Outbreak

The definition of Outbreak is "the sudden or violent start of something unwelcome, such as war, disease, etc."

It's something that is going on now and something that happened in the 1995 hit movie, Outbreak. In that movie, a dangerous airborne virus threatens civilization-hmm think on that-and it spreads through a small Californian town and not the world like we are experiencing today.  The movie stars Dustin Hoffman, whatever happened to him by the way, who is a contagious disease expert along with his ex-wife (Rene Russo) that the town brings in to help stop the spread of the disease. The movie also has Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and Donald Sutherland.

To me, not all outbreaks can be taken negatively as you can turn the word into something positive with the right wording. Between 1996-1999, the hobby experienced an outbreak of creativity like no other. We had acetate autographs, cards that made players move for seconds of time, cards in cans, cards in tins, one card high end packs and coins and cards together as one hobby just to name some.

It was a great time to be alive as a card collector watching the hobby boom.

One of my outbreaks at the time was an addiction to cards and coins. They weren't worth much then and really aren't now, but I just loved it. I wasn't even a coin collector but occasionally you could see me adding a wheat penny here and there when I found one.

I actually even spent the time to put the coins in the card slots if I had the right player and coin that matched up. A lot of the time that wasn't the case as there was two cards per pack, one with a slot and one not and one coin for retail which is what I bought. Hobby had two coins and three cards per pack so your odds was better that way.

With all of my recently found extra time, I have been scouring eBay for some packs in the last few months when a bumped into a listing of a completed 1996 30 bronze football coin set in a special Pinnacle Coin binder. The set was listed for $3.99 starting bid and $6.99 shipping. It also had a make offer option which I always take the option on. So I offered the starting bid and the seller immediately accepted. One would guess that they either needed money or wanted to make sure this was gone.

You know, I buy junk.

Here is the front of the binder and the backside of the first half of coins.

Open it up and you find an outbreak of the 30 coin set that spreads across two pages

Some pretty big names mixed in including Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, John Elway, Brett Favre (and for me Kerry Collins and Mark Brunell)

And Emmitt Smith, Steve Young and Jerry Rice just to name a few. The names alone made the purchase worthwhile to me.

Here is the final side.

I think this is a pretty unique item for my 90's PC and not something I ever see pop up. And really I haven't ever seen this item. It may not be packs to open to take me down memory lane like I had hoped, but I was still very happy with my purchase.

Outbreak was a great movie for it's time and may have to give it another watch since it has been awhile and I don't fully remember it that well. I know the timing of that isn't great with everything going on, but I just gotta remember the good guys win in the end. I foresee that at some point for us as well.

Before I close, I must point out there really hasn't ever been a creative outbreak in the hobby like that since 1999, but there has been a outbreak of positivity in the hobby as of recent. Whether its on Twitter with all of the giveaways, pay it forwards or Panini simply giving away boxes and packs or it's also bloggers helping each other out and doing free card threads almost every day for some. As the saying goes, we are all in this together and it's great to see in this hobby community that we all have each others backs when we are down.

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)

Trading With Kids On Recess

Trading had just become a new thing to me, well trading cards that is. We always traded snacks. Whoever was willing to give up their Dunkaroos or Fruit Gushers were the most popular and kings of the classroom. That wasn't me however. I wasn't giving up my frosting to dunk my cookies in for nothing!

However, trading cards was a different story. My friends began taking some of their cards to school to show me what they had. A lot of the kids who collected that year had a product called 1995 Pinnacle Club Collection.

I had just recently picked up some packs of the product myself and brought my showings to the table. Well, the swing set, but you get the point.

The product didn't bring a lot of excitement in terms of inserts as I don't think any of us had pulled one or brought it to the table if we did. What the product did bring was multiple cards of your favorite players and teams and as kids that was the main starting point for us. Not to mention, the pricing was affordable as well.

Here were the options for inserts if we had pulled some, Arms Race fell 1:18 packs, Aerial Assault fell 1:36 packs, Spotlight fell 1:90 packs and Pin Redemption fell 1:24 packs.

The 261 card base set had members of the NFL Quarterback Club and each player had nine cards a piece. The main base cards had full bleed photography with the "Quarterback Club" logo and the player's name listed at the bottom against a gold foil background.  The cards did look nice and the set was full of stars of the 90's like these guys,

There were subsets as well and they had fun themes and good designs.  These counted as apart of the players nine cards and each player had three subsets a piece.

 

 

Trading was a lot of fun on recess and I can't count the many times I helped out Cowboy fans with Emmitt and Aikman to get Dave Brown and Phil Simms.

Looking at how their careers ended, it's probably not a move I would make today.