1997 and 1998 Pinnacle Inside Five "Pack" Break.

I ripped open five "packs" of this crap so that you don't have to.

Top 10 National Pick-Ups: #2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes.

#2: One box of 1998 Zenith.

Paid $27.

Do you really want to know why I get angry at gimmicks? It's all because of Pinnacle Brands. Pinnacle may have been the first instance of a corporation gimmicking itself into bankruptcy.

The spectacular rise and devastating crash of Pinnacle Brands should be a case study on how not to run a trading card company; but first, let's go back a few years. In 1992, there were five MLB licensees, and of those five, what was then known as "Score/Sportflics" was clearly the trailer. Score was the last company to introduce a "premium" card set and when 1992 Pinnacle was finally released, Topps' Stadium Club and Fleer's Ultra had already upped the ante. Score's flagship set was hindered by drab design, boring color schemes, rampant overproduction, and a lack of inserts. If you were a betting man in 1992 and had to lay odds on which of the five MLB-Licensed trading card companies would be the first to go, Score would have been the Morning Line favorite.

Things began to change in late-1993 when Jerry Meyer was hired as CEO of the newly re-named "Pinnacle Brands." Within a few years, mainly by catering to what collectors actually wanted, Pinnacle had gone from being The Hobby's "sick man," to (according to a survey released by Action Packed) company with the largest percentage of market share.

By 1996 Pinnacle was exactly that; the pinnacle of The Hobby. Then a series of bad decisions followed by even more bad decisions, led to one of the most spectacular falls in Hobby history. It all started with Pinnacle's ill-conceived acquisitions of Action Packed and Donruss. In '97 Pinnacle released an Action Packed football and an Action Packed NASCAR set, but no baseball and nothing else afterward '97.

What was most puzzling was what they did with Donruss. The company's European owners had been wanting to get out of the American market; and so in 1996 they sold the candy division to Hershey and Donruss to Pinnacle. Even though Donruss had been acquired by Pinnacle, for some reason, they continued to operate it as a separate company. Although Pinnacle did move Donruss to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, it still had its own separate staff, its own office space, and its own distribution channels. It even had, if you could believe this, paid for its own licenses.

Donruss could have released all their 1997-98 baseball card sets under Pinnacle Brand's license. But they spent to money on a separate license anyway.

For the next two years, Pinnacle and Donruss's business model relied largely on 1) Overproduction and 2) Gimmicks. To be fair, they did leave their flagship brands (Score, Pinnacle and Donruss) largely sacrosanct. Yes, they did such things as the 1998 Score All-Star Edition (a re-release of 1998 Score Baseball, only with different inserts), and 1997 New Pinnacle (a completely different Pinnacle set released in lieu of a second series of 1997 Pinnacle Baseball). But Donruss, Pinnacle, and Score remained largely unchanged.

But in order to raise the revenue needed to level their post-acquisition balance sheet, Pinnacle (but not necessarily Donruss) let the presses fly with one new brand after another; a slew of 200-250 card base set all retailing for $2-$3/pack, all virtually indistinguishable from one another. 1997 New Pinnacle; 1997 Pinnacle X-Press; 1997 and '98 Pinnacle Inside; 1998 Pinnacle Performers; 1998 Pinnacle Plus: If I were to show you a base card from any one of the aforementioned sets, would any of you be able to properly identify it?

But it wasn't just the avalanche of new brands, it was the constant re-tooling of existing ones. There was no consistency from year to year. Take for example Zenith. It was introduced in 1995 as the company's first true "super-premium" product, designed to compete with Fleer's Flair, Upper Deck's SP, and Donruss's Leaf Limited in the $5/pack category. (Pinnacle also introduced that year the Chromium-stocked Select Certified as their answer to Topps Finest.) For the first two years, you basically knew what you were going to get in a box of Zenith: A high-quality base set with a couple of way-cool Dufex inserts in a Hobby box.

Then in 1997 they completely changed the product, doubling the price to $10/pack, reducing the base set to only 50 cards, and inserting two, oversize, 8" X 10" cards per pack.

Yeah, oversized cards and $10 packs in 1997. What the fuck were they thinking?

And then there were the gimmicks. I guess if you're part of the product development team and management mandates that you crank out yet another set, I guess you have to do something to make it stand out. Hence, the cards in soup cans and tins and bizarrely structured sets like Fractal Matrix; so confusing that even I, a man with a graduate degree in economics (which requires a lot of advanced mathematics to acquire) still can not figure out.

Which brings us to 1998 Zenith, a Perfect Storm of the needless meddling of an established card set combined with just about the dumbest gimmick I've ever seen. Yes, I'm talking about Dare to Tear.

I picked up a box of this junk for $27 at The National -- which is about $26.99 more than I probably should have paid -- and video broke it. In the process, I will attempt to extract the standard-sized card from the jumbo WITHOUT trying to damage either card.

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three:





#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song

Top 10 National Pick-Ups: #4. Epix Mo-Jo!!!

#4: One Orange 1998 Pinnacle Epix "Season" Mo Vaughn and one Emerald 1998 Pinnacle All-Star Epix of Mo Vaughn.

Paid: $0.25 each.



I guess it's kind of apropos that I post these cards today, the 13th anniversary of Pinnacle Brands' bankruptcy filing. There were a lot of stupid things that Pinnacle did that drove them into Chapter 11, and as a bit of foreshadowing, we'll be discussing one of the most egregious examples later in this countdown. One of the few things Pinnacle did right, however, was Epix.

Epix was a 72-card, multi-brand, multi-tiered, insert seeded into packs of 1998 Score, Pinnacle and Zenith. There were 24 players in the set and each player was supposed to have had four cards celebrating their greatest (in ascending order of scarcity) play, game, moment, or season. One of each player's card was inserted into each product with the fourth card scheduled to have been in 1998 Pinnacle Certified. Pinnacle, of course, wouldn't last that long. Each card was also available in Purple and Emerald parallels. According to Pinnacle, about 20% of the total production run was in Purple, 10% in Emerald, and the remaining 70% (the "base" cards) in Orange.

What makes the Pinnacle Epix cards so great are, of course, the look. Nothing says "late 90s" than holographic matrix foilboard and Epix had plenty with each of the four tiers having their own unique matrix pattern. Decades from now, when you're thumbing through a quarter box at The National and come across an Epix insert, even if you've never seen one before in your life, you'll know it's from the late 90s.

But wait, that's not all! Later in the season, Pinnacle released another batch of Epix cards known as "All-Star Epix." Unlike the regular Epix cards, only one card for each of the 24 players was produced, with the first 12 cards in the set seeded into packs of 1998 Score Rookie/Traded and the other 12 in Pinnacle Plus. The All-Star Epix cards were also in three different flavors: Orange (70% of the production run), Purple (20%), and Emerald (10%).

I have no idea why I found two different Mo Vaughn Epix cards in the same quarter box. They were the only Epix cards in that particular dealer's box; and I don't recall seeing any other Vaughn cards. 1998 was Vaughn's last season as a Red Sox and his last truly productive season. He went to Anaheim the following season, and his career went to complete shit. Too bad. I always liked "The Hit Dog." Yes, he won the AL MVP in '95, although that probably had more to do with the fact that his name wasn't "Albert Belle."

#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song

JUNKWAXAPALOOZA 2011! 1998 Score

Part One...



Part Two...

The Jersey Shore Junkwaxapalooza! 1997 Totally Certified.

Platinum Red (numbered to 3999): 33 of 150 (22.00%)
three doubles

Platinum Blue (numbered to 1999): 19 of 150 (12.67%)

The Jersey Shore Junkwaxapalooza! 1996 Pinnacle Aficionado

Base Set: 76 of 200 (38.00%)

Parallels
2 Artist's Proof (1:35) J. Damon, M. Newfield

Inserts
2 Slick Picks (32 cards, 1:8) K. Griffey, Jr., J. Gonzalez

Autogamers: NONE

Why the Wal-Mart Black cards are not a gimmick. (I think)

In 1997 Pinnacle Brands released the third edition of their popular Pinnacle Certified Baseball set. The set had been highly anticipated by collectors as it was one of the first sets to exploit the low-numbered parallel concept. At a time when a card serial-numbered to 5000 copies was still considered "scarce," '97 Certified had three different parallel sets limited to under 100 copies: Mirror Red (limited to 90 copies), Mirror Blue (45 copies), and Mirror Gold (serial-numbered to only 30). The '97 Pinnacle Certified Mirror parallels raised the bar (or lowered it, depending on your view) and established the benchmark for scarcity.

But when '97 Certified went live, some collectors noticed something peculiar. They looked like a base card, but it had the "refractor-like" sheen of a Mirror insert. Collectors had accidentally discovered the now-legendary Mirror Black parallels, and as reports of them began to surface on the Beckett Message Boards, many were led to believe that these cards were a "stealth" one-of-one parallel.

Only it wasn't. Pinnacle later admitted that the Mirror Blacks were printed as part of a test run and inserted into packs as a mistake. (They weren't even ones-of-one as at least two Jay Buhner and Juan Gonzalez Mirror Blacks are known to exist.)

Fast forward to 2009 and the news that some base set cards being pulled out of 2009 Topps Wal-Mart Blasters have black-borders. Given Topps' recent history, many collectors have (rightly) called shenanigans. However the Wal-Mart Blacks, just like the Mirror Blacks of 1997, may very well be legitimate error cards.

Why do I believe this? Let me count the ways...

1) The coloring

If Topps was to produce a special edition of their base set, why would they choose the same color as one of their established parallels?

2) The scatter-shot distribution

Some Blasters have yielded nothing but lack base cards. Some have yielded nothing but white-bordered base cards. Now if Topps really, really, did produce a parallel that's exclusive to a particular pack-type, wouldn't it have made sense for them to distribute them a little more evenly? (i.e. one-per-pack)

3) Bad P.R.

With all the goodwill Topps has earned with their 2009 effort, why would they throw it all away with a gimmick like this?

More than likely what happened was redux of the Mirror Blacks -- only on a much larger scale. When the time came to produce the Wal-Mart Blaster packs, Topps (or the sub-contractor who printed the cards) made a mistake. A number of black-bordered cards were accidentally produced, and instead of throwing them away, they decided to pack them out as a Wal-Mart-exclusive "Special Edition." In other words, Topps is trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

But hey, I could be wrong. If Topps really did collude with Wal-Mart to create a "stealth" parallel, and failed to inform anyone until after the fact, many collectors will never, ever, purchase a Wal-Mart Blaster again.

Pinnacle, Ten Years Later.

It was ten years ago this month Pinnacle Brands -- maker of such brands as Score, Select, Zenith, Sportflix, and later on, Donruss -- went out of business.

With a decade's hindsight, what do you remember about Pinnacle?

Do their cards stand the test of time?

What Pinnacle Brands brands (sorry) do you wish were still around?