Tuesday, January 17, 2012

1990 Donruss #643 Mike Schmidt

I think I speak for all bloggers when I say I love to receive comments on my posts, although occasionally I'm genuinely surprised by which of my posts receive multiple comments.  Take for example my recent post on the 1990 Topps Phillies cards.  I thought for sure this would be one of those posts that languished in the Land of No Comments, but to my surprise that post received comments from four different readers.  The wealth of knowledge of our baseball card community and the passion we share with regards to something as mundane as deciding the least worst baseball card set of 1990 just amazes me.

A comment from 14,000 Phillies actually had me going back to my 1990 Phillies binder because I didn't remember the Mike Schmidt tribute card from the 1990 Donruss set he referenced.  The card doesn't feature a great photo, but it should get recognition for being the first baseball card to contain Michael Jack's complete year-by-year statistics from 1972 through 1989.  Say what you will about the Halloween paint splatter design on the front, Donruss definitely got one thing right by including this final tribute card to Schmidt in its 1990 set.

4 comments:

Jim from Downingtown said...

The 1990 Donruss cards are a good memory for me because they were my two sons' entry into baseball card collecting. We bought tons of rack packs at the local Wawa, and at least once a week the entire lining room floor would be turned into a card-sorting area. The same with the blue Donruss cards from the following year. (We also bought Topps and Fleer cards those 2 years, but not as much.)

Anonymous said...

I remember thinking the '90 Topps set was such a huge bust, design-wise. I liked the '89 design, but '90 had green again for the Phillies, which was such a disappoint after the '88 Phillies green. I remember thinking at the time that the '90 set was probably Topps idea of ushering in a new, bold decade with those crazy borders and eye-sore backs. They were probably also trying to compete with Upper Deck's entrance. But it just didn't work then, and as you mentioned, it really didn't stand the test of time. 1991 Topps was such a relief; Topps stuck to team colors and I think the design is actually pretty classic, despite being mired in the junk wax era.

As for the Schmidt tributes, I loved the '90 Donruss card. I had a bunch of them and it was fun to put the whole set in a binder and still have one more year with Schmidt included. The UD card was nice, too. I also really liked the '89 Fleer Update tribute; pretty unique having 5 photos in one. I really wanted Topps to do something but they really didn't. TBTC was cool, and I was waiting every year since '86 for them to feature Schmidt, but it would have been nice to have one last Schmidt card, like the one you created.

John Bateman said...

Did not like the 1990 Donruss Set (or Fleer, Topps, Upper Deck or Score)but this is one great card. I loved the facted they included it even though he retired in May of 1989.

Jim said...

Great stuff guys.

I really enjoyed reading all these comments.