3 Card Manny - Episode 1: The Card That Ended It all
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by Manny Stiles
Q. What is 3 Card Manny?
A. Other than a lame reason for me to add a category of "3" in my alphabetical archive, it's a "Random Stroll Through a Box of Trading Cards (SPORTS cards, not glorified UNO cards. No pogs, dragonball z or pokemon crap allowed)
It's a stroll with host and former-obsessed card collector Dr Commento through the Great Baseball Card Rennaissance (1981-1984), the Golden Age of Card Collecting (1985-1987) the begining of the end and downfall (1988-1990) and through today's collectables megaindustry.
The Card That Symbolizes The End
When Jim Morrison sang of "The End" he was wasn't screming about Oedipus. It was all a front for the future he was seeing. He saw the day that SCORE entered the baseball card business, further ruining the Great American Hobby and throwing the first dirt on it's still-getting-nailed-in coffin.
As a marketing hook and line, the top of the box of SCORE cards was a picture of one of it's cards - the aesthetically photographed Roger Clemens card. It showed you all about Roger you needed to know BUT... you, just like unfortunate AL batters had no idea where the ball was! A fine card if there ever was one to represent a new company shoving it's way into the bloated marketplace.
SCORE spurned the traditional wax packs and bubblegum (screw the bubble gum, but you could see the last card in every wax pack). SCORE had a plastic wrapper that wasn't able to be steamed open by shady dealers, to remove the good cards and replaced by common scrubs. No SCORE wrappers stretched before ripping so tampering was evident. And the Clemens card #110 has a classic, clean look that was a good choice to represent the brand. If only the whole set looked as good.
Roger Clemens was a bonafide star and had drawing power. It was widely assumed that he would win several World Series with the BoSox. He had 2 Cy Youngs and an MVP and was only 25 years old. It was a no brainer...
Other than the equally stylish (purple bordered) Wally Joyner card (of which I still have 18 in my collection - more on that in future episodes) the set was Medusa with an acne problem. It randomly changed the purple border to other colors like green and blue but also included mustard yellow and puke orange amongst it's eye-blistering array of tragic mistakes.
And a lot of pictures of other players weren't so special, looking like they were slapped together at the last minute
It was the begining of the market oversaturation. It was the end of a fun run that saw people like my mother addicted to "getting the whole set".
And we collected everything, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, Superman the Movie collectable cards, opn and on. We had all 28 teams' football helmets under the Pepsi bottle caps (but didn't finish the set until after the contest ended), stickerbook collections, Garbage Pail Kids, and by 1987 I was ripping kids off to feed my Wally World addiction.
But I'll never forget that Clemens card beaming "We sell the elusive SCORE cards here, KIDS". And we were suckers for it. Looking back today, I know that was the moment the Good Times had ended.
It was a downward spiral from there... (to be cont'd)
3 Card Manny
Goes like this... I chuck three cards at you and you gawk.
3 more cards? Ok, but it's gonna cost ya some Armchair Bucks...
awwww, since I like ya, this one's on the house! (Click on the cards to view and inspect closer if the images aren't burned into your cortex)
And now for the Fun® part
A little game called...
Who the (Rick) Hell(ing) was I?
Name this Major League Baseball player! Some people know who he is just by seeing this card so many times (I never saw him play) and others know him for another dubious destinction - Extra Credit if you can explain why he his famous (more than one acceptable answer). I'll always remember him as a California Angel...
