A Smorgasbord! 1990 Starline Long John Silver's Baseball Superstars

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

 

The first two weeks of middle school are in the books, and you're tired. It's a new building. A new workload. New classes. New pressures. And it's fine. You're handling it.

 

But still, you're tired.

 

Now it's Sunday, and you've been out helping dad with some errands. That's also fine.

 

But still, you're tired.

 

Then dad gives you an escape.

 

"How about some lunch?"

 

Absolutely. You're definitely hungry, and if you know dad, he's not taking you home for a cold, uninspired bologna sandwich. There are plenty of places to eat out here on the road.

 

So you nod in agreement, sit back, take a breath, and let dad drive. 

 

It seems like it takes a while, but eventually you roll up to this place: 

What in the world are you even looking at there? A fish place? Where even is this? How far did dad actually drive? 

 

But you know what? All those questions don't matter. You're here. So that's where you're eating. You get out of the car and head to the front entrance with dad.

 

And then you walk in and see this:

Welp. The pirate/landlubber theme is still going strong on the inside.

But it's not all weird. The smell of french fries is pretty strong. And looking around at what other folks are eating, some of the fish is battered and fried, too. You even see some chicken fingers.

 

Then, while you're waiting on line to order, it gets even better. There's a big, poster board display on the wall next to the cash registers highlighting a special promotion.

 

GET A FREE 5-CARD PACK OF LONG JOHN SILVER'S BASEBALL CARDS WHEN YOU ORDER A MEAL WITH A 32-OUNCE COCA-COLA 

 

Your eyes light up, and you turn to dad.

 

"I guess we're both getting a meal with a 32-ounce Coke", he says with a sly grin.

 

Ah, now it all comes together. You bet dad saw an advertisement in the paper, and that's exactly why he brought you to this place. Even sweeter, you know he's going to give you his pack, so you can open one, and keep the other sealed if you want.

 

You both order the fish and chips with some hushpuppies, plus the Coke. It's not long before your order is ready, and as the cashier slides the trays over, you spot the packs of cards. 

 

Once you find a booth and sit down, dad slides a pack over to you. 

 

 

  

Before you dig in to your meal, you flip it over.

 

 

 

  

Darryl Strawberry? Cool! 

 

He's got one of the swings that you and all your friends try to imitate when you're playing Wiffle ball, or baseball at the park.  

 

And then as you look at the design, it hits you: 

 

It's just like the posters that you and some of your friends have on your walls—only in baseball card size! 

 

The fun discovery only increases your appetite, so you chow down. The food is good, and Long John Silver's is quickly becoming one of your favorite places to eat.

 

Once you finish eating, you ask dad if you can open one pack right there at the table. He says it's fine with him, so you go for it. 

 

 

 

Pretty good result! Along with Darryl, you find some great stars. Boggs, Raines, Trammell, and Sabo.

 

After inspecting the header card a little more, you discover that you received Set #5. There are 8 Sets in all, which means there are 40 different cards to collect. Hopefully there will be more trips to Long John Silver's in the near future. 

You ponder the possibilities, and flip over one of the cards.

Nice color photo. Nice stats. They could have filled the space at the bottom a little more, but overall, it's a decent effort by Starline.

Then you flip over the header card. 

 

Sweet! It's a form you could use to order the actual posters! (You've got to tell your friends about this. If you all start going to Long John Silver's, you'll have the complete 40-card set in no time.)

 

As you leave, you notice a bell hanging from the wall with a little rope hanging from it. An employee tells you that you can ring it on the way out. One ring means the food was good, two rings means the food was great, and three rings means someone is in trouble.

 

You give that bell two solid rings, and dad does, too.

 

Now let's talk about the restaurant. 

 

  

The first Long John Silver's restaurant opened in Lexington, Kentucky in 1969. The founder, Jim Patterson, saw an opportunity to be the first fast-food chain dedicated to seafood, and went all-in on the maritime, nautical theme inside and out. Success came pretty quickly, thanks in great part to the quality food and the dining experience. Within a few years, the chain opened new locations around the US.

By the early 1980s, there were more than one thousand Long John Silver's restaurants across the country. Toward the later half of the decade, the number was closer to 1,500!

 

In the 1990s, that number started to decline. Not only was it impossible to continue the kind of growth the franchise had experienced to that point, but other fast food giants had also started to notice the popularity of the seafood chain, and reacted by adding fish items to their own menus.

 

Since then, the Long John Silver's name has had some struggles, including bankruptcy, ownership changes, and the closing of numerous locations. 

 

However, the chain has recently had some success. They've rebranded, placed some healthier options on the menu, created more drive-thru facilities, and modernized by adding an online ordering system. As of this writing, there are nearly 500 Long John Silver's restaurants operating in the United States, and a small handful abroad in places like Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. 

 

Here's a TV commercial that promotes the baseball card set. (Sounds like it's narrated by Mel Allen!)

 

 

 

So how about you readers and collectors? 

 

Do you have any of these cards in your collection? Have you ever eaten at a Long John Silver's? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

 

Completed Set: 1991-92 Score Canadian Bilingual, Series 1

Well, that was fast.

 

Back in March, I posted a story here on the blog about a box of hockey cards I received as a "throw-in" with a facebook marketplace purchase.

 

 

 

Yep, 1991-92 Score Canadian Bilingual Hockey, Series 1.

 

It was a mouthful, released right around the peak of junk wax–era hockey cards. And as a result, it wasn't exactly high on my list of sets to complete. (Actually, it wasn't even on the list.) However, the box was free, and although all the packs had already been opened, there were enough cards inside to get me fairly close to the full set: 287 out of 330, to be exact. So, I decided to put a want list up on TCDB and get the word out to the card-collecting community.

And thanks to the ever-present generosity of that community, I've already reached the finish line! 

That's right. About two months after I put the word out, 1991-92 Score Canadian Bilingual Series 1 is now complete and in my possession. A win is a win, right?

 

So let's take a look at this set, and what gems we can find within.

 

First things first: The folks at Score didn't mess around with common cards to start off the set. Check out the first six names on the checklist:

 

Brett Hull

Al MacInnis

Luc Robitaille

Pierre Turgeon

Brian Leetch

Cam Neely

 

All six are now Hall of Famers, and better still, they're shown in action on their cards. Many of the cards after those six—be it HOFer, common player, or anything in between—didn't disappoint, either. 

 

 

 

Throughout the set you'll find examples of solid hockey action and quality image cropping. As you can see above, there are plenty of guys spraying snow, rushing the puck up ice, or otherwise zooming around.

 

 

 

The action didn't stop with the skaters. Goalies received some good cardboard in the set, too. I can hear the muffled boom of the puck rebounding off Peter Ing's leg pad there on the right.

 

 

And if you want good hockey technique, Score's got you covered. Look at the three players above. Head up, puck on stick, looking to make a play. That's absolutely textbook. Images like these are much harder to find on hockey sets of the previous decades. Overall, I was really impressed with the Score photographers at this point.

 

However, as I continued to look through the cards in the set, I noticed a pattern. Murphy, Huddy, and Trottier are not the only three players displaying good puck-handling skills. Not even close. In fact, there were so many images of players carrying the puck on their stick, I decided to count them up. 

 

Would you like to know the total?

 

118.

 

That's right. There are 118 cards in Series 1 that show a player with the puck on his stick, ready to pass, or skating with the puck under control. That's one third of the set!

 

As you flip through the cards, this becomes a bit repetitive. But don't worry—the Score photographers did go off the script at times. For example, look at these two:

 

 

 

Although they only did it twice for all of the base cards in Series 1, Score did add a horizontal version of their base card design. I always find it interesting when a card company goes through the trouble of creating a separate card layout, and then only uses it for one or two cards.

 

 

Regardless, you'll also find some exciting cards like these, which show players blasting shots. Look at Steve Thomas there. He's comin' right at ya!

 

The bold, red design of each card also comes right at ya.

 

It works better for some teams than others, of course. The Red Wings, Blackhawks, and Kings do well. Teams with orange in their uniforms, like the Flyers, Oilers, and Islanders, can cause a bit of a clash with the red. But hey, listen. We were smack-dab in the middle of bold '90s card designs, so Score's color choice here fits the era quite well.

 

As for the overall design, we get a somewhat simple card front. The angular top and bottom lines of the frame are reminiscent of 1989 Fleer baseball, and help deliver the message that hockey is an action sport. Score placed each team's wordmark at the bottom right, and then placed their big "SCORE" branding at top right. I like the little hockey puck underneath the player's first name.

Let's look at a card back now.

 

 

Typical Score excellence. You've got plenty of good information to read, and because this is the Canadian bilingual version, it's available in English and French.

The big color photo on the right is a crowd pleaser, and the yellow-orange banner for the player name at the top of the card stands out. The team logo and player position underneath provide nice touches, for sure.

But let's get back to the card fronts. Score had some fun subsets here, as they always did.

Remarkably, five players reached the career 1,000-point mark during the 1990-91 season. Score did well to make a subset out of it. Crunch Crew was another 5-card subset, featuring some of the big hitters of the NHL. And as a relatively new hockey fan back then, it was so fun to discover that a few sets of brothers were playing in the NHL at the same time. (The Courtnall brothers released an instructional video around this time called The Shooter's Edge, which I certainly benefited from during my high school hockey days.)

 

 

 

Of course, you had to have a rookie subset too. The "Top Prospects" in the league, including the three big names above, all received this unique card treatment. (Although it's important to note that not all of these cards were true rookie cards.)

 

 

 

Score continued the trend of "player in tuxedo" subset cards that existed at the time, showing NHLers accepting their end-of-season awards. The Season Leader cards were nicely done, with the blue and white sections helping the player action stand out. As for young Mr. Lindros, he was a big deal back then, and Score gave him a special "First Round Draft Choice" card at the end of the set.

 

 

 

A few unique ones now. The Brett Hull "hockey stick on fire" card was a neat one when we first saw it. Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins received a nice-looking card to help commemorate their Stanley Cup victory the season before. And on the right, you'll see one of the special Bobby Orr insert cards. These were pretty tough to pull, and an absolute treat when one did come out of a pack.

 

 

Remarkably, the 1990-91 NHL season produced more than just 1,000-point milestones. Wayne Gretzky would score his 700th career goal, and Brett Hull put up 50 goals in his first 50 games. (If you couldn't tell from the cards shown so far, Brett Hull was the big man on campus at this time. After those first 50 goals, he netted 36 more, for a season total of 86!)

 

 

 

The design of the Franchise cards is loosely based on the 1956 Topps baseball set. Only five teams received a Franchise card in Series 1. The rest would appear in Series 2. Guy Lafleur, who finally retired after the 1990-91 season, received a three-card tribute set, which was artfully done.

And that wraps up 1991-92 Score Bilingual Hockey, Series 1. Overall, Score did a better than decent job with its second-ever hockey offering. There are good subsets and action shots to be found. And although the repetitive nature of the images can wear on you as you flip through the cards (the bright red borders don't help), when I look back, it was a fun set—especially for a young collector or hockey fan.

 

Now a question for your readers and collectors:

 

Do I go for Series 2? 

 

It's only another 330 cards, which is doable. (The borders will be blue this time, not red!) And there are some very nice rookie cards in Series 2, like John LeClair, Dominik Hasek, and Nicklas Lidstrom. 

 

Maybe I'll buy a wax box and try to build the entire set the old-fashioned way: Opening packs and sorting the cards. Boxes are currently available on ebay for about $20, plus shipping.

 

Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading!

Six!

 

1975-76 Topps #150, Darryl Sittler

If you were a hockey-loving kid opening packs of cards on February 8th, 1976, and pulled the card above, you would have let out a big cheer.

 

Why?

The night before, Darryl Sittler scored 6 goals against the Boston Bruins in an 11–4 win for the Maple Leafs. Add 4 assists to his scoresheet, and you'll find that Sittler contributed to 10 of his team's 11 goals.

There was no way you were trading that card at school the next day. (Or maybe you do try and trade it—you'd be sure to get a haul in return.)

Regardless, six goals in a game is pretty special. And do you know what else has "lit the lamp" 6 times now, in an anniversary sense?

This blog!

That's right. Tomorrow marks the 6-year anniversary of my very first post here at Nine Pockets. I don't know where the time goes. It's baffling.

But it's been another fun year. I designed more custom cards, found some pieces of trading card nostalgia from my childhood, learned some French-language baseball terminology, and started a series on food-issue cards.

 

I'm also happy to report that I've officially kept the streak of Sunday posts going for another year. Every Sunday since 2019. I'm pretty happy about that.

One more thing I'm happy about? Last year at this time, one of my goals was to get some zeal back for the hobby. And I'll give myself a passing grade there. The Smorgasbord series has helped, as I've enjoyed picking up some cool, retro, funky food-issue cards over the past few months. Much more to come there, so stay tuned. I also completed three more sets from my youth this past year: 1983 Topps Baseball, 1982 Topps Football, and 1990-91 Pro Set Hockey.

As for this coming year, I've got some posts lined up already that I'm hoping you'll enjoy. It's been a while since I've done a giveaway, so I think I'll try to include a couple of those throughout the year, too. Other than that, I just want to keep the good mojo going, and I've got to make an effort to find more time to read and comment on all the great trading card blogs out there.

The hobby is still in a weird place, isn't it? It seems like there's lots of big energy, but lots of malaise at the same time. Quite a few things are behind that phenomenon, but instead of taking time to analyze and write about them, I think I'm just going to stick to what makes me feel good in the hobby, share some of those good feelings here on the blog, and treat all the rest of it as noise.

Thanks to all of you for following along these past 6 years, for your friendships (real-world or virtual), for your trades, and for your comments. We've got a great community, and I look forward to year number 7.

Here's to lots of good collecting all around in 2025!

A Smorgasbord! 1977 Burger Chef Fun Meal Discs

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here.

 

  

It's winter holiday time, 1977. School's out. You're feeling pretty good about things. Your most recent report card was impressive, and there's a strong chance you'll receive at least one or two of the gifts you've been hoping for.

 

You'll find out in a few days, but it doesn't even matter right now. Your first gift just came early. . .

 

Mom and Dad are treating you to a Fun Meal at Burger Chef!

 

 

 

Even though it's been ages since they brought you there, you can already taste that flame-grilled burger, french fries, and dessert.

And it gets even better once you enter the restaurant. Instead of the standard toy, check out what you get with your Fun Meal tray:

 

Baseball discs, featuring Major League players!

There's too much text to read right there at the register, so you run over to an open table, blitz through the assembly, and set the game board in front of you:

 

 

There's no time to put your burger, fries, and drink in those designated locations. You've got to learn how to play the game, so you flip the whole thing over:

 

There's more discs on the back!

You waste no time punching them out, and then make a wise move—agreeing with your parents to eat some of your food before it gets cold, and before you can fall out of their good graces. (I mean, come on. Holiday gift list. Don't mess it up now.) Besides, there will be plenty of time to play this Burger Chef baseball game at home.

So you keep your food off the tray altogether and scarf down that delicious, flame-broiled burger and the rest of the meal.

 

As soon as the holidays are over, you'll start bouncing off the walls, just waiting for April to arrive so you can see your favorite baseball pros in action again. At least you have some super-cool Burger Chef discs to play with in the meantime.

 

Now let's talk about Burger Chef a little bit.

Do you know that Frank and Donald Thomas, founders of Burger Chef, patented a flame-broiler machine way back in 1954? They used it in their very first Burger Chef location, which opened a few years later in 1957. The flavor imparted by the broiler became so popular that by 1972, only McDonald's had more hamburger locations around the country.

 

And speaking of McDonald's, guess where they got their "Happy Meal" idea from?

 

Yep, that's right. Just a few years after Burger Chef introduced their Fun Meal for kids, McDonald's launched their Happy Meal. Burger Chef initiated a lawsuit, but lost the case. 

 

They did keep going strong through the late '70s and early '80s. However, in 1982 the entire chain was bought by Hardee's. And sadly, that was the beginning of the end. Over the next decade or so, individual Burger Chef locations were either converted to Hardee's restaurants, other types of restaurants, or just closed down.

But let's get back to Burger Chef's run of greatness, including the awesome cast of characters they featured on the tray up there. There's Burger Chef himself, along with a sort of sidekick youngster named Jeff. Then you have some "likeable villain" types. Crankenburger is a Frankenstein-type monster. Count Fangburger is, as you can guess, a vampire. There's also Mrs. Fangburger and Fangburger's Daughter. Then you have Burgerilla (a gorilla), Where Wolf (a shaggy wolf), and Burgerini the magician.

Someone in the Burger Chef marketing department was quite productive.

 

Here are the discs I have in my collection, front and back.

There's a whopping 216 total discs in the set, and 24 of the 26 MLB teams were represented. Only the two new expansion teams of the time, the Blue Jays and the Mariners, were absent. A different tray was printed for each team, which means there's a perfectly even distribution of 9 players per team. The discs themselves are about 2 3/8 inches in diameter.

I really might have to pick up more of them—both for the players on the front and the Burger Chef mascots on the back. (I still need a disc of Crankenburger, Fangburger, Mrs. Fangburger, Burgerilla, and Jeff).

Regardless of what teams and players you collect, you're likely to find a few discs for your collection.

Do any of you readers have memories of Burger Chef? If there were any locations in my region of New York back in the 1980s, I certainly didn't know about them.

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

PS: How big was Burger Chef back in the 1970s? Check out what franchise they linked up with in this commercial:

 

Relief Hitters

One of the vocabulary words we discussed during the Baseball in French series here on the blog was frappeur d'urgence, which roughly translates to "emergency hitter". Or, as we better know it here in the States, "pinch hitter". 

 

Our good buddy Chris the Collector left a thought-provoking comment on that post, suggesting that the term "relief hitter" would also make a fair bit of sense. After all, we have relief pitchers, right?

Well, it got me thinking. Relief pitchers are players unto themselves. They take up a roster spot. They're specifically trained to come into the game at some point after it begins, in order to relieve a pitcher who might be struggling.

 

What if teams carried a player specifically for "relief-hitting", too? In other words, this player would take up his own roster spot, never starting a game, signed solely for his relief-hitting skills. Late in the game, when your team really needed a hit, he'd always be ready with bat in hand.

 

Imagine how clutch that guy would have to be? It's a fun thought.

Now like me, I'm sure many of you readers have already started to think that this would never happen. No team would burn a roster spot for a player who would just ride the pine every game until [maybe] the team needed him to step up to the plate to get a hit. Once. Not to mention how difficult it is for a player to do that when he's been sitting around, tight and cold, for a couple of hours. 

 

But wait a minute. Before dismissing the idea entirely, maybe we should think about all the other kooky rules that have been implemented over the past few years. There's a pitch clock. Bases are larger. The team up at bat in extra innings gets a ghost runner on second base. There's a DH in both leagues. Robo-umpires are around the corner. Eventually it's going to become blernsball, anyway.  

 

 

 

 

So why can't relief hitters be a thing?

 

To make it more appealing to the powers that be, maybe we should change the criteria a little bit.

 

Let's say that the relief hitter can be brought into the game no earlier than the 7th inning. The twist is that he's permitted to lead off every inning after that—8th, 9th, and extras if applicable. And he doesn't have to play a fielding position. I'm getting some ideas here. Time to make a list.

Relief Hitter Rules:

• Can enter the game no earlier than 7th inning.

• Must be lead-off batter in every inning after that. (Taking away the at-bat from the hitter in the lineup who would have led off.)
  

• Does not play fielding position during defensive half of inning.

• Must remain in game for at least two innings, unless first at-bat is in 9th inning.

• Must run the bases if he gets on base.

• Can be used as a relief hitter in maximum of two consecutive games. Then must be made unavailable the following game.

• Each team can carry only one relief hitter on its roster.
  

 

That last rule means there's 30 MLB roster spots for those relief hitters to claim. So, who would be good candidates? 

 

Wade Boggs could find the holes, that's for sure. So could Tony Gwynn, who was especially proficient at hitting with two strikes in the count. Ichiro could get on base with line-drives, grounders, infield singles, or bunts at any time. Derek Jeter was pretty good in the clutch. Pete Rose could probably muster up a hit whenever the team really needed one, and he's a switch-hitter, which is a definite asset. Ted Williams and his .400 average would be something. (He'd have a serious intimidation factor on his side too, because he hit for power. Plus, he's got the best on-base percentage in MLB history.) Rod Carew, Edgar Martinez, and Rickey Henderson would be other solid choices. 

 

The problem is, of course, that you'd want all of those folks in your starting lineup. Not as relief hitters.

 

But let's imagine they're winding down their careers, and almost ready to retire. If you were to play them as relief hitters for only the last two or three innings of certain games, it might allow them to stay in the big leagues for an extra couple of years.

 

If the idea were to catch on, I wonder if baseball developmental schools would eventually start looking for young hitters with less power but superior bat control, and start training those guys to be super-good at hitting singles and drawing walks. On the right team, deployed in the right way, they could end up playing up to 90-ish games per season and getting at least an at-bat or two per game, which isn't so bad. 

 

You never know.

In the meantime, because this is a blog about trading cards, here are my top three choices for a relief hitter, featured in cardboard form:

The position designation on the card could be changed to "Relief Hitter", or even "RH".

 

So what do you think? Is it too kooky of an idea to even consider? 

 

Even if that's the case, which player(s) nearing retirement, current or past, would be your choice for relief hitter? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

Baseball in French, Lesson 13: La Balle Tire-Bouchon

Welcome to Baseball in French, Lesson 13. Previous lessons can be found here.

 

Today's term is La balle tire-bouchon.

 

In English, that translates to "the corkscrew ball". Or, as we better know it, "the screwball".

There's a certain Montreal Expo who wasn't exactly known as a screwball pitcher, but had a change-up that acted like one, falling away from left-handed batters. Here he is on his 1994 O-Pee-Chee card. 

 

Martinez only spent 4 seasons with Montreal, from age 22 through 25, but that's when he started to show glimpses of the brilliant pitcher he'd become. In 1997, his final season in Montreal, he'd go 17–8 with a minuscule 1.90 ERA (led majors), 13 complete games (led majors), 4 shutouts, and 305 strikeouts to 67 walks. He won his first of 3 Cy Young awards that year.

His grand totals with les Expos:

55 W, 33 L, 3.06 ERA, 20 CG, 8 SHO, 248 BB, 843 SO, 797.1 IP

Then he was off to Boston, and you already know the dominance he displayed there. More Cy Young Awards, All-Star teams, a Triple Crown, a World Series championship. Total stud. I'm glad I found a way to get him into these French lessons.

And speaking of these lessons, I think I'm going to make this the final one in the series, which is fitting with "corkscrew". In other words, if you've stuck with the entire series—all 13 posts—consider congratulating yourself in the only way a French baseball player would: by taking out that corkscrew, opening a bottle of wine, and enjoying a glass. (Beer is fine, too.)

Thanks for reading!

Embracing the Best and Worst of the Junk Wax Era: Hockey Card Edition

A couple of months ago, I was inspired by Nick (of the Dime Boxes) and Night Owl to post a list of what I considered the best and worst sets of the junk wax era for baseball. I was a young collector back in the junk wax days, and certainly opened my share of baseball packs during that time. But there was also another sport I collected: 

 

Hockey. 

 

So I thought I'd create a similar best and worst list for the coolest sport on ice.

Interestingly, the junk wax era for hockey cards didn't follow quite the same timeline. In the second half of the 1980s, when baseball junk wax was booming, you still only had two choices for hockey cards: Topps and O-Pee-Chee. But that all changed during the 1990-91 season, as FIVE new brands emerged on the scene (Pro Set, Score, Bowman, OPC Premier, and Upper Deck). It was a wild time to be a collector, that's for sure.

For the sake of this post, I think I'll set the junk wax hockey years as 1990-91 through 1994-95. After that, a whole bunch of premium brands came around, with all sorts of inserts and parallels and rare cards. I'd say that effectively ended the era.

So let's start with my selections for the five worst junk wax sets, in no particular order.

 

 

 

1991-92 Pro Set

The 1991-92 Pro Set design was never going to be as rambunctious as the inaugural version the year before (we'll get to that one later). However, I think the company might have gone too far in the opposite direction this time, and fallen flat. The loud colors and stripes of the 1990-91 set were replaced with. . . almost nothing. Just a full-bleed image and a little black tab across the bottom for the player name (not even a position!). Even some of the subsets in this set were boring. You could only tell one from another by a little half-circle banner over the team logo that indicated what subset card you were looking at. In addition, the photography was not great at times, with images that were a bit blurry, or that were strangely cropped. The black tab can kind of get in the way of the action on the card, too, as evidenced by Dale Hunter on the face-off and Chris Winnes taking a slap shot up there. Maybe the design team at Pro Set was still exhausted from the previous year.

 

 

 

 

1991-92 Score

 

Yeesh. Score was really trying to cash in on excitable collectors during the 1991-92 season. They produced three variations of the same set, each with a different color for the borders. Card backs were written in English, in French, or both. The adolescent version of me sure did get swept up in it, buying plenty of packs of the American (purple border) and Canadian English (red or light blue border with purple interior) versions. I might have bought packs of the Canadian Bilingual version too (red or light blue border with green interior), but I don't remember seeing packs in card shops or at card shows very often in my region of the US. It's true that there were a few exciting insert cards available in each set that featured Bobby Orr—including an autographed version. And occasionally a player's photo did differ from one version of the set to the next. But that certainly doesn't rescue 1991-92 Score from my bottom 5.

 

1993-94 Topps Premier

 

Back in 1990-91, O-Pee-Chee released their first premium set, called "Premier". It went over pretty well with collectors, and for the next two seasons, O-Pee-Chee continued with the brand. Then in 1993-94, Topps decided to jump in with "Topps Premier". It was the same exact set as the O-Pee-Chee version, other than the lack of French text on the card backs. I think I'd learned my lesson from Score a couple of years prior, and didn't fall for the Topps Premier hoopla—even with the allure of the special Black Gold inserts, which were admittedly pretty cool. 1993-94 Topps Premier was also one of the early hockey sets that suffered from "bricking" due to the ultra-varnish coating, which was another strike against it. Adding to the negatives, it was a time in the hobby when close-cropped player photos were in style, across many sets. Too close. I mean, look at how cramped those three guys are.

 

1993-94 Fleer Power Play

 

The irregular size and shape of these cards was eye catching, that's for sure. But I also think that a lot of folks bought one or two packs for the novelty of it, and then just never bought more. If that wasn't enough of a deterrent for collectors, the large set size (520 cards) probably did the trick. Even though it turned out that the cards measured the same as the vintage "tall boy", I didn't know many collectors who were willing to buy all the unique storage supplies necessary to complete and display the set, or even finish a team set. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Power Play did not return the next season. The thing is, Fleer didn't do such a bad job with the photography, oftentimes setting part of the player outside of the frame for that 3D effect. This works well on the taller template—especially in the digital image. As for how they looked on the actual cards in hand? I'm not so sure. Maybe the images would have worked better in some other form. Just imagine those three cards above as banners hanging throughout the concourse of an NHL arena, for example.

 

 

1994-95 Upper Deck Be a Player

 

I think 1994-95 Upper Deck Be a Player can be argued as a best set AND a worst set. It's a potential worst set because of the photography. It's a potential best set because it was the first one outrageous enough to put an autographed card into every pack. The list of autographs was an astounding 178 cards deep, and it contained many of the big names of the time: Brodeur, Selanne, Bourque, Leetch, LaFontaine, Shanahan, Gretzky, Yzerman, Kariya, Yashin, Lidstrom. 

 

The big negative, though, is for that photography. There are players standing outside in the cold, wearing ski jackets. There are players on the golf course, wearing polo shirts and khaki shorts. There are players wearing NHLPA jerseys instead of their team's jersey. (There was a lockout during part of the '94-95 NHL season.) Ultimately, even though this inaugural edition of Be A Player really changed the game with the one-autograph-per-pack thing, I still have to put it in the bottom 5.

 

 

Now let's get to the top 5, also in no particular order.

 

 

 

 

1991-92 Upper Deck

 

If the inaugural Upper Deck hockey release came out with a bang, their follow-up set in 1991-92 was even louder—and in a good way. The designers really upped their game. You've got some fantastic subsets like the Canada Cup and All-Rookie Team, plus much better quality on the hologram inserts. In addition, there are lots of great rookie cards to be found (Teemu Selanne, Nicklas Lidstrom, Peter Forsberg, John Leclair, Alexei Yashin, Alexei Kovalev, and Keith Tkachuk to name a few). This is probably the Upper Deck set I collected the most back then, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I still remember walking to the local card show with my friend on the first Friday of each month, going back to my house with packs and packs of 1991-92 Upper Deck, and playing NHL Hockey on Sega Genesis while we flipped through the cards.

 

 

 

 

1990-91 Pro Set

Despite the many errors in this set (and many stripes of many colors), I've got to put this set in my top 5. It's large and colorful—perfect for young collectors—and both Series I and Series II have some great rookies. On top of the standard subsets like All-Stars, Draft Picks, and Award Winners, you've also got some fun subsets like Head Coaches, Career Leaders, and even Referees! Oh, and collectors had the rare chance to pull a Stanley Cup hologram card. The photos in this set weren't always the best, but they also showed some decent action and weren't cropped so tightly or oddly as some other sets of the hockey junk wax era. That's nice.

 

 

 

 

1990-91 OPC Premier

 

I remember packs of 1990-91 OPC Premier being tough to find back then. But if you did find them, you had a good chance at putting the complete set together—it's only 132 cards deep. There are certainly some big-name rookies (Jagr, Modano, Fedorov, Roenick, Bondra, Mogilny, Nolan, Sundin), and a decent design that helps to make it memorable. The photography can sometimes be plain, and I'm not sure this set would have been in my top-5 back in the early 90s, but history has shown that it holds up, and the big rookie cards are still prized among collectors.

 

1990-91 Score

Score made a splash with their inaugural hockey set. Part of the buzz was generated from their exclusive rights to Eric Lindros. He appeared on the final card in the set, and if you purchased a factory set, you received 5 "bonus" Lindros cards that featured him in various photoshoot-style hockey poses. Here in 2024 it might be hard to understand how big of a deal this was, but Lindros was the hottest name in the sport back then, and hockey card companies all wanted a piece of the big power forward. Lindros aside, Score did very well with their first design. There were hardly any errors, especially when compared with some of the other brands. The "hockey rink" design—featuring a blue line, red line, and blue line across the borders—was pretty cool. In addition, there were some fun subsets like "Blaster", "Sniper", "Magician", "Stopper", and "Speedster". Baby-faced Jaromir Jagr and Martin Brodeur rookie cards add to the good grade here.

 

1990-91 Upper Deck

Upper Deck took their baseball card success from 1989 and rolled it right into hockey for the next season. Their photography was unmatched, and gave hockey card collectors the best look they'd ever had into what the sport was all about. (Flip through the set and you'll see that Theo Fleury and John Tonelli up there represent just two of many fantastic, descriptive images.) The tamper-proof foil packs and anti-counterfeiting holograms on the card backs were cutting edge. The rookie cards were highly sought after. And on top of all that, the Young Guns series was created that very first year. It's still going strong to this day, which is truly impressive.

 

So that's my bottom-5 and top-5 hockey sets from the junk wax era. If any of you readers collected hockey cards back then, share some of your rankings in the comment section—or create your own blog post!

Thanks for reading, as always.