Peel Slowly and See

The 1990s were a competitive time for baseball cards. Multiple manufacturers and brands fought hard for each collector’s dollar. This led to an era of innovation that had never been seen before or since. These innovations fell into three main categories:

1. Hobby changing ideas - on-card autographs, parallels
2. Ideas that faded away due to cost or other factors - die-cuts
3. What the heck were they thinking – Cards in a can, protective film

Cards were shinier than ever in the mid 90s with layer upon layer of gloss used to make them more appealing to the casual collector. The perfect solution for protecting these high-end cards seemed to be to slap a layer of plastic on the top of the card. After all, no one wants to get a greasy fingerprint on a shiny refractor, right? Needless to say, the idea didn’t really catch on. The fad passed quickly and by 1997 card manufactures had moved on to their next big idea.

Here are three examples of protective coating from my Darren Daulton Collection.

1996 Finest #B136


Finest was relatively subtle with this particular design. Notice how the coating directions fade into the busy background and run parallel to Darren’s swing. If you’re going to put a bunch of black block lettering on the front of a card you could certainly do worse.

1996 Leaf Preferred Steel #36


This is gimmick on top of gimmick. I’m not sure what these “steel” cards were made of, heavy duty tin foil would be my first guess, but the ample “REMOVE PROTECTIVE FILM” advisories strips away any potential majesty from this card.

1995 Donruss Dominators #2


I’ve saved the worst offender for last. What if I told you that there would be one card in your player collection that matched your player up with two Hall of Famers at his position? You’d be excited, right? Well, seeing Dutch on a card with Piazza and Pudge would certainly be neat… if only I could see Daulton. Instead I'm forced to take Donruss at their word and believe that's actually the correct player behind the sticker. Sure, I could peel it off, but I find it more entertaining to wonder if that's actually John Kruk behind the sticker.

Collectors have witnessed a bevy of gimmick attempts since the mid-90s, some have worked and some haven’t, but protective film remains one of the worst ideas of the past 20 years.