The Pinnacle of Affordable Group Breaks (Part 1: Rockies)

They might not be a chance to add the latest and greatest to your collection, but any time Colbey at Cardboard Collections runs one of his affordable group breaks, you know they're an opportunity to take a walk down memory lane for just a few dollars. In late January, he decided to order up some 1995 Pinnacle products, and I bought the usual two-team slot. As usual, part one includes the Rockies, who are on a three-game winning streak, and the randomizer decreed this time that part two will consist of Philadelphia Phillies.

1995 Sportflix #9 Charlie Hayes

Pinnacle Brands put out quite a few products in 1995, including the penultimate year of the lenticular Sportflix set. This set has quite a bit going on. Not only are there two photos of third baseman Charlie Hayes to be found when you tilt the card, but also his last name appears to rush out at you on the right side. Even more than that, the logo on the right side alternates between the Sportflix '95 logo and the Rockies team logo.

These never come across that well in scans, but I don't really expect them to. What you can see anyway is Charlie Hayes' special face guard, which was such a curiosity that it appeared all over his 1995 cards. It pre-dated the C-flap by over twenty years.

There aren't too many stats on the back, but Pinnacle did highlight a few career totals in the Triple Crown categories. Seeing a .267 average isn't too jarring, but above that are his 367 career RBIs, an oddly huge and in-progress number that isn't usually featured on a card, which tend to focus on single-season accomplishments. He finished his career in 2001 with 740 RBIs and a surprisingly consistent .262 average.

1995 Sportflix #10 David Nied

So many pitcher cards show them mid-delivery, with their elbows, arms, and faces contorted into frightful positions. The ghostly half of this lenticular card is no different, but the alternate image shows a rarely-seen shot of this Rockies ace calling a popup. Pitchers seem to do this less often these days, but it's still surprisingly rare to see on a baseball card of any era.

On the back, Pinnacle kept the same theme of including full career statistics through 1995. There's also a small mention of Nied's "first full Major League season" in 1994, blatantly disregarding the strike that shortened both the '94 and '95 seasons. The career stats selected for these card backs mirror the Pitching Triple Crown, the lesser-known cousin of position player greatness. Those stats are wins, strikeouts, and ERA. It's a bit more common for pitchers to lead all three categories than batters to hit for average and power, but it's still quite rare. It hasn't been done since 2011, when both Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw pulled it off.

Anyway, looking at the back of Nied's card shows what would pass for a fairly decent single-season performance: a 17-6 record, 139 Ks, and an alarmingly high but Rockies-esque 4.58 ERA. Unfortunately, those are his stats from 1992-1994, and while his win-loss record looks quite impressive, Pinnacle made a significant error. His career record to that point was actually 17-16, meaning they dropped a full ten losses from his career count. When you feature a number that prominently, you really should get it right.

Sadly for David Nied, he'd never win another game, wrapping up his career in 1996 with a 17-18 record.

1995 Score Summit #45 Larry Walker

The next set is one you've seen a lot of around here, 1995 Score Summit. It's arrived in a few trades and even a Nachos Grande group break. I don't believe I've shown the Larry Walker card from this year, though. These cards always surprise me in how thick they are, and the photo reproduction is really quite sharp. The gold medallion team logo is a bit hard to discern, but it catches the light well enough.

1995 Score Summit Nth Degree #105 Dante Bichette

The primary hit I got in this break was Dante Bichette's Nth Degree parallel, which is one of the most sparkly parallels out there. It's not new to my collection, arriving once upon a time from everyone's favorite French trader, to whom I send my condolences for the destruction suffered by the Notre Dame cathedral this week.

I've shown the card before, but wanted to give my scanner another shot at it to have it turn out less blue than before. Success.

1995 Zenith #20 Dante Bichette

Unlike Summit, 1995 Zenith is a rarity in my collection, occupying only two 9-pocket page slots in my vast collection. Dante Bichette got a card in this set too, and given the small size of all three of these sets (200 cards or less), there is quite a bit of player repetition. They might all even be from the same photo shoot, as Dante is shown in a black spring training jersey with an away uniform on both his Summit and Zenith cards. Summit and Zenith pretty much mean the same thing anyway, as does Pinnacle. The set names in 1995 probably came from a thesaurus. There was no Acme, but that would have worked as well.

Gold foil was the name of the game in 1995, even hitting Topps flagship base cards for the first time. Pinnacle used the normal shade of gold for the various foil elements in this set, but I quite like the shade they used for the brick pyramid element in the background. It's a lot darker of a shade, more like honey, which manages to stand out among all the other gold sets of the era.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC)

The Rookie subset in Zenith didn't use the same shade, giving us lots more gold to look at, as well as a duplicated image as a backdrop for the main photo. The card back gives us a nice write-up of Juan Acevedo's prospects on a baseball stadium-themed design, complete with an artificial shadow of the player's head being cast over the outfield. There's even a cute scoreboard with his statistics.

1995 Zenith #129 Juan Acevedo (RC) (Reverse)

It's more cartoony than 1993 Fleer Ultra, which had a similar theme, but Bichette's main set card makes great use of this layout, showing his spray chart to the various fields against both lefties and righties. Bichette managed one opposite-field home run in 1994, long before the phrase "oppo taco" came into use.

1995 Zenith #NNO Chase Programs Checklist

Colbey even included one of the checklists for 1995 Zenith, showing the full breakdown of the three insert sets. Looking over these names reminds you of a few you haven't heard in a while, like Carlos Baerga and Raul Mondesi. Plenty of others are now in the Hall of Fame.

One of the three sets is "Rookie Roll Call". As usual with a set like that, it's peppered with now-legends like Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones, a few minor stars of the day like Todd Hollandsworth and LaTroy Hawkins, plus a few prospects that didn't especially pan out, such as Benji Gil and Bill Pulsipher. Only one Rockie made it into any of these insert sets, and that was Larry Walker.

Given these small set sizes, it looks like I did pretty well as far as pulling full team sets. Summit was pretty far along already, but Zenith is going to need a few more pockets in the 1995 binder.