Scan one is a mostly Michigan affair with seven of nine (insert Star Trek: Voyager joke) depicting Wheatley in his college duds on cards issued in '95 and '96. Those all hail from Classic and Superior Pix brands and feature a fun mix of designs and home/away shots. Meanwhile, the other two could be found in packs of '96 SP and Ultra Extra (a.k.a. series 2).
In terms of quality, scan #2 might be the tops (other than my biased choice of the Wolverine uni-centric #1, of course) as it stars so many designs I really, really like. The '96 trio of Topps Chrome and Laser plus UD Silver looks really sharp. Then 1997 ups the ante with a very strong Topps run of Finest, Stadium Club, flagship, Chrome, and Gallery. It looks like that year was a great one for the manufacturer, who'll hopefully use these for inspiration in their bland-at-best baseball products one day. Also from that year we have the first iteration of Ultra's neon sign design, one that held up for quite some time.
Speaking of Ultra it's back here in its 1998 and 2000 (card #8) versions. There's also other brand repeats of Finest and Stadium Club, plus the first of multiple appearances of Playoff Contenders, Quantum Leaf, Topps Collection, and flagship Upper Deck (all from 2000). They're mostly outshined (I see you, Quantum Leaf!) by UD's 1999 Encore product. As has been the case in this series, football's versions of Stadium Club continue to impress me on average a bit more than those from the baseball world.
It's not a huge surprise that there's barely any brand overlap here when it comes to what you saw in the previous three scans; After all, we were spoiled for choice back in 2001! Absolute Memorabilia makes for a strong start, and Bowman's Best, Donruss Classics, Fleer Showcase, and Leaf Certified Materials join it among higher-end brands I really liked. There's also yet another example of my favorite football flagship (say that three times fast) version of Pacific, followed by the lone repeat, Contenders.
That's a huge difference from this final scan of vertical cards, though the odds were against us at this point. The first five continue the 2001 run and are all sets we've seen so far except for the vintagey goodness of Heritage. 2002's lone newbie is Pacific's 100% on-brand Exclusive. That year's Ultra design interests me because I get more of a Stadium Club vibe every time I see it.
For the horizontal stuff we mostly linger during Ty's Giants years. The angle of the photo on his '96 Pinnacle base plus a player in the background makes Wheatley look like a heckin' chonker, though he comes off as more svelte on UD's debut of SPx from that same year. UD3 is another Upper Deck product that I believe originated with baseball and then came to the gridiron, but regardless of the order I think Tyrone's '97 card looks fantastic. '98 comes with an interesting pair: Playoff's cel-in-a-shield-shape Absolute Hobby and Pacific's busy (in a good way, IMO) Omega. And UD gives us one last look at Wheatley's Raiders days in 2001.
That works out to exactly 50 new cards, continuing a bit of a trend from this purchase of being super productive towards multiple PCs. In Wheatley's case his total nearly doubled and did manage to cross the century mark to 106 cards!
Now I'm down to just two posts--will I get them done before March?!--featuring two more RBs and a QB.
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