Pinnacle’s debut into the baseball card market probably didn’t go exactly as planned. As it turns out, 1992 was a very strong year thanks to the beginning of Bowman’s reign as the “Home of the Rookie Card”, not to mention strong showings by Upper Deck and Topps’ flagship brands. However, in just five years Pinnacle was producing what is hands-down the most innovative and high-end cards known to mankind. To classify a product like Pinnacle Certified or Totally Certified simply as “baseball cards” is like calling Beethoven’s 5th, 6th, and 9th symphonies, elevator background music. That’s not even a small exaggeration. Look at the insane prices, late-90s Pinnacle cards fetch on the secondary market despite lack of game-used relics and/or autographs.

Let me just say this, and you probably won’t be able to keep a straight face … but Pinnacle Brands’ designers were creating ART while Topps, Upper Deck, and other card manufacturers were simply producing baseball cards. Of course, art is hardly ever understood and/or appreciated in its time but all you have to do is look at eBay completed auctions to really see how great Pinnacle Brands was and how absolutely tragic their unexpected departure in 1998 truly was. Think I’m full of it? Check out this $4,000 auction of an unreleased Pinnacle product. How about this $3,900 card with 55 bids. I know what you’re saying, “Oh, those are unreleased and extremely rare prototypes”. This is true but still, late-90s Pinnacle inserts and parallels hit exorbitant prices every single day.

Which brings me to this absolutely awesome eBay auction featuring Pinnacle prototypes of basketball cards, which Pinnacle never produced. From the looks of it, they may have attempted to obtain an NBA license and created these mock-ups to show executives. I am not at all impressed with these mock-ups but who knows what could have been if Pinnacle was granted an NBA license. All I know is their baseball debut was as bland as it got but THANK GOD they got their foot in the door because with out it, we would never have gotten the legendary Certified brands or even their Dufex goodness, which was well on its way to becoming the premier baseball card parallel before shutting down production and giving the easy victory to Topps Company.

#LongLivePinnacle