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The best of Score


Score was my kind of card company.

Sure, I've always been a Topps fan, and Fleer is right up there, too. Score didn't do everything right (looking squarely at '92), but during that baseball card paradigm shift of the late 1980s, I was definitely part of Team Score.

Collectors aligned themselves into two camps at that time -- well, they would have if the internet was around in 1989 anyway. I'm told we're all so damn divided these days. But as we collectors went about our business by our lonesome back then, some of us gravitated to Upper Deck and some of us gravitated to Score.

I felt the pull of Score, although I admit I didn't even see Upper Deck for at least the entire 1989 collecting season if not longer. But Score appealed to me immediately. It was colorful, it was action-packed and it was informative. It produced the "thinking collector's" card. Turn over that card and Score could give you a thorough rundown of Thomas Howard's progress through the minor leagues. Upper Deck couldn't do that.

The first Score set I saw was from 1989, but my immediate favorite was its inaugural set from 1988. The early days of this blog are filled with my attempt to complete the '88 Score set and the ensuing odes. I'm sure I declared it my favorite Score set at that time and I'm sure it was.

I still like the brilliant border colors and the Reggie Jackson subset and the Action-Packed vibe you get from that set. It remains underrated.

But it's not my favorite Score set anymore.

The 1991 Score set has moved into the No. 1 spot.

That's interesting because just as I praised '88 Score in the early days, I shrugged off 1991 Score, too. Even though I bought a lot of it in '91 and it appealed to me, I found the very early '90s colors in the set -- TEAL? REALLY? -- a bit off-putting. A couple of the subsets are downright cheesy, and I actually have traded away lots of cards from this set over the years.

Big mistake.

Because now I'm trying to complete it.

Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on your view -- the set is 893 cards large. So even if I've traded away a lot of cards from the set, I still have plenty. And it's from the heart of the junk wax era so the cards are plenty plentiful.

In fact, I received a stack of more than 100 needs from '91 Score just last week from Marc at marcbrubaker.com (formerly "Remember the Astrodome"). I'll run through just a few of the basics because I think we all know about '91 Score by now.

The base cards -- it seems so weird talking about "base cards" when it's Score -- come in four different colors:


White



Teal



Black



And Blue.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, "white and black aren't colors." Shut up.)

I am interested in how these look in a binder because I've always found the teal cards jarring when compared with the others. The border colors come grouped together -- as Score was fond of doing during this time -- so I don't think it will be quite as upsetting to my eyes as if the colors were mish-mashed together.

Like most Score sets, the photos are all action-oriented. They are much clearer in the '91 set than they were in the '88 set, and they weren't all the same, which is one of the reasons why I'm starting to enjoy this one more.

But probably the biggest reason for my realization that I must complete this set is all of the subsets in '91 Score. The 1991 Score set is the King of Subsets, some of the best, and certainly it has to be the most to ever be committed to one set, right? (Don't confuse "subset" with "insert." I'm sure there is some set with 1,000 different insert sets).

I didn't receive all of the different Score subsets from Marc, but I did get a few notable ones:


Master Blaster (TM), which also arrived in the set with its companions, "Rifleman" and "K-Man".



Highlights, those very newsy cards that goes back to Topps sets in the '70s.



Draft picks, because we were all about the draft picks then. Still are, I guess.



This was one of my favorites. Score treated the all-star subset with caricatures, which was/is tremendous. Score continued this popular treatment through a few of the sets.

After this salvo from Marc, my '91 Score want list is much more manageable -- around 150 cards. Bo, from Baseball Cards Come to Life!, has gotten ahold of that want list now and I have a feeling there won't be much more to get once he's done.

That is pretty cool from a nearly 900-card set, that you can complete without too much of an effort. That's what makes '91 Score brilliant. It is giant, it is informative and it is accessible. Modern card sets have so much to learn.

Meanwhile, Marc added a few other cards from my collecting interests and he did quite well.


Four cards for my 2019 Archives, '75 set completion quest -- well, three anyway. Arcia turned out to be a dupe.



Four cards from 1980s Fleer wants. Yes, I still have '89 Fleer wants --- ssssssssh, don't tell anybody!



Four stickers/sticker backs from this year's Sticker set.



Four Dodger needs from last year's set. I've been so delinquent on 2018 sets.



As evidence, these are two parallels I received from Marc from last year, but I still need the base cards for both.

The Stat Kings card is the single most offensive "Dodger" card from 2018. Greg Holland is featured first and the whole back of the card is about Holland. Meanwhile, Kenley Jansen had the exact number of saves as Holland that year, yet he's "No. 2." Nice math, Topps.



Back to the present day. These are all 2019 Dodgers needs. It's a relief to get that flagship Hyun-Jin Ryu card. I can't stand putting base needs from the current year in my online cart. It feels so silly when I know that the same card is just sitting on a store shelf down the road or somebody I know has like seven duplicates of it.




Mini Kershaw needs from this year. This package was Kershaw heavy. I sent Marc an Astros coin from Archives earlier, it's reassuring to know everyone is pulling the exact opposite coin that they want to pull.



Now a couple of sets that I've neglected from this year. I haven't bought a package of Gypsy Queen since like 2013. Here are a couple of Dodger needs of the muddled-image set.


Don't worry, I'm not coming across an epidemic of modern diamond-cut cards. I scanned this Bellinger crooked.



Fiya! Fiya!

My Fire Dodger-pulling has been abysmal thus far -- worse than any set I've bought. So this is nice.



Here is one weird card. It's like '90s Metal except it scans decently.

Finally, Marc, added a figurine of Big D that he apparently found in a neglected dollar box.


He even looms over the other Starting Lineup figures in my collection.


Marc was happy to get all that surplus Score out of his house and I appreciate him going the extra mile to find some Dodgers I needed. Sometimes the giving -- i.e. the getting rid of -- is better than the getting. I do understand that.

But I must at least complete the best Score set ever.

Comments

Sean said…
I did like Score back in their early years, though I remember liking the 1990 set the best. The vibrantly colored borders drew me in that year, way more than the 1989 or 1991 sets did (though I agree about the caricatures in the 1991 and subsequent sets being brilliant).

There was also this really short lived 1990 Score bubble that year which I remember. I think there was a rumor that Score had printed the set in lower quantities and everyone started buying it like crazy, especially that Bo football/baseball card. Then in the middle of the summer they flooded the market with factory sets and the bubble, and collector interest in 1990 Score, immediately burst. For a few weeks that year though Score outdid both Upper Deck and Topps in the battle for attention though.
Nachos Grande said…
1991 Score is one of the first sets I collected as a kid, I think my dad was buying me packs in the grocery store at a rate of something like 5 packs for a buck. Each pack had a ton of cards in it too, if I recall correctly. Great set!
Jeremy said…
I remember being in a small town in the middle of Wisconsin who's card shop was selling my friend and I on the rarity of 1990 Score. We each made the smart investment of going 50/50 on a full box for $30 (the nether of us pulled a Bo).
ketchupman36 said…
I recently picked up a factory set of 91 Score for $8 from my LCS. I had about 100 cards from when I was a kid and trading my way to a full set would have been quite the task. I love this set.
Brett Alan said…
A couple of random thoughts:

1. You make a great point that if you like lots of information on your card backs, you were going to like Score more in that era; if you preferred big photos, UD was more to your liking. I do tend to be more in the former category, and I do like that Score set a lot.

2. You're right (again) that there's a big difference between having a lot of subsets and having a lot of inserts. The set with the most inserts is clearly the current Chronicles, which by my estimates has 7 base cards and 38,037,924 different insert sets.

3. The facsimile signatures on the Mondesi and Arcia Archives cards are so thick and twirly that it looks as though they are marks left behind as the player swished his bat back and forth. I don't think this ever happened on the real 1975 Topps. They could have made the sigs smaller, but I guess there's nothing they can do about how the player signs.
Matt said…
I was a big fan of Score, because of the paragraphs of information on the back. The 1991 set was one of my favorites too. (I actually liked the teal!)
CrazieJoe said…
1991 Score is one of MT best memories as a kid because it was the first set I every received a box of cards for (birthday gift). Kid me thought it was the best gift ever.
GCA said…
When Ros-man gets done, I'll take a crack at the leftovers for '91.

I missed them all when they were new, but got an '88 set years later, but after that they didn't excite me much except for 1996.
Jamie Meyers said…
Of the major sets that came out that year, Score was the only one I did not try to complete. I considered the size to be prohibitive, though Topps and its 792 cards didn't scare me off. I was never actually much of a fan of the caricatures and some of the other subsets seemed superfluous to me as well. I liked the Dream Team cards better and the Impact Player cards that came out the following year.

Regarding modern players on the 1975 design, the sorry excuses they have for signatures are a definite turn off to me. The Koufax facsimile is hard to read, but look at it compared to the other three, especially the Arcia. They might as well leave them off for the modern players.
Nick Vossbrink said…
1991 Topps is one of my favorite designs of all time but 1991 Score is one of my favorites sets. Photos are great. Subsets are WONDERFUL. I'm not a huge fan of the design but it's not horrid either. In many ways I like the fact that it's not all over the rainbow the way 88-90 are and is instead just hanging out in the cool side of the color wheel. 1988-1991 Score is as fantastic a run of card sets as any company has put together.
Stack22 said…
I always enjoyed opening Scores the grocery bag like wrappers their packs came in. I loved those All-Star cards and was (and remain) extremely bitter that Score opted to go with Matt Williams as the NL 3B for the '91 set.
Bru said…
YAY! As I said in the note, very happy to help. 1991 Score's borders are bad, although the black and blue often look sharp. But something about the giant first letter and the asymmetry it causes makes me loathe it. It does have plenty of fun photography, though, and the Rifleman/K-Man/Master Blaster subset is one of my favorites from the 90s (I finally finished those this summer).

I just realized while reading this post that Ozzie Guillen has made a double play on a ghost.

Oh, and I only had 3 copies of the Ryu, but yes - always happy to pass dupes on to someone that will give them a loving home. Enjoy!
Bru said…
I'm in the minority that thinks '93 and '97 were excellent.
flywheels said…
I remember buying a box of 1991 Score while on a youth retreat with my church in the mountains of TN. I purchased the box with Christmas money as we left right after Christmas and returned before New Years. I ended up splitting the box 50/50 with a friend. We both were excited over the prospect this set for many of the same reasons you do.
Grant said…
I noticed the '89 Fleer Jeff Kunkel has him listed as an IF and P, despite pitching one whole inning of relief in 1988.
Fuji said…
One of my students just told me white and black aren't colors either earlier in the week...or possibly last week. I get that at least once or twice a year. Gotta love those kids. Historically there's about a 25% chance another classmate will say something along the lines of "shut up" like you. ;)