2018 Sportlots purchases: Tons of Tony

It's time for the penultimate post in this Sportlots series and today I'm #gwynning.  It's all Mr. Padre today for you Tony Gwynn fans, so enjoy some cardboard (and other material) spanning 1986-2017!

This is a scan only a certain tertiary adjunct of unimatrix 01 could appreciate /VOYAGER'd.  Yep, seven of nine cards you see here are Sportflics, with #s 1, 2, 6, and 9 representing solo shots hailing from 1986, '87, '88, and '94, respectively.  #2 and 3 are from '87 and include Dave Parker and Kevin Bass (best NL RF) and Wade Boggs/George Brett/Hubie Brooks/Tim Raines/Ryne Sandberg ("The Players Poll").  The Padres card is also from '87, in this case a Team Preview set, and that one co-stars 11 other players, three in each corner.  '93 cards from SP and Studio round out this group.  By the way, the back of the SP card helpfully states, "Gwynn confused onlookers by donning Padres pitcher Scott Sanders' jersey for a spring training game."

Another Studio base is the second and final '94 representative, then 1995 kicks off with a Leaf Limited trio that includes the Bat Patrol insert plus a Gold parallel, which actually uses a different photo.  After a Score parallel (one of a couple you'll see today) is an Upper Deck trio comprising SP and both of Tony's SP Championship bases.  For as many of my PC guys that are in the latter I'm probably a decent way towards completing it!  One of Gwynn's Stadium Club subset issues ends this scan.

A base card from the solid '95 UD design is the end of that year's stuff, then 1996 starts out with the excellent fourth-year version of Finest, another Score parallel, and one of my favorite Studio designs of all time.  You really couldn't go wrong from '96 on, in my opinion.  After that is a nice Topps trio of the Classic Confrontations insert, Gallery, and Laser.  The Laser experiment didn't work, but kudos to Topps for trying something different--and at least Gallery didn't get tossed into the cardboard scrap heap!  And in case you're curious, the insert covers Gwynn's stats against "aces" like John Smoltz (.468 AVG, 2 each of 2B/3B/HR, 9 RBI) and John Smiley (.200 AVG).  Then we get a look at the first two of a trio of base cards from one of my favorite UD flagship sets I don't own (with '97 being the other).  The "Young at Heart" subset is especially fun.

Tony's regular base appearance--and a supremely cool one at that--is the last of the '96 items, and then we get a brief look at 1997.  I remember first seeing Bowman Chrome's debut at a mall show and still like the design today.  That year's Studio look is another winner as is the second year of Topps Gallery.  And there's an example of the greatness of '97 UD and its cool commemorative stamps, plus the fun die-cut Star Attractions insert.

Moving on to '98, Bowman Chrome still featured a pretty nice look, plus I grabbed the base product's International parallel with it.  And one of that year's highlights was the mind-bending E-X2001 design, half of which was a weird foil pattern with the rest being acetate, all on a super thick card!

This is a fun scan that begins and ends with the same brand.  The '98 version of Fleer's Flair Showcase (Row 3) leads off, and that's followed by a couple more cards from that manufacturer's partnership with Sports Illustrated.  '98 closes with a stunning SP Authentic base plus excellent cards from Topps Gallery and Gold Label (Class 1).  A little 1999 run includes Bowman's Best plus returning brands Finest and Showcase.  As usual with some of these Finest cards I'm often torn between peeling them and leaving them, with the best option probably getting a second copy to peel!

There's plenty more of my favorite brands to see here including more of Sports Illustrated, Topps Gallery, and Topps Gold Label.  Each of those had a design I liked at least to some degree every time they were produced.  They're joined by two final 1999 UD offerings:  another top set for me in Century Legends plus Ultimate Victory.

Then the entirety of my 2000 haul was mostly a Topps affair with a Pacific base interrupting a run of Finest, Gallery, and HD.  The Gallery card is the fifth of Gwynn's five-card run from '96-2000, and I'm fortunate to own his 2003 card as well.  HD was also a very, very nice looking product though definitely not worth the high wax price.

Bowman Chrome and Donruss Classics make a nice pair of cards to open up a multi-scan run on 2001 that then goes into a Fleerstravaganza of brands from that year:  E-X, Focus, Genuine, Premium, and Showcase, with Focus and Showcase owning the best designs in my opinion.  Mid-end products Leaf Limited and SP Authentic are a nice way to close out the scan but we're not quite done with 2001 yet...

...because first we need to cover cards from another of Studio's best designs plus a very nice look for Ultra.  It's possible '96 is my favorite overall Studio base design but this one is very high on the list as well.

At this point we start getting into cards produced after Gwynn retired so there's a bit more jumping around.  2002 is represented by an Ultra design I don't care for quite as much paired with a great photo, plus a base from one of UD's cooler one-and-dones, World Series Heroes.  After that we get lots of appearances in sets that tend to focus on retired legends:  '03 Sweet Spot Classics, '04 Greats of the Game and SP Legendary Cuts, and '05 Leaf Century and UD Past Time Pennants.  I've always been partial to the Sweet Spot and Legendary Cuts brands but for my money nothing tops the base offerings from Greats of the Game.  As you can see Fleer was on top of their game with this framed design and vintage photo!

One last card, UD's Sweet Spot Classic, fits in well with the stuff above, then we jump into the current decade with four Panini items and one from Topps.  2015 Archives is the example of the latter while the former is responsible for 2012 Cooperstown, 2015 Diamond Kings, 2017 Diamond Kings' DK Originals insert, and Donruss flagship from the same year.  The recent iterations of DK prove that the brand doesn't have to be low-end just because they lack the MLB license, and I continually appreciate that they offer some solid alternatives to Topps' mailed-in efforts of late.

Here's one more scan that starts and ends with the same brand, this time in horizontal form!  The first column is all Stadium Club with cards from '92 Dome, '96, and 2015.  The other two hail from 1995 Leaf's Checklists insert and Sports Illustrated's World Series Fever set from 1998.

And still we're not quite done yet because there's one oddball item left to look at:

As in the Griffey post last week I have another Collect-a-Books to show off!  This is the 1990 version, and of course it's worth seeing all it has to offer:

As you can see this purchase treated Gwynn's collection very nicely, adding more than 80 new items to give him a milestone-breaking total of 567, good enough for fourth place behind Ripken, Griffey, and Larkin...at least for now!  One player remains in this series and it's the one who got the most cards added to his collection.  The big finish will be posted soon, and have you figured out who it is?  Stay tuned!