1994 Topps Traded

Topps again issued a 132-card “Traded” set in 1994 the same as previous years; cards were numbered separately from the base set with a “T” suffix as #1-132.  The set contains cards of rookies, draft picks, free agents and traded players (no new managers this year) and a 2-card tribute to Ryne Sandberg, who retired in the middle of 1994.  The design is the same as the base set.

The set was issued again as a factory set, but the box design was no longer quite as square – this year it was only available in a colorful blue and black flat box with 3 rows for the cards once you opened it.  There were actually 140 cards in the box – there was an 8-card “Topps Finest” insert set of 6 MVP and 2 Rookie of the Year candidates.  They did OK in “guessing” these – they got Raul Mondesi for the NL RoY and Frank Thomas for the AL MVP, while Griffey (2nd) and Lofton (4th) were up there in the final MVP tally.  But they missed on the unanimous Jeff Bagwell for NL MVO, while Matt Williams was close (2nd) but Maddux (5th) and Piazza (6th) weren’t really.  They also missed on Bob Hamelin for Manny Ramirez.  Ramirez was 2nd, but it wasn’t a close vote.  I like that the Maddux card shows him batting.

After a lot of cards in the previous seasons, there is only one cards of Reds 1990 World Champion members.

• Chris Sabo signed as a free agent with Baltimore in the 93/94 offseason.

There are 3 Hall of Famers in the set.

• As mentioned, Ryne Sandberg retired in the middle of 1994 and had a 2-card tribute set.  This was pretty cool – they had him pictured as a Phillie for the first time on a Topps card.  The backs of the cards match the front – his Phillies stats are shown on the first card and his Cubs stats on the 2nd card.
• After being sent from the A’s to Toronto and contributing to the Blue Jays’ second straight World Series title, Rickey Henderson signed back with Oakland in the offseason for his third stint with the team.
• Eddie Murray signed as a free agent with Cleveland in the 93/94 offseason.  He would have 2½ solid seasons as the Tribe’s DH, and he picked up his 3,000th hit with the team in 1995.

There’s also an NFL Hall-of-Famer – see anatomy of a trade cards below.

Topps didn’t feature players from Team USA after doing so in the previous 3 Traded sets.  They did have a number of Draft Picks from the 1994 summer draft.  Paul Wilson was actually given the #1 card.  I didn’t know that Ben Grieve had a brother drafted the same year as him – kind of interesting.  Ben was in high school, while his brother was 4 years older, so that’s what led to this.

There are also some other “rookie” players worth showing here.  The biggest by far – and the only one that really gives this set any “value” – is the Paul Konerko rookie card.  He’s starting to get into borderline HOF territory – and I remember when the Reds had him very briefly!  Jason Schmidt has a rookie card – it’s the only card dressed as the Top Prospects subset in the Traded set.  The biggest rookie at the time was probably Chan Ho Park.  I remember when he was a big deal – the first Korean born pitcher to make the big leagues.  Park pitched in the majors last in 2010 for the Pirates.  He pitched in Japan last year and issigned to pitch in the Korean major leagues next season.

There were some big free agent / traded players in this set.  I remember Will Clark being the biggest name – though he only had a couple of good seasons in Texas and left in his career.  Palmeiro and Vizquel had the most left – it will be interesting to see if Omar hangs on for another year (he’s 150 hits from 3,000).  Ellis Burks and Bret Boone both had some near-MVP seasons left, though Boone’s best came when he went back to Seattle.  And the Reds got Gant for very cheap in the middle of 1994 after he was hurt in a motorcycle accident and the Braves got out of the big contract he’d just signed.  He won the Comeback PoY and helped them to the 1995 playoffs.

There were also the typical guys who were really hanging on to long – though El Presidente did have a couple of decent seasons with Cleveland and Lee Smith did the same with Baltimore.

Topps added a few subsets to this Traded set – like the Sandberg, Draft Pick and Prospects cards shown above.  They also had one Future Stars card of Paul Shuey, who didn’t end up fitting that bill.  The most interesting subset was the “Anatomy of a Trade”.  This was 2 cards that looked at trades between Montreal/Los Angeles and Cincinnati/Atlanta.  It’s interesting – both were trades that helped each team, though the DeShields trade wasn’t nearly as good for LA in the long run.  And if Pedro had become as dominant in LA, they would have had a much better chance signing him long-term.  I remember when the Reds got Neon Deion – it was pretty exciting.

Lastly, Shawon Dunston is in this set with the Cubs.  I find this interesting because he doesn’t fit the bill for a Traded set in any way.  He played for the Cubs in 1993, and he was still with them in 1994.

1994 Topps inserts

Topps again included a Black Gold insert set as its primary insert set.  The cards come 22 per series, with the American League in series 1 and the National League in series 2.  The insert set has a totally black background with a gold foil team name on the top, the player name in gold foil at the bottom, and white outline around the player.

Black Gold (44 cards, 1:72)

There are also some winner cards possible – though I didn’t pull one this year. Just as the year before, there were 7 different winner cards possible – 4 different 11-card winners, 2 different 22-cards winners, and a full set winner.

Randy Myers is a 90 Reds World Series member who has a card in this set.   I don’t have it yet – so I can’t display it.

Finest Pre-production (40 cards, 1:36)

Topps capitalized on the popularity from its finest brand from the year before by inserting preview cards into series 2.  I believe the pictures are exactly the same as their base cards for Finest.

Spanish Leyendas (10 cards, included in Spanish Factory set)

Topps issued a bilingual factory set paralleling the base set with Spanish writing as well.  The factory set included a 10-card “Legends” insert set of retired Latin stars.  I’m going to try to get the insert set eventually, but don’t have any at the moment.

1994 Topps parallel sets

Topps Gold was back for its 3rd year in 1994, again as a roughly 1 per pack insert.  From the box I opened – it was really more of a 5 in 4 packs insert.  The “Gold” cards was the same idea – the player name was printed in gold foil.  The cards also came 4 per cello, 3 per rack, 5 per jumbo, 2 per mini-jumbo and 10 per factory set.

The 4 checklists were again replaced with players who weren’t part of the base set for Topps Gold. 

• 395 – Bill Brennan
• 396 – Jeff Bronkey
• 791 – Mike Cook
• 792 – Dan Pasqua

Topps Gold– 792 cards (1:1)

 

Topps also produced a special factory sets of bilingual cards as a test in markets with larger hispanic populations.  I’ve read there were about 5,000 of these sets, which also came with a 10-card “Leyendas” insert of retired legends.

1994 Topps scans

I’ve been through my ’90 Reds post and the All-Star Rookie team, now here’s my post where I go through some of the better scans of cards from my 1994 Topps boxes.  Let’s start with card #1 again.

From 1990-1992, Topps put Nolan Ryan as their leadoff card to the set.  In 1993, Ryan got moved elsewhere in the set and they did a pretty cool thing.  George Brett and Robin Yount had both just passed the 3,000 hit barrier, and they gave Yount card #1 and Brett the leadoff card (#397) in series 2.  They went with a similar idea in 1994 – they gave Mike Piazza the first card and fellow unanimous Rookie of the Year winner from So Cal, Tim Salmon, card #397.  I like this move – I remember both those two guys putting together a combination of two of the best rookie seasons in opposite leagues ever.  I’m not sure if there’s any other years where both winners were unanimous, but I doubt you’d find two guys who had such great rookie seasons followed by great such careers.

Ryan did get a card in the 1994 set – he got his number, card #34.  It’s one of two cards I’d call “tribute” cards from this set.  Ryan’s card has a “27 seasons” logo on the front, and is very cool because it is his last Topps card - and since it’s the year after he retired, it has his complete statistical record on the back.  It’s hard to read the small font when a guys had 27 seasons – but I learned a little I didn’t realize reading this card.  It’s common knowledge Ryan has the career strikeout record and the walk record.  But as he got older, he was still striking out a ton of batters, but his K-BB record got markedly better.  The other tribute card is a very cool card honoring the 20th anniversary of Hank Aaron becoming the all-time Home Run king.

Keeping with that theme, here’s some older guys that were nearing the part of their career where they could get tribute cards.  That Brett card could very possibly be the best in the whole set (see next paragraph).  This is the last Topps card for both him and Yount.  Kirk Gibson was back with the Tigers, and this was his second to last Topps card.  Ripken and Boggs still had a few years left, but they were getting up there.

OK, this is my card of the set, beating out the Brett card.  Roberto forcing out his brother and trying to turn two.

Back to guys getting close to having tribute cards – here’s my obligatory Rickey card.  Though Rickey had plenty of years left, too – though his best was behind him.

And my obligatory Griffey as well – I don’t believe I actually have this card yet.  I also don’t believe it’s possible for a mid 90′s Griffey card to not look awesome.

After starting with quite a few older guys, here’s the really young ones from this set.  Wagner is the only rookie card of any note in this set – despite the fact that Topps was clearly starting to focus on younger players.  I saw Wagner get his 400th save and also saw Super Mario get his.  Both times I just happened to be traveling to that city for work and it happened to be a game I could go to.  That’s 2 of the 5 guys who have 400 saves.  Can you name the other 3?  Kirk Presley – I remember he was kind of notable back in the mid-90′s, and every card pointed out that he was 3rd cousins with Elvis.  Kieschnick was also notable because a) he was a great college player and b) because he didn’t really pan out.  But I’ll give the guy credit – there are a lot of interesting things about him.  When he didn’t pan out as a hitter, he did switch up and pitched in the bigs until 2004.  He’s the only player to hit a homer in the same season as a pitcher, pinch hitter, and a designated hitter.  And he’s also an inaugural member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame.  And his 1994 Topps card features him in a very cool photo from his days with the Longhorns.

Only slightly ahead of the draft picks are some guys in some of the other subsets in 1994.  These guys would have been “prospects” in 1994.  Manny was the RoY runner-up to Bob Hamelin; Hamelin deserved the award, but Manny had the much more impressive career.  Thome had a good year in his first full season in 1994 – man, how good and promising were the Indians in the mid 90′s!  Cliff Floyd and Carlos Delgado were always tied together in my mind – they were on these type of future star cards all the companies came out with in the mid 90′s when I was collecting, and they both were slugging 1B-OF prospects for Canadian teams.  See?  They’re like the same person.  They even both played for the 2006 Mets that blew a chance at the World Series in the 9th inning of the NLCS.  Delgado had quite an impressive career, and Floyd’s wasn’t half bad.

Speaking of how good the mid-90′s Indians were, how about the 1994 Expos!  Here’s a few of their young stars from the team that had the best record in baseball at the time of the strike.  I can’t look at this particular card of Moises Alou without thinking of the comment he made about peeing on his hands.

I remember 1993 and 1994 seemed like “passing the torch” years.  A lot of guys like the ones below became stars while some others faded away.

Here’s a bunch of the best players from 1994.  These are all pretty cool photos.

OK, enough cards based mostly on the caliber of the player.  Here are cards I picked for caliber of the picture.  These are some of the better action shots.  Gotta love having Bob Feller’s retired number make an appearance on a Mariner card!

Except for the Wild Thing, the next group are photos that aren’t really action shots.  The Drabek, Daulton and Williams will be in the running for some of my “best card” awards whenever I complete this set.  The Rey Sanchez is pretty cool, too – he’s showing off his 1993 Topps card – in the picture for his 1994 Topps card!  The Mitchell card will have a good shot at my favorite Reds card from this set – competing with the Larkin above.

I noticed Topps was starting a habit of putting a bunch of “dugout” photos in the set.  I was really trying to think up a steroid joke with the Canseco picture below, but I guess I’m not feeling that creative.  It’s a cool photo – I wonder how many players shave sections of wood from their bats after they get them from the manufacturers?  I feel like the McDowell photo is a grab at some stuff that Upper Deck had been doing in their photos for a few years – show guys goofing around.  It’s a cool card, though.  For the Devon White – this isn’t dugout, it’s locker room, but it’s cool to think he’s looking through fan mail and maybe gonna send back some TTMs.

Topps was also showing some retro unis.  I had to do a little work to figure out some info on these.  The Brewers and Rangers intrigued me the most – because these teams didn’t seem like they had much to throw back to.  I did recently learn that the St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles franchise was actually the Milwaukee Brewers for 1 year – in 1901, the first year of the franchise.  But in looking at the Hall of Fame’s “Dressed to the Nines” website, this isn’t a throwback to that.  What I did learn is this was a throwback to the 1920′s Milwaukee Brewers – which was an American Association (minor league) team.  What do I think about that?  Thanks for asking.  I think that’s freaking cool.  The Pirates jersey on Merced’s card is apparently from 1925, when the Pirates won the World Series.  The patch on the chest was to commemorate the 50th season of the National League.  The Rangers throwback, unlike the Brewers, is just a uniform with an “old feel” to it – there isn’t any specific homage being paid here.

Finally, here’s some cards that had “interesting” pictures.  The Harvey and Barberie cards have some photo effects.  The Barberie is that motion capture similar to what Upper Deck had started doing in 1989 with Jim Abbott & Nolan Ryan’s cards.  The Steve Dixon just looked weird – because that’s a lot of Red!

1994 Topps All-Star Rookie subset

Topps All-Star Rookies

Tim Salmon and Mike Piazza both won unanimous Rookie of the Year votes in 1993 – so they were easy selections to this team.  From there, though – this team had a lot of potential debates as 1993 was a really good year for Rookies.  Greg McMichael saved 19 games and was excellent in 74 appearance for the Braves.  He was a good pick, but Jason Bere (12-5) and Pedro Martinez (10-5, 2.61) both had seasons as starters that put them in the discussion.  I’d have selected Kirk Rueter (8-0, 2.73) over Steve Cooke at LHP.  Jeff Conine and Wayne Kirby were certainly deserving behind Salmon in the outfield, but Conine’s teammate Chuck Carr led the NL in stolen bases and could have been above either of those 2.  Al Martin (18 HR) also could have made it.

RHP – Greg McMichael

LHP – Steve Cooke

C – Mike Piazza

1B – JT Snow

2B – Carlos Garcia

3B – Mike Lansing

SS – Wil Cordero

OF – Jeff Conine, Tim Salmon, Wayne Kirby

 

1994 Topps ’90 Reds Cards

I’m not doing a Big Red Machine post for the first time – since there were no Big Red Machine members in the 1994 set.  There are still plenty of members of the 1990 World Series team, though.

After having 18 out of 25 possible ’90 World Series members in the 1993 set (with a Barry Larkin subset for good measure), Topps actually got 2 guys back into the mix.  Danny Jackson and Jeff Reed weren’t in the 1993 set, but still had active careers and made it back in to the 1993 set.  Lou Piniella was gone from the set as Topps didn’t include managers in 1994, while Herm Winningham (1992) and Scott Scudder (1993) had played their last games and didn’t have Topps cards.  Norm Charlton had a card in 1994 Donruss, Fleer, Pinnacle, Score and Collector’s Choice – but not Topps.

That’s a net loss of 2 guys, for 16 out of 25 in 1994 Topps.  That leaves Winningham, Scudder, Billy Bates, Ron Oester, Rick Mahler, Luis Quinones and Glenn Braggs out of baseball by 1993, with Piniella and Charlton not having cards in the 1994 set despite still being active.

There was again a single subset card – this time it was an All-Star, but not Barry Larkin this time.  Randy Myers got the nod from Topps for his 53 saves with the Cubs in 1993.  So the total is 17 cards.

Some changes in uniform from what they had in the 1993 set:

• Eric Davis from the Dodgers to the Tigers
• Todd Benzinger from the Dodgers to the Giants
• Paul O’Neill from the Reds to the Yankees
• Jack Armstrong from the Indians to the Marlins
• Randy Myers from the Padres to the Cubs

There was again only one subset card, and yet again – it was again an All-Star card of Barry Larkin.

1992 – Jose Rijo, Tom Browning, Danny Jackson, Randy Myers, Rob Dibble, Jack Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Hal Morris, Mariano Duncan, Barry Larkin, Chris Sabo, Billy Hatcher, Eric Davis, Paul O’Neill, Jeff Reed, Todd Benzinger, Randy Myers (AS)

Randy Myers also has a card in the Topps Black Gold insert set.

Most disappointing box thus far – 1994 Topps series 2 wax box

 

So my series 1 box from 1994 had pretty poor collation and a lot of doubles.  Well, my series 2 box was much worse.  But that’s not the reason for the title of this post.  I was fairly disappointed with my 1982 boxes – after a wax box and a vending box, I didn’t pull a Ripken rookie.  But opening those boxes was still fun.  I was rooting for the Ripken up until the very end, and I expected to not pull some fairly big RC at some point in the early 80′s.

The problem with my 1994 series 2 box – roughly 3 or 4 cards out of every pack were stuck together.  As in, not repairable, stuck together.  I’d pull the cards apart, and at best there would be a line of “sparkliness” across the middle of one card where the UV coating had been pulled.  At worst, some of the time the cards would literally pull chunks of the card from each other.  This tended to happen most frequently with Topps Gold cards – and I noticed it always happened when the fronts of two cards were facing each other.  It was quite frustrating.  This is by no means a big deal financially – I got this box in the middle of 2010 somewhere over the internet.  But it just isn’t much fun to open a box when one-third of your cards aren’t salvageable.  I got a Griffey Topps Gold card of the Measures of Greatness subset – a 25-cent card I would have been excited about! – and it was clearly ruined.  I wonder if the box was stored in poor temperature conditions or something.  Who knows. 

Of note – the other box that I had really bad problems with something like this was 1986, but I believe that was due to the design with all the black in the cards that year.  Ultimately not really a big deal, and maybe I can look on the positive and say I had some war stories as part of this project

Also on the bright side – I started rooting for poor collation throughout the box because of the cards sticking together.  Since I was getting plenty of singles that were ruined – getting a double that was fine later in the pack was a good thing.  All told, I ended up with 215 cards toward the 396-card series.  44 singles were damaged, so I would have had only 259 out of 396 even if it wasn’t for that – out of 432 cards in the box, that’s not too good.  30 of the 45 Topps Gold cards I pulled were damaged.

I got another Black Gold card inserted – Greg Jefferies (with the Cardinals – didn’t know that happened.  should I have?) - so I did get a black gold in all 4 boxes despite the odds always being 1:72.  It seems like, maybe, if you factor in all the possible winner cards – are you actually supposed to get a Black Gold card of some sort in every box?  The winner cards have some pretty long odds, so I’m not sure if that’s the case.  I also got a Topps Finest preview card of Dean Palmer.  Not two great names by any means – but, honestly, the one good thing I can say about this box is that it was fun to get two inserts.  And, you know what – they aren’t bad-looking cards.  I guess in 1994, these would be considered “hits”!!!!

 

As always, the numbers below don’t factor in the damaged cards – I’m tracking this to know what it would have been if I had bought the cards in 1994, and I assume they wouldn’t have been stuck together back then.

Stats for the box:

36 packs per box * 12 cards per pack = 432 cards

100 doubles

26 triples

259 of the 396 card set. (65.4% set completion)

44 Topps Gold parallel

1 Topps Black Gold (Jefferies)

1 Topps Finest Pre-production (D. Palmer)

Including the first box:

566 / 792 of the base cards (71%)

1994 Topps series 1 wax box break

I bought this box earlier in 2011, and finally go to open it.  Topps decreased the pack size by 3 cards in 1994 – so I was even less likely to get a good chunk of the 1994 set from these boxes.  The poor collation I saw from 1993 continued in the 1994 boxes I got.

From a collation perspective, I got exactly the same number of cards as I did for series 1 in 1993.  This is actually doing better percentage-wise considering the lower number of cards per pack – I had fewer doubles.  I got 307 cards toward the base set, still nearly 100 cards short of filling the set.  With 89 cards missing, I got 80 duplicates.  Out of the 44 Topps Gold cards I got, 9 of them are cards that I didn’t get the base card for – my big parallel pet peeve!

I got a Black Gold card of the Big Unit – so that was a pretty cool pull, even though these aren’t worth much any more.

Stats for the box:

36 packs per box * 12 cards per pack = 432 cards

80 doubles

307 of the 396 card set. (77.5% set completion)

44 Topps Gold parallel

1 Topps Black Gold

1994 Topps Overview

792 cards in the set – after a one year increase of 33 cards, the set was back down to the standard amount that it had been since 1982.  Topps issued the cards in 2 series of 396 cards for the second straight year.

• Subsets: All-Stars (#384-394), Draft Picks (#201-210, #739-762), Measures of Greatness (#601-609), Hank Aaron Tribute (#715), Coming Attractions (#763-790), Topps All-Star Rookies (10 cards throughout), Top Prospects (10 cards throughout), and Future Stars (26 cards throughout series 1).  Topps eliminated the manager subset in 1994, adding the Measures of Greatness subset in the 2nd series.  The Coming Attractions subset, which was new in the previous year, now has two players per card.  The Future Stars subset was back after a few years away – this time with a player from each team.  A tribute card for Hank Aaron was made to honor the 20th anniversary of the day he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record.
• Set Design: The set design features a player photo surrounded by a border shaped like a home plate, with a white outer border.  The player name is in white italicized font at the bottom over a colored triangle.  There is a thin strip with the team name and position.  The cards were printed on white cardstock, with full glossy UV coating – these cards have noticeably more gloss than the 1993 set.  The back of the card features a color player photo on the left hand side.  The rest of the card back features the card number at the top left, with the planer name, biographical information and the Topps logo above seasonal statistics and career totals.  When there is room at the bottom, Topps included an interesting fact of the player.
• Packs: Topps increased “wax” pack prices by 10¢ to 79¢ – and decreased the number of cards from 15 to 12.  Packs were no longer the plastic packs folded like a wax pack; they were the tamper-evident packs you had to rip open.  Every wax pack had one Topps Gold card in the pack.  As before, there were 36 packs per box and 20 per case.  29-card cello packs increased 60¢ to $1.99 with a decrease of 5 cards – they had 4 Topps Gold per pack.  Rack packs went down to 33 cards (from 45) with 3 Topps Gold per pack.  There were also 56-card jumbo packs (probably cost $3.99) with 5 Topps Gold per pack, and mini jumbo packs with 2 Topps gold per pack (I think these had 24 cards per pack, but am not sure – I’ve only seen the box not the packs).  Series 2 is the first Topps pack I know of to clearly feature a specific player.  While series 1 is a generic player, that’s obviously Mike Piazza on the front of the series 2 pack.
• Rookies: This is one of the least impressive rookie card crops – Billy Wagner’s draft pick card is the only rookie card of any kind of note in the set.  There were some big rookie cards that Topps missed out on in 1994 – the biggest by far being Alex Rodriguez, who didn’t sign a licensing deal with Topps until 1998.  Michael Jordan also had his baseball rookie cards in a number of Upper Deck products.  Topps also missed out on Derrek Lee, Jorge Posada, Chan Ho Park and Torii Hunter.
• Hall of Fame: There are 18 Hall of Famers in this set – down 5 from the year before (this number includes the newest inductee Mr. Barry Larkin!).  Hank Aaron was a new HOF-er, featured in the subset mentioned above, but there were 6 guys gone from the set.  Three of them were managers gone as the subset wasn’t featured (Tony Perez, Sparky Anderson, Tommy LaSorda).  There were 3 players gone for good; catchers Gary Carter and Carlton Fisk had played their last games, as had Bert Blyleven.  Since Neon Deion is in the set, there is also 1 NFL Hall of Famer.
• Variations: There is no card #379 due to a printing mistake; there are two cards #370.  Mark McLemore’s card was the one that was supposed to be card #379.  Card #109 of Delino DeShields also has two variations – a Red and a Yellow team/position at the bottom.

The series 1 wax box has a blue background with a red stripe along the middle left-hand side, while the series 2 came with a blue stripe.  There are 2 cards pictured – Barry Larkin and Spike Owen for s1, Pete Harnisch and Roberto Alomar for s2.  “BASEBALL” in big block letters covers a baseball over the bottom of those cards, with the Topps logo and 1994 above the cards.  The bottom of the stripe has the series and the words “picture cards”.  The MLB and MLBPA logos are to the left.  There is a yellow section to the bottom right advertising the inserts available.

The odds below are for hobby/wax packs unless noted.

Promo Cards

Topps issued a 9-card promo set of the regular cards in cello packs to dealers and inserted 9 promo cards into specially marked 1993 factory sets.

For the 4th and final year, Topps issued a card in the ’93 design of the Golden Spikes winner in conjunction with the awards banquet (which was held in October 1993).  The winner for the ’93 banquet was Darren Dreifort.

Update Sets

Topps again released a 132-card Topps Traded set in factory set form.  The set had an 8-card Finest insert set including MVP and Rookie of the Year award contenders.

Parallel Set

• Gold – 792 cards (1:1)

Topps again inserted parallel versions into packs with Gold Foil over the player and team name.  The cards were again issued at a 1 per regular pack rate (actually, 5 per every 4 packs).  The 4 checklists were again replaced with players who weren’t part of the base set.

• Bilingual – 792 cards (factory)

Topps issued a bilingual factory set paralleling the base set with Spanish writing as well.  The factory set included a 10-card “Legends” insert set of retired Latin stars.

Insert sets

Topps again included Black Gold inserts in both series in 1994.  Black Gold was inserted at a rate of 1 every other box in both series – though I got one in all 4 boxes I opened from 1993 and 1994.  The series 1 cards are American League players, while Series 2 was National League players (this was flip-flopped from last year).  There were also Winner Cards inserted to mail in for 11 cards, 22 cards, or a full set of the 44 cards.  Topps also included preview cards to generate excitement for the release of its second year of Finest cards.

• Black Gold – 44 cards (1:72)
• Finest Pre-production – 40 cards (1:36)

Factory Set

Topps again issued only one design for its factory set.  Hobby factory sets included 10 Gold parallel cards, 3 Black Gold inserts and 3 of the Finest pre-production inserts.  Retail factory sets have the same number Gold and Black Gold cards, while also including a 9-card preview set for 1995 Topps, a spectralight version of those promos, and a 3-card super sampler promo of Topps other 3 sets from 1994 (Bowman, Finest, Stadium Club).

Promotions

None I know of from 1994.

Other releases associated with the Topps flagship set

#1 – Just like 1993, R&N China supposedly issued a bunch of “parallel” versions of Topps cards throughout the mid-90′s.  Some of the porcelain cards created were reprints – for example, they did a full run of all 26 of Nolan Ryan’s cards.  I’ve read some things that claim that a full reproduction was done of the 1993 and 1994 set, but read other things saying that a full parallel being done is very unlikely.  Looking around on eBay seems to support the latter.  But there are certainly quite a few porcelain reproductions from the 1993 and 1994 set.

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1994 saw continuation of the first release of “Super-premium” sets – SP, Finest and Flair all continued with their 2nd release, while Leaf came out with Leaf Limited to join the fray.  Topps had really upped the quality (and the price) of its base cards to compete with some of the other base sets.  Upper Deck had actually started moving its base card up to more of a premium level – price-wise it was competing with Pinnacle and Stadium Club, while the Topps base brand’s similar price point was Collector’s Choice.

There were two bigger stories I remember from 1994.  The first was Michael Jordan’s minor league attempt.  Say what you will, but Jordan did show some progress in winter ball after his first year.  I think he would have made it to the Majors someday – but we were all better off with him coming back to the NBA.  The bigger story was the labor unrest – cancelling a World Series dampened interest in everything baseball related, including cards.

Topps joined the retro party that Upper Deck quietly started with All-Time Heroes the year before – this was the first year of the Archives product.  All told, for licensed products we were up to 24 standard products, 2 retired player products, and O-Pee-Chee just had the one bilingual set.

• Topps – Topps, Bowman, Stadium Club, Bowman’s Best, Finest, Archives
• Donruss – Donruss, Triple Play, Leaf, Studio, Leaf Limited
• Fleer – Fleer, Extra Bases, Ultra, Flair, Extra Bases
• Pinnacle – Score, Select, Sportflics 2000, Pinnacle
• Upper Deck – Collector’s Choice, Fun Pack, Upper Deck, SP, All-Time Heroes
• O-Pee-Chee – O-Pee Chee

After a big change in 1993 by going to 2 series and adding UV coating and color pictures to the backs, Topps stayed similar in 1994.  Forme, 1994 was probably my biggest year of collecting – I was going hard after 1993 Upper Deck, and I was all over anything Upper Deck at this point.  I loved anything Griffey Jr. and I remember loving the Michael Jordan baseball cards that Upper Deck did.

1994 Topps Pre-Production

Topps again came out with two sets as they did the year before to preview the design of its 1994 set to collectors.  This year, however, the same 9 players are featured between each set – the 2 different methods of release are just variants of the cards.

First, there was a 9-card set issued in a cello pack as a preview of the set.  These cards were numbered the same as the other and only have statistics through 1992.  They have a white rectangle on the back, with wording “Pre-Production Sample design and photo selection subject to change”.

There were also 9 cards included in specially marked Topps factory sets.  These cards are very similar to the “cello” preview set, with each card have some difference – sometimes subtle, sometimes not.  The backs are exactly the same between the two sets.

The differences between the sets are as follows:

• 2 – Barry Bonds. The cello set is a vertical pose that matches to the photo that Topps went with in the base set.  The factory set is a horizontal action shot.
• 6 – Jeff Tackett.  The same photo, but it is cropped very slightly differently from left to right.
• 34 – Juan Gonzalez.  Different colors for the team name and the triangle in the lower left.
• 225 – Matt Williams.  Different color triangle in the lower left.
• 294 – Carlos Quintana.  Different colors for the team name and the triangle in the lower left.
• 331 – Kenny Lofton.  Different colors for the team name and the triangle in the lower left.
• 390 – Wade Boggs.  Different colors for the team name and the triangle in the lower left.
• 397 – George Brett.  This is the exact same shot, but the photo is cropped completely differently.  The cello promo is a vertical shot from further back, showing the scoreboard in Kansas City in the background as Brett follows through.  This is the same picture featured on his actual Topps card.  The promo from the factory set is a close-up with just Brett, the catcher and the pitcher.
• 700 – Nolan Ryan.  Like the Bonds, there are two different photos of the strikeout king.  The cello promo shows off a vertical side view of Ryan throwing a pitch.  The factory card shows a horizontal shot with the batter out of focus in the background.  Neither card is the photo that Ryan has in the base set.

For the 4th and final year, Topps printed a card of the Golden Spikes winner for the 1993 awards banquet of the US Baseball Federation.  Darren Dreifort was the ’93 recipient.  This card was the same design as the 1994 Topps set, with Dreifort pictured kneeling in his Team USA uniform.  Where the team name would normally be is replaced with “Golden Spikes Award Winner” and 10/27/93 where the position would be.  I couldn’t find a picture of this card online – but it is shown in the Standard Catalog.  Here’s one – thanks to reader Joseph for finding one for me!