Phat Albert

1997 Score Baseball The Franchise
6 of 9. Albert Belle
For as plentiful as they are, 1990 and 1991 Score Baseball laid a lot of the groundwork for the future of the brand. In these sets, Dream Team and The Franchise subsets arguably garnered more attention than the rest of the set.
The Franchise went on to become [...]

Cooperstown Calling

1996 Ultra Baseball Call to the Hall
10 of 10. Frank Thomas
It’s funny looking back at the cards that claim to have future Hall of Fame inductees. During the mid-1990s there were your sure-fire candidates like Griffey, Maddux, Ripken and Gwynn. There were also the then sure-fire names that have since been defamed by alleged steroid [...]

Christie Brinkley Collection Redux

1996 Pinnacle Baseball Christie Brinkley Collection
3 of 16. Dave Justice
From the looks of this card, I suspect he would have made an excellent heel pro wrestler or manager. Just look at his smug look as the little kiddies boo him and cuss him out. Either he’s got a canary hiding in his mouth or he [...]

Taking a Bite Out of the Crime Dog

1996 Pinnacle Baseball Christie Brinkley Collection
6 of 16. Fred McGriff
Some of the coolest photos on cards are the ones that are posed, not action shots. A couple of cards I’ll never forget are the overhead shot of Benito Santiago unmasking in 1991 Topps and Doug Jones holding the flaming baseball in 1991 Score. There’s a [...]

Here’s Blinking at You, Kid

1994 SP Baseball Holoview Blue
37 of 38. Sammy Sosa
Growing up, I loved holograms. They always carried a certain “wow” factor about them. I mean, it’s a two dimensional picture, but there’s three dimensions! So when Upper Deck came out with the team logo holograms, let’s just say that I had many a notebook covered in [...]

How Sweet the Sound

1997 Upper Deck Baseball Amazing Greats
AG14. Jeff Bagwell
I’m not a big fan of “the pun” when it comes to naming card sets. For example, take this perfectly gorgeous mix of faux wood and a slide portrait – very classy, very nice. But then you’ve got the cornball title “Amazing Greats.” It’s not very often that [...]

Ninja Throwing Star

1996 Pinnacle Essence of the Game
4 of 18. Matt Williams
The Crazy 1990s Insert spotlight continues with today’s card. Pinnacle’s Essence of the Game inserts mixed cool rainbow foil (or Dufex as they called it) with a clear plastic design. What’s the purpose of this set? I don’t know, but it sure looks cool.
With the clear [...]