Truly Madly Deeply Pinnacle

They'll Be Your Dream, They'll Be Your Wish, They'll Be Your Fantasy.....

Those words come to mind when I break a box of any Pinnacle product. Pinnacle simply knew how to get to my heart and had some of the most creative minds in the industry other than Upper Deck at the time.

They created some unique parallels, inserts, ways of packaging and products nobody else would have thought about trying. One of their biggest things was their connection with the NFL's Quarterback club.

Other than being a fun Super Nintendo video game, though I have always preferred Madden more, the NFL QB club featured some of the best player in the NFL at the time. Pinnacle used those players in fun subsets, inserts and even created a product on them.

I want to stand with you on the Pinnacle of a mountain

1995 Pinnacle QB Club Collection was a product that only featured players from the NFL QB Club. Each box came with 24 packs and each pack was loaded with 12 cards. There was also multiple inserts to chase as well. Boxes can be found pretty cheap right now with this one running at $12.

The basics of the product is a 261-card base set with members of the NFL Quarterback Club having nine cards each. NINE CARDS EACH. Which if you do the math, which I just had to on my calculator, that means the base set is basically 29 players.

I remember opening some of these packs as a kid. At the time, it was fun to find some of your favorite players in every pack and trading your dupes with your friends on recess. Which I honestly did. I remember trading a few Troy Aikmans for some Dave Browns, what a time to be alive that was.

However, it was a much different feeling opening this product as an adult. How dull was it finding the same players pack after pack. The only thing that kept me excited was seeing the great photography Pinnacle used as they did an excellent job of using creative photos for this set.

Oh can you see it baby?

I also enjoyed the design of the base set with full bleed photography and gold foil touch with names. I do wished they had used the full name on the front of the base set. The subsets were also themed and designed well.

Not sure who Jerry is calling, maybe he is getting a call from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Junior had the look and fierce play of one of the greatest Linebackers ever

This reminds me of the Giants defense trying to tackle the past few years. Something tells me Barry broke out of this.

Sweat...baby sweat...baby...

He is checking in with Ace!

The true meaning of "talk to the hand"

This base card could have gone either way, whether it was Jerry or Steve

One thing I always found kinda odd but cool that Pinnacle did, was catch players not at their greatest moments. Dan is obviously being sacked here and this isn't the first time I have seen Pinnacle use images like that. Not a big play for Dan, but still makes him the center point of this card.

 

Pro Bowl. Back when the game meant a little more than flag football. There is even a Cleveland Brown in it. Definitely a different time of football. Sorry Browns fans.

 

X and O's was one of the subsets in the product. The chalkboard look is always fun to see.

Look at the photography on these Defining Moment subset cards especially the Michael Irvin one. Absolutely stunning.

You don't have to close your eyes
'Cause it's standing right before you.

My first insert find was this Arms Race of Randall Cunning ham. Kinda boring design. These fell 1:18 packs

 

FINALLY! Some Pinnacle Dufex! I am not sure why they didn't make Trophy Collection parallels to the base set to spice it up some. These Aerial Assaults fell 1:36 packs.

 

And my final hit was a Pin Redemption of Randall Cunningham which felt more like a piece of paper. These fall 1:24 packs and are redemption cards for Pins of the featured player.

 

According to this paper insert you found in every pack, I am 24 years short of being able to get my Cunningham pin.

Honestly, I would have kept the redemption card most likely. I am sure I actually did back in those days because I was young and probably didn't know any better.

I want to open these forever.
Until the sky falls down on me

(today's lyric re-writes come based off the song Truly Madly Deeply which was released by Savage Garden in 1997. Go give it a listen)