Acetate Appreciation: 2004 Playoff Contenders - Rookie Round Up

About as far from football season as you can get, but I had to show this card off. I didn't even know this card existed until I saw it on comc, and a quick quick to the back view confirmed it was an acetate card of Sean Taylor, who is still the last player I would call my favorite Redskin.

Not the best use of the acetate format as the back is just a mirror of the front, but a clear card, numbered to 375 from Taylor's rookie season still wearing #36. This one ranks pretty high up in the collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 2015 Topps Strata

A fairly new release for the Acetate Apprec series featuring an autograph of the only Rockies player in the set, DJ LeMahieu. Why Topps chose DJ over Nolan Arenado or Cargo I have no idea, but here it is, probably the cheapest auto in the set, so at least it was easy on the wallet for an all autograph set. As you can see by the scan there is not much use of the clear part, just the auto basically. Not a bad card design, but what really bugs me is the clear area is in such a noticeable box, it really takes away from the card. I know Strata is more about the Shadowbox cards, which I have yet to get one of, but I feel Topps really could have done something better here with the base or regular autos.

Acetate Appreciation: 1998 Upper Deck Amazing Greats

These seemed pretty hard to find for cards limited to 2,000 copies, but were worth the search. Nice looking cards, a little busy but not over the top. Fairly large set for inserts at 30 cards they also come in a die-cut version limited to 25.

 All I can think of when I see this is the Orioles "This is Birdland" gif.

Acetate Appreciation: 2011-12 UD Black Diamond Bruins Championship Rings

Just in time for the start of the NHL season, a card from a set that I have wanted since they came out. I think these Stanley Cup Championship Rings were one per case in 2011-12 Upper Deck Black Diamond and were always out of my price range when I did see them. Then a random search on the Bay turn this up, from a Canadian seller for about $10 shipped. It more than I wanted to spend on a Shawn Thornton card, but impulse got the better of me and I hit buy it now.

Acetate Appreciation: 1995 Stadium Club - Clear Cut

A rare case of a card that scans better than it looks in real life. The weird bluey-greenish-teal dominates the card while the color wheel thing in middle doesn't really add much either. Stadium Club is usually know for quality stuff, but this one leaves a lot to be desired.

Check Out My Tek (Acetate Appreciation)

I was pretty excited when my order from COMC.com arrived, it had been a long time since I got my stash shipping and it included all my mailbox service cards, including all my Topps Tek. I was excited to post them until I saw how crappy my scanner makes them look, but I felt the need to show them off anyway. The one that did show up was the "Disco-fractor" auto of Carlos Gonzalez, numbered to 50 and on card.

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 Leaf Studio - Stained Glass Stars

The stained glass look is a pretty obvious use of clear cards and has been done a few times, but this might be my favorite so far. Inserted into packs of 1996 Leaf Studio, the checklist is a little limited with only 12 cards from 7 teams, including 3 Indians, but the design is outstanding. The die-cut is limited to the top, meaning they still fit in pages and penny sleeves and the design is simple enough not to get messy. Scans really do not to justice to how nice these are in person.

Acetate Appreciation: 2000 Stadium Club Chrome - Clear Shots

 From the same set that had the acetate "Eyes of the Game" inserts is the "Clear Shots" inserts from 2000 Topps Stadium Club Chrome. A 10 card set with both hitters and pitchers all in posed shots. Not a very imaginative way to used the acetate stock, but not the worst I have seen. This post is almost as boring as the photos on the cards as there is not really much to say about these other than they exist.

Acetate Appreciation: 2000 Fleer Tradition Hall's Well

The first thing I thought when I got this card is "Yuck." First off the bad pun of "Halls Well", then the horizontal design or more specifically not taking advantage of it with something other than a generic photo, and lastly the card back making no use of the acetate stock at all. Whatever is on the card back is as hard to read in real life as it is on the scan.

There are 15 cards in this set, inserted into packs of 2000 Fleer Tradition at 1:30 packs, or a little better than one per box, and they are all as boring as the Jeter shown here. As far as acetate insert sets go, this is one of my lest favorite.

Acetate Appreciation 1999 SkyBox Thunder - Turbo-Charged

First released in 1996 by Fleer as Circa, this line later became Circa Thunder and in 1999 was released as Skybox Thunder. Another weird set from the pre-Topps monopoly era, when every company had multiple brands and they had to try new things to get noticed in a flooded market. These Turbo-Charged were inserted at at rate of 1:72 packs, or one every two boxes. A ten card insert set featuring power hitters of the day, the design is fairly nice, but nothing ground breaking, not really doing anything unique with the clear medium. These cards are also very thin, making the card flimsy, something that I really don't like in acetate cards.

Acetate Appreciation: 2001-02 UD Ice Hockey

One of my favorite modern hockey sets, Ice was released by Upper Deck starting in 1996, with 2001-02 being my favorite. The 151 card base set does a nice job of showing of the clear features of the card, while not losing the basic card info with stats and player details.

Acetate Appreciation: 2014 Topps Clear

We have all seen pretty much everything 2014 Topps has to offer by now, but something that I haven't seen a lot on is what I have found the most exciting, the clear parallels. These have been selling very well on secondary markets so I have not acquired one yet, but judging from the scans I have seen these are pretty sweet. Paralleling the full 330 card base set, and numbered to ten, with all the parallel overload in the last couple years, this is one that I really support. Hopefully the success of these cards leads Topps to embrace the clear plastic cards and include them in future products.

Acetate Appreciation: 2013 Pinnacle - Clear Vision

Not an acetate card in the truest sense, but a set I have been looking forward to posting about, it just took this long for me to finally get one. The newest incarnation of Pinnacle fell kind of flat for me, I still can't get past Panini having to remove logos, but the insert were interesting.

Here we have the "Clear Vision" inserts, coming in ten parallels (five for hitters and five for pitchers). The cards are made in two layers, the top or front of the card being a shiny foily layer with a cutout, and the bottom or back of the cards being acetate should which parallel, this one being a double, with a cloudy background. I couldn't capture it on a scan, but if you hold the cards sideways and look at the edge you can see this pretty clearly. Pretty underwhelming as far as the acetate part, but the multiple layers make for a pretty interesting card.

Acetate Appreciation: 2005 Topps Hot Button

A weird little set that you don't see much of, 2005 Topps Hot Button. These cards were part of a game made by Topps in which players would insert cards into an electronic game unit and the game would come up with a result based on the cards used. The cards themselves were sold as a starter kit with 20 cards and a game unit and as booster packs with 7 cards.

Acetate Appreciation: 1999 Finest - Peel and Reveal

An insert set from when peel off protective film coatings were a common thing to see on cards. These cards came in packs of Topps Finest with a black film on both sides that had to be peeled of to see which card you got. The three parallels were Sparkle, the most common (roughly 1 per box), Stadium Stars, the least common (roughly 1 in every 5 boxes) and Hyperplaid being somewhere in the middle (about 1 per 2.5 boxes). These cards are very hard to identify by scans so I used a black background below to help out. The Sparkle are just what you would expect, with shiny specks in the clear space, Hyperplaid are probably the best looking in person looking similar to X-Fractors from recent Topps Chrome releases. The Stadium Stars are the hardest to see with Stars and Circles that create a slight 3D effect.

Acetate Appreciation: 2007 UD Elements

A very weird and confusing set released by Upper Deck in 2007, the cards were released with 3 mini-boxes per box, 5 packs per mini box, 3 cards per pack, with what was advertised as "3 unique Technology Cards" with Relic and Auto cards mixed in as well.

Box 1 contained cards 1-42 and 127-168 on "Foil Board" (Think Chrome Refractors)
Box 2 contained cards 43-84 and 169-210 on "Lt Fx" (Think Fleer Metal)
Box 3 contained cards 85-126 and 211-252) on "PETG" (Think thicker than average acetate)

The first 126 cards were of veteran players, with one card per "Technology" and cards 127-252 being all rookies limited to 550, meaning each player has 3 different cards in the set. The PETG (or Polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified) are clear plastic cards that fit into the "acetate" part of my collection. The "Technology" is pretty much wasted on these as only the top portion of the card is clear, and the back containing a bio and stats shows though to the card front. The photos used on the PETG cards look to all be posed studio shots, making my dislike for these cards even greater.

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 Collector's Choice - Crash the Game Exchange

Collector's Choice was a product released by Upper Deck in the mid 1990's. One of the selling points of this line was the "Crash the Game" redemption/contest inserts. The cards featured players with specific dates and if the player hit a home run during that time the card was a winner and could be redeemed for a different card of the same player. In 1996 the inserts were a shiny/foily kind of thing, and the redemptions were acetate.

The design is very similar the Thunder Boomers inserts from 1998 Thunder with a wood grain border and the player photo in a broken out section. Of the 30 players in the set 27 of them have redmeptions, Tim Salmon, Larry Walker and Joe Carter didn't hit home runs on any of their redemption dates. The cards are kind of flimsy and fairly simple, but a pretty nice design for early acetate cards.

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 Select Team Nucleus

A 28 card insert set from 1996 Score Select, featuring 3 of the top players from each team. Pretty boring design on a multi player card. The thing that stuck out to me was Larry Walker, Andres Galarraga and Dante Bichette combining for 107 homers and 335 RBI in a strike shortened season, led by Bichette who hit .340 with 40 bombs and 128 driven in, sending the Rockies to their first playoff appearance.

Acetate Appreciation: 1994 Studio Editor's Choice

The oldest baseball acetate card in my collection comes from the 1994 Donruss Studio line. These were inserted at a rate of 1:36 packs, or one per box. The 8 card set is designed to look like a film strip, a pretty obvious idea for acetate cards, but one not widely used. These cards scan very nicely, but don't look as good in person, the whole card is clear as opposed to the player photo being solid like on most acetate cards. This leads to a really washed out look on the card and make it really dull. It adds to the feel of being a photo negative, but makes for a pretty boring card.

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 CE President's Reserve NFL

President's Reverse was a product put out by Collector's Edge, a company that focused mainly on NFL cards during the 1990's. 1996 would be the only year a President's Reverse line was released and it really is a pretty forgettable set. The design doesn't use the clear portion well and the photo is not the sharpest which is a problem with most acetate cards. The entire 400 card base set is acetate with each card listed as being "1 of 20,000". Not a set I like very much, but it is an excuse to post a card of a punter, not something you see very often anymore.