Sunday, May 10, 2020

Completed Set: 1991 Topps Baseball

The 1991 Topps baseball set holds some significance that should not be overlooked:

  • It was the final year Topps used their traditional, thick card stock.
  • It was the final year Topps sealed their cards in wax packs.
  • It was the final year those wax packs came with a stick of bubble gum.

And as you can see on the top left of Nolan Ryan's card here, Topps was also celebrating 40 years of producing baseball cards.





That's a lot of history. But there's something else about Nolan's card that's important, too:

The action.

Over the previous couple of years, the newer baseball card brands (Upper Deck in particular) had been displaying very fine, creative photography on their cards. 1991 was the first year Topps seemed to step up their own game.

Just how much of a statement did they make?

Well, that Nolan Ryan card is the very first card of the set. How's that for an opener? 

Pretty good timing for a 40th anniversary, too.

And card #1 was just the start. Have a look at these examples.







And on top of those cards, now look at these.




And this!




These types of "staged" shots would become rather popular (if not a bit overdone) throughout the '90s. But at the beginning of the decade it was still a big departure from the norm. Topps was really going for it.

As for the overall design of the card, you can see it's somewhat simplistic. However, I think that's fine because it doesn't take away from the elements you really want to notice: the 40th anniversary logo at the top left and and the team name at the bottom right (which is done in each team's official wordmark). And of course, the imagery itself.

Before we get back to the gems of the set, though, let's note that Topps also maintained some traditional baseball card style in 1991.




I'm happy about this. 

You can imagine there may have been some pressure to go overboard with the fancier, more modern action shots in order to keep up with Score and Upper Deck and the premium brands. But every good complete set needs some posed shots, tooespecially when you've got 792 cards to create. 

I mean, look at Rafael Palmeiro there. That's a baseball card. Tradition, I say! 

And speaking of tradition, here's a shot of the card back.




It's mostly what you'd expect with the full bio, stats, and "league leader in italics" style, but note the monthly scoreboard on the bottom. Clever little departure there. Tony Fernandez had a pretty good September/October.


Now let's continue with the stunners in this set.

First, move your eyes from left to right and watch as three infielders morph into one to complete a double play.




Now go from right to left and watch these three guys combine to wallop a baseball.



Finally, here are my four favorite cards in the entire set.


Dwight Evans has just laced a single into center field, and it's that magic moment right after contact and right before everyone in the crowd reacts. Seems like only Evans himself knows he's just gotten a hit.



Shane Mack has finally come to a stop, but the position he's in, the slide marks to the right of third base, and his still-tumbling helmet reveal just how fast he was running a few moments ago.

 

Within a second or two, Walt Weiss has stepped on second base, thrown the ball toward first, and leapt in the air to avoid the take-out slide of Joel Skinner. And he's still focused enough to watch the flight of the ball. A perfectly executed double play, perfectly caught by the Topps photographer, perfectly framed on the card. 

 

Carlton Fisk is a smart catcher. He knows it's Cecil Fielder (6'3", 230 lbs) barreling down at him. And although Fisk is a big boy himself (6'2", 223 lbs), he's got to be devoting at least part of his mental faculties to things like force, mass, and acceleration as the throw from the outfield heads toward him. Fortunately, it looks like Fielder's teammate is yelling at him to get down for a slide, which might feel a bit less awful to Fisk than a flat-out football-style collision.


Fantastic cards, right? And you can find plenty more on your own. 

Before this set, the last time Topps featured so many compelling action shots in a set was probably in 1973.

I'm very happy to have finally put this set together. Big thanks to Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life! for helping me out with a big stack of them. 

And thanks for reading, as always.

27 comments:

  1. Congratulations on completing it! One other unique thing about this set is that Topps used the same design for multiple sports, creating a unified brand identity. I wish it had gotten used in the NBA other than a handful of cards in the Archives set, but at least now that I'm collecting hockey I can still get a chance to work on it.

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    1. Good observation, Billy! Let me know if you start collecting the O-Pee-Chee hockey version. I should have a good amount of duplicates.

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  2. Congratulations! Great recap and summary of the set. This set is one of my top sets and I made the mistake of attempting to complete both glow and non-glow back sets (with errors).

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    1. Thanks very much! Your completion goals with this set are ambitious. I've heard about all the variations. Oof.

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  3. Well done! Always nice to accomplish a set goal.

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  4. This might be one of the most overproduced products in the history of trading cards... but with that photography... it's not a bad thing. The Walt Weiss is my favorite card in the set. I've been trying to track down all of the variations of that card.

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    1. Glad I got your favorite card in there! You and Base Card Hero should try to help each other out with the variations. (See comment above.)

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  5. As far as sets from that era go, I personally think that this one has held up the best, most because of that stellar photography. It was also really fun to open these, what with the chance of being able to find one of those one-in-a-million "vintage" cards that were randomly inserted in packs.

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    1. I'd forgotten about the vintage cards inserted into packs! The odds of finding one must have been minuscule.

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  6. There's a reason the '91 Topps Carlton Fisk was the first entrant into the Cardboard Appreciation Hall of Fame.

    I did a similar post when I completed '91 Topps, one of first sets I completed upon starting the blog! The set also has one of the greatest collections of horizontal cards, as you illustrated.

    Pretty amazing that the critics bagged on '91 Topps as "too boring" when it came out!

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    1. Good choice, Night Owl! Just went back to find your post. We both used the verb "to barrel" in describing Cecil Fielder's action there. Heh.

      As for the critical reaction to the set back in 1991, how strange!

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  7. Glad to help! I don't remember it every being criticized as too boring. I remember saving an article, probably from either Newsday or the New York Post, about Topps finally making an exciting set. It had the Boggs, Santiago, Clemens, and one more, now I forget which.

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    1. Reading Newsday on Sunday mornings with a good Long Island bagel. Good times, Bo. Good times.

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  8. I liked how you structured the different groupings of cards. Gives you an appreciation for the set. A nicer set than I remember! Good stuff.

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    1. Thanks very much, Jeff! Going to check out your new blog.

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  9. Nice, I have a lot of fond memories of collecting that set back in 1991, though I don't think I quite finished it. Like you say, the photography was a big step up from the previous years (decades) and the simple border design is pretty cool. The only thing I never liked was the 40th anniversary logo. It always felt too minor an occasion to be worth putting so prominently on the card. 40 isn't as impressive as 50 or 100. Plus they were commemorating the 40th anniversary of the release of the epic....1951 Red Back set which nobody remembers.

    Good set nonetheless, congrats on finishing it!

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    1. Thanks Sean! Because of the huge quantities produced, it wouldn't be too difficult to finish your set now. I say go for it.

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  10. Also, did you notice in that 3 card tryptic of a double play you put up that both Lou Whitaker and Felix Fermin are both jumping over the same player (Steve Finley of the Orioles)? Neat coincidence there!

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    1. Good observation! Poor Finley. The guy just keeps getting forced out at second base...

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  11. Congrats on completing the set!

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  12. This is an awesome set and I kinda wish I didn't have it factory-sealed so I can look at the cards and appreciate them as you have here. One thing that I didn't know at the time but annoys me now is the variations due to the 40th anniversary logo being light or dark on the backs. Still a great set though. The Clemens and Santiago are my two favorites and if I were starting a baseball card Hall of Fame they're represent 1991 for sure!

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    1. I'm happily ignoring all the variation stuff, and highly recommend that approach ;-)

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  13. I've always been hard on this one. Even with my increased appreciation of white borders, I find the design distracting. That's a shame for me I guess, because I flat out don't care for the set. The recent Stadium Club Kaline probably owes a bit of itself to the Boggs card. You did a fine job showing off the best of 91.

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    1. Thanks Julie! You know what? When this set first hit shelves I didn't like it, either. I felt the design was kind of boring and thought Topps was trying too hard to draw attention with that 40th anniversary logo. It's only looking back now that I see just how large a step they took with their photography.

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