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#1
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1988 Score: A Forgotten Gem
Recently, while sifting through some old boxes in the basement, I came across some cards from the 88 Score set, and became fascinated in the player bios on the backs. They were written by legendary former Sports Illustrated writer Les Woodcock. Now, other than the divisive woodgrain borders, one of my favorite features of 87 Topps was the little player bio section on the backs which taught me (among many other things) that Howard Johnson was the co-winner of a rib eating contest, and that Moose Haas not only had a blackbelt in tae kwon do, but was also an amateur magician and certified locksmith. What a fascinating guy, I thought as a youngster.
Well, 88 Score took that concept and ran a marathon with it. The player bios here are massive. In fact, the print has to be small to fit them on the backs of the cards, so I have to wear my reading glasses to even make them out sometimes. Beyond the standard bio fare, they often include anecdotes and quotations. It's the kind of stuff that I love reading about. So after having my interest in the set piqued, I decided to order a factory set as they are dirt cheap nowadays (height of the junk wax era). I had fun sorting through the cards with my daughters, finding my favorite players and Detroit Tigers and putting them in a binder. The set focuses mostly on action shots of the players with very few traditional poses. The backs include not only the bios and stat lines, but also a color photo portrait of the player. This was fairly novel for the time. While I'm not crazy about the multi-colored borders throughout the set, the overall design is still somewhat attractive. The set also includes a cool little Reggie Jackson subset which covers his career. The writeups on the backs of these cards could fill up a small book. 88 Topps has grown on me somewhat over the years, but 88 Donruss and Fleer remain hideous abominations to my eyes. At the time, Score was kind of an afterthought to me. It was a new set, and I just never got into it. But now, looking back, I realize that I missed out. |
#2
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Sorry...the the 1988 Score can't hold a candle to the even more underappreciated 1986 Sportflics.
Last edited by darkhorse9; 11-21-2017 at 01:42 PM. |
#3
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I picked up an 88 Score factory set at a garage sale for $3 a month ago... I might have gotten ripped off investment-wise, but the memories of being an 8th grader when these came out made it worth it!!
Gregg Jefferies...I swear I thought that card would be worth a million dollars one day... Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk |
#4
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Loved the 88 score design. They went downhill from there.
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#5
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Agree that it was a innovative design for 1988. There are also some sneaky tough spelling variations (Francona, Andersen, Neidenfuer, etc) that aren't expensive but rarely come up for sale
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#6
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I liked the 1988/89/90 sets, after those 3 I agree they went downhill.
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#7
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Nice, I loved this set when it first came out. The different colored borders (reminded me of 75 Topps), the sometimes blurry action photos on the front (76 Topps, 82 Fleer), the color photo and the seeming 50,000 character twitter limit on the back of the card (1986 Sportflics).
For some reason, the regular set seemed to be relegated to junk wax status even quicker then the 88' Donruss Baseball and the 90' ProSet Football. |
#8
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I guarantee you there are less 1988-91 Score cards in the hobby than any of the other major companies of that time.
Not that they are rare or scarce but they do show up much less than Donruss or Topps and 1989-91 Fleer. Rich
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