Top 100 Jose Canseco Baseball Cards – 1996 Pinnacle Aficionado First Pitch Preview
Ahh Fish Ee Oh Nah Doe
1996 Pinnacle Aficionado is a set that baseball carded harder than you think. The cards, packs, and display boxes were actually sprayed with bubble gum scent!
It is also probably the toughest name to spell out of all cards ever made, and the technology used to create the holographic face was named “heliogram.” (Not to be confused with an actual heliogram – a message used to transmit light through a heliograph.) Uhmm, welp … I guess you could reflect light off the player’s face to someone else? It rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? Heliographic Aficionado. Anywho…
’96 Aficionado was a one-off set, so apparently there wasn’t enough bubblegum spray in the world for a sophomore release. Well, that and there were no notable rookies.
Aficionado did, however, create a parallel that is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. The “First Pitch Preview” set wasn’t confirmed to have had parallels of all players (first 100 cards) until over a decade after its release. With baseball struggling in general after the strike, it’s no surprise that not many were produced. At the time of this writing, 8 full sets have been confirmed, though it is suspected that some players were printed more than others.
Here’s the way it worked: If you were on Pinnacle’s mailing list back in 1996, you were sent a letter with questions to be answered on Pinnacle’s website. Three of the questions were in the letter, and the other two questions would be obtained from a participating local card shop. If you got all five questions correct, Pinnacle would send you a randomly selected First Pitch Preview card.
As a side note, I find it fascinating how Pinnacle attempted to break the “wax pack fourth wall” by driving people to their website (in 1996, no less!) AND to their local card shop. There were some serious hoops to jump through to get these!
Statistically speaking, one would have had a 1% chance of getting their guy if they participated.
At long last, I finally landed one again, and this was after having to send one back that had paper loss – which leads to another question – how many others out there suffered this fate as well? Heck, just 28 TOTAL from the entire set have been graded by PSA, with just four hitting a 9, and one graded at a 10.
In any event, the 1996 Aficionado First Pitch Preview is more than just a mouthful (and noseful of bubblegum scent;) it is a glorious heliographic specimen worthy of its place in the hallowed realm of 90s cardboard rarities.
Shoutout to Baseballcardpedia, where I learned many of these factoids shown above!
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