Monday, November 22, 2010

Stadium Crud

I've been sitting on this box for awhile, but on this cold late Monday night I decided to let it free and toss it in with the other piles of stuff I have available to trade or send to people. I decided to forego the traditional box break format and just show a few highlights because, to be quite honest, this is a pretty small set with terrible collation. The number of names of dupes I would have had to type up would have been maddening.

I actually don't mind the font scheme for the player names that really seems to bug a lot of people. It's very dated, of course, but I kind of like it because of that. It definitely screams early-to-mid '90s MTV to me.

That being said, despite Stadium Club's usual crop of interesting full bleed photography, this is probably the lousiest Stadium Club set from a quality standpoint. The cards just feel thin and ready to fall apart when compared to other years.

Here's a very contemplative Andy Van Slyke. Dude, it's okay. You're playing baseball.

David Wells has a really creepy tattoo. I certainly hope that's his kid and not someone else's.

There was probably a story behind this one.

There's a subset of Rookie Rockets, which would seem to be for players who primarily throw the ball and happen to be rookies.

Fantastic Finishers... okay. Well, I didn't know Maddux was ever a closer.

And then there's Rookie Rockers, who seem to be youthful players who are into the rock stylings of 311, or whoever was popular back in late 1994.

Every card I've seen of Carlos Delgado in his catching days has been hilarious to me so far.

Cardinals cards? There were few to be had. Three of them were the same Bob Tewksbury card which I probably have 10 of now, and one is a current ESPN announcer. Yikes.

Each pack contains a parallel Golden Rainbow card, where the gold foil is supposed to look like a rainbow... which is just gold. I don't get it.

Stadium Club Finest inserts are perhaps the best reason to at least consider dropping a few bucks on this product.

They are supposed to fall at 1:6 packs (the only odds printed anywhere on the wrapper or box) but I only got three in my box and they were actually in the first three packs that I opened.

Apparently, these inserts did not require the protective coating that Finest cards from this era usually had.

I'm not sure what the odds on Dugout Dirt cards are supposed to be. More on that in a second. There are 4 of these in total (4 for each series) and each one looks like a regular card on front with gold foil instead of red foil. On the back is a comic of some sort. I really, really dislike bad caricature art... which is pretty much all of it.

This isn't the actual front of the previous card, but it's something else entirely of its own. It's an "infocard". This particular infocard mentions the 4 possible Dugout Dirt cards. I got 8 in the box as a whole. That was pretty unnecessary. I would have liked to have seen more Finest cards and less ugly Jeff Kent and Randy Johnson.

Finally, here's the "hit" if you will. According to a price guide that some people like to use, you get one stamped 1st Day Issue card in each box. Mine happened to be Matt Walbeck. Hopefully a Twins fan will appreciate this.

4 comments :

  1. I have a story about Ayala that is funny. It might go good with that card. I really need to send you a little package o' cards.

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  2. "Hey David... uh, my wife and I were wondering, why do you have our kid's face tattoo'd on your arm?"

    Are all the subsets (Rookie Rockers, Fantastic Finishers) inserts or just part of the base set? If they're inserts, I'm interested in taking them off your hands. Also, I'm interested in the Finest inserts.

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  3. The subset cards are part of the base set. The only inserts (that I pulled at least) are Finest and Dugout Dirt.

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  4. I'll be more than willing to take that Tim Salmon Finest card off your hands! In fact I've got a nice little stack I've been setting aside for you that I'll send out sometime after Thanksgiving.

    I like the design used, but I agree that the cards are rather flimsy.

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