Tuesday, November 7, 2017

From My Collection: Denny's Grand Slam

While I was in high school, Denny's started to give away baseball cards with the purchase of a Grand Slam breakfast.  There was a Denny's near where we lived, and we went there sometimes.  Specifically, I probably went there with my family sometimes, and with my high school friends other times.  Over the years, I got six of these cards.  They're holographic cards, produced by Upper Deck.  Is there a good way to scan holograms?  You can see the pictures in these, but you don't get any of the fancy colors.
1991 Denny's Grand Slam Dave Parker.
I have four from the first series, the 1991 set.  Here we have Dave Parker, newly with the Brewers.  The back says that he had 8 career grand slams.  Funny how some players get so many more than some other players, even with similar talent levels. (The other three 1991 cards are at the end of the post.)
1993 Denny's Grand Slam Eddie Murray.
I only have one from the 1993 set, and it's of Eddie Murray, as a Met.  I prefer Murray cards as an Oriole or a Dodger, but you take what you get.  They varied the design for 1993 to be not entirely holographic, but the hologram is still quite substantial.
1992 Denny's Grand Slam Cal Ripken, Jr.
This is the only card I have from the 1992 set.  I must have just eaten more Grand Slam breakfasts in 1991 than in 1992 or 1993.  The card back indicates the Ripken had two career grand slams, one in 1982 and one in 1983.
1991 Cecil Fielder.
1991 Dave Justice.
1991 Kelly Gruber.
Cecil Fielder, Dave Justice, and Kelly Gruber round out my Denny's card collection. In all of the 1991's, you can see the background has fireworks.  The 1992 Ripken has a cityscape background, and the 1993 Murray looks like it's of Murray kneeling on a ball field.

Finally, I'll tell a funny story about these.  When I went to my most-usual local card shop (there were several shops in town, but I went to Collector's Depot most often, I think) after getting the 1992 Ripken card above, I mentioned to the owner that I had gotten it and that I had a few from the previous year.  I asked what he thought the older ones might be worth, and he said they wouldn't be worth anything, since there was a new set out this year.  I thought, that's not how this works, older cards are still worth something.  To this day, I can't decide if he just didn't know and didn't want to guess, or if he really thought they were hardly worth anything, or if he was possibly hinting that the market for cards was about to crash.

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