’ve been wondering why I should limit what boxes I open?  If a 1990 box can be so much fun, why not open boxes from 1989 (with or without inserts)?

Therefore, from here on out, the gloves are off.  Any box is fair game.  To celebrate my new freedom, look for an 80s Sportflics box in the near future.

This post isn’t about the Bermuda Triangle or the Fountain of Youth, but it is about a hobby mystery – What happened to 1998 Pinnacle Series 2? Huh?!? 1998 Pinnacle was a one series product. Well, let’s just look at the facts.  (The truth is out there.)

Pinnacle folded in 1998

The collapse of Pinnacle in 1998 has been well documented.  Do a search over on Wax Heaven for “Pinnacle”, and you’ll find all you need.  If there was going to be a year in which Pinnacle was going to get caught with its pants down and not be able to finish its product, it was 1998.  The bankruptcy argument alone is pretty flimsy, but it opens the door for the discussion.

1998 Pinnacle Press Plates

We have Pinnacle to thank for press/printing plates.  Pinnacle started it all in 1997 and continued the tradition in 1998.  The backs of all 1998 Pinnacle Press Plates indicate that they are from Series 1.  If this isn’t evidence that 1998 Pinnacle was initially planned to have multiple series, then I don’t know what does.

I admit that this isn’t a lock.  Look at a box of 1999 Collector’s Choice (a single series product), and you’ll see Series One written on the front.  You could argue that any single series product could be called series one.

Do I have any other proof for multiple series for 1998 Pinnacle?  Funny you should ask…

Player checklist

Look at the starters in the 1997 All-Star Game.  They are shown below by league.  Players marked with an asterisk have a regular card (non subset) in the 1998 Pinnacle set.

American League
Brady Anderson
Alex Rodriguez
Ken Griffey Jr.
Tino Martinez
Edgar Martinez
Paul O’Neill
Cal Ripken
Ivan Rodriguez
Roberto Alomar
Randy Johnson

National League
Craig Biggio*
Tony Gwynn*
Barry Bonds*
Mike Piazza*
Jeff Bagwell*
Larry Walker*
Ken Caminiti*
Ray Lankford*
Jeff Blauser*
Greg Maddux*

Dang!!  Not a single American League starter made the set while every National League starter was included.  I would bet that Series 2 was going to focus on the AL All-Stars.

Conclusion

I think 1998 Pinnacle was meant to be a two series set.  At some point very early in the design (but after player selection and layout of the press plates) Pinnacle realized that they were just going to do a single series set.  By the time the boxes and packs were put together, essentially all evidence of multiple series had been erased. The reason for shortening the set was probably financial, but who knows.

Stats

base cards: 380 of 528 – 73.5% complete (124 duplicates)
Art Inserts (1:1): 11 of 11 – 100% (25 duplicates and higher)

Base cards

Base cards are base cards.  The previous box post shows some cards.  The one notable card I got in this box was Sammy Sosa, one of the key rookies in the set.  Sosa is just about unrecognizable.  I wonder if he could selectively forget how to speak English all the way back in 1990.

312 Sammy Sosa (unrecognizable & I’m not sure I ever knew that he started out on the south side of Chicago)

Conclusion

This box was just about on the money with the first.  The first gave 388 different card; this one gave 380. Based on a little math, the first box gave 73.5% of a set, and the second box gave 72.0%.

The two boxes together (if random) should give almost a complete set – 528 cards.  How complete?  Here’s the formula for the number of cards not found between the two boxes.

missing cards = 528 * (1 – 0.735) * (1 – 0.720) = 39 cards (39.2)

If the two boxes in fact left only 39 missing cards, then that would be 489 different cards.  What did I have after opening both boxes? – 451.  That’s not quite 489, but it’s not terrible.

I have a third box of 1990 Bowman that I’ll probably open and see how close I can get to a complete set.

Pete in Las Vegas in 2008 (photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started this blog about 11 months ago.  Is 4,256 hits any good for 11 months?  I don’t think it’s much to brag about.  For comparison, Crinkly Wrappers started at almost exactly the same time my blog did.  Crinkly Wrappers is fixing to pass 17,000 hits in the near future.  That’s a mere four times the hits of this blog.

OK, so 4,000 hits in a year kind of sucks.  Regardless, topping Pete Rose in hits isn’t bad.

I had forgotten the smell of the gum in packs.  I had forgotten the little wax flakes that get everywhere when the packs are opened.  I had forgotten how smoothly the wax layers separate when you tease two folds apart.  I had forgotten the gritty feel of the cards from the powder coating of the gum.  I had also forgotten the joy of wax and gum stains.  Despite the stains, this was a fun box to open.  It took me back about 30 years.

base cards: 388 of 528 – 73.5% complete (116 duplicates)
Art Inserts (1:1): 11 of 11 – 100% (25 duplicates and higher)

Base cards

48 Brian Lane (with gum stain)

84 Orel Hershiser

Inserts

unnumbered Will Clark – Art Insert (looks just like a former student of mine)

Comments

• collation
  This box was pretty good.  Sure I got some duplicates, but I didn’t pick up a single card in triplicate.  That’s not bad.
• subsets
  This set doesn’t have any subsets.  Every card looks just like the other.  Lame.  There aren’t even any horizontal cards. The base design itself is very boring.  My biggest gripe is that the name of the player is in too small of a font size.  My 40+-year-old eyes may not be the best, but I know they’re good enough to read a baseball card.  These names are terrible.
• inserts
  The Art Insert set is kind of cool.  They are very true to the artwork found on Bowman cards from the 1950s.  I normally think about insert sets as rarer than the base set, but these are far more common than base cards.  One box gave three insert sets.

Conclusion

This is definitely junk wax.  This box cost less than $7 shipped (as part of a three-box lot), and I could have maybe done better if I had been patient.  Why is this box so cheap?  Two reasons – lousy product and overproduction.  These are bad cards.  I think the design was meant to be clean, but instead the cards are plain boring.  The backs are also weird with a breakdown of performance by opponent instead of the usual seasonal totals.  For that matter, since the set emphasizes rookies, most of the players have blank stats.

Topps may have figured out a winning formula for Bowman, but the early years were definitely a work in progress.

Other blogs’ takes on 1990 Bowman

A Pack A Day

Junk Wax Gems (tons of cataloged errors and variations)

My wife and I moved about a year ago.  Since we moved, we’ve had trouble with a shower drain.  I can normally get it going with Drain-o, but the latest round in the drain war has gone to the shower.  As a last ditch effort, I figured I’d let the water pool in the shower and then take a plunger to it.  I did, and it seemed to help some.

After being such an industrious husband, I went outside with my wife and kids.  My wife went inside only to quickly run back out to say that it was raining in the kitchen.  Uh oh.  The kitchen is under the bathroom.  I had broken something.

We’ve already had a plumber by the house.  With the plumber making a lot of racket in the bathroom off our room, my wife put our baby (four-months old) in the spare room for the night.  The spare room has the scanner.  So, because of rain in the kitchen, this post is a bust.