A lot of older collectors like myself have a “dark period” of collecting. That’s when you either stop or slow your collecting. Maybe you grow out of it or maybe you just kind of get interested in other things as you grow up. For some it’s short, for some it’s long, for others… it’s forever. I would say it was long for me.
1994 was right at the front end of my dark period. And for me that meant a stop to collecting. About a year or two before this I had a band, I was going through high school and about to go to college, I had a job, I was playing sports, and there was too much going on to make collecting a priority. So I stopped. I at least stopped collecting cards. There might have been a few things here and there that I picked up, but they weren’t cards.
So 1994 Stadium Club is something I have in my collection, but I don’t have a tie to it from a nostalgia perspective because it’s all stuff I picked up after I took my collecting break. That definitely changes the way I see this set compared to how I would if I was opening the packs when they first came out.
But I will say, this design still takes me back to the 90’s. Maybe it doesn’t scream it like some other sets, but it’s rooted deep in the 90’s.
Other related posts: Card Thoughts: 1994 Stadium Club Series 2 – Back in da Club
The Big Names
With the end of Ryan and Brett and the heart of Griffey and Bonds. This set had some really big names. You’ll see plenty more in the pictures below. It’s how they showed those names that seemed crazy.
The ripped paper and red, shiny, metallic bar feel so very 90’s to me. It gets even more that way when you see the “’93 Award Winner” text on the Bonds card. It feels straight off of MTV at the time. (Kids: MTV is a channel that showed music videos and at the time was starting to be more tainted by shows like the Real World)
One thing I noticed about these though, there’s no team name. In those first years they didn’t include the team name on the cards. But do you notice something else about these three? You barely see any logos or team names on them at all. It has an unlicensed feel to it as you look at them even more. There’s actually a good chunk of cards that are like that in this set.
Gotta Include One
This overexposure type of thing was a thing back then. Looking back it feels like the thought was, “well, if Upper Deck is doing it then we should too.” Did we really need it? Nah, I mean a collision at the plate should be a cool card image right? But I think the other questions is, do we need it for Kirt Manwaring? You could argue it makes his card cooler and we don’t need it on a big stars card.
A Little More Sparkle Please
As if the red wasn’t enough, now we get this gold, sparkly, rainbow effect. I would almost like this better as the normal part of the design instead of the red. These days it seems like that would have been the choice, but back in the 90’s…
The Oddballs
This was about the time you started seeing parallels and inserts in all sets so of course there’s going to be a good amount of that in this set. On thing I liked that Stadium Club did back in the day was create in “Info Card” for each of these inserts and parallels. You can see the Superteam Cards version of that above.
The first one is a First Day Issue of David Justice. This is a card from the first day of printing and they put a foil stamp on it. According to the info card there are about 2,000 of each card so that makes it about like a gold parallel from current sets I guess. The Superteam Card is some kind of context card.
Dugout Dirt
These are the fronts and back of the Dugout Dirt series of inserts. Each card looks like a regular card on the front, but the back has a cartoon. So you can see I pulled a Piazza and a Cal card in this box. Of course Cal’s has to do with his streak.
TTM Cards Galore
This is one of the best parts for me though… some serious cards for TTM. And since I don’t have a lot of this set, that means I don’t have a lot of doubles, which means I hadn’t had a lot of these to send out. I wonder where Ron will sign his card.
I had a good time opening these and the all came out pretty good. Sometimes with this era of cards they get a little sticky and can get damaged but these looked very good.