Ray Lankford's Canadian "Premier" Was Destiny

Plus, the "Scoop" on the power of orange bubble gum

Note: When you click on links to various merchants in this newsletter and make a purchase, this can result in this newsletter earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier Ray Lankford (#72) - Card of the Day

Ray Lankford and O-Pee-Chee Premier seemed destined to make a rookie splash hand-in-hand.

See…

Lankford, a two-time third-round pick out of Modesto Junior College, marched straight through the Cardinals’ minor league system in the late 1980s without taking a breath. Rookie ball, Single-A, Double-A, Triple-A fell in succession, with the lefty-lefty center fielder showing that he could hit, pop some power, run, and take care of business in the grass.

By the time Lankford debuted for St. Louis in August 1990, fans were expecting a lot, and collectors were anxious to see what his rookie cards could do. And, thanks to the first rookie-heavy Bowman set, we already had some Lankford cardboard to keep us company.

Upper Deck and Score would add the speedster to their late-year lineups, and we were off and running.

In the meantime, while Lankford was climbing the ladder, O-Pee-Chee was busy being O-Pee-Chee, meaning basically the Canadian Topps. They shrugged on that old familiar guise again in 1991, too, issuing a full 792-card bilingual parallel to the 40th-anniversary Topps set.

But the winds of change were blowing through the hobby in 1991. I mean, sure, everything was still Junk Wax, but we didn’t know it then — not that everything was Junk Wax, that is.

Spurred on by Upper Deck’s success out of the gate in 1989, the other card makers were scrambling to catch up. For the most part, that meant upping their game.

Donruss was the first to pick up the gauntlet, reviving their Leaf brand as a premium set in 1990. That issue was a big hit, spurred on by rookie cards of Frank Thomas, David Justice, John Olerud, and scores of other young guns.

The rest of the manufacturers couldn’t very well sit on their hands and let Donruss lap the field, could they?

Nah.

So Topps wheeled out a classy-looking base set for their 40th anniversary in 1991, along with the fanciest, most expensive, most premium premium set the world had ever seen…Stadium Club.

Fleer stepped into the arena with Ultra that same year.

Score gave us, uh, shirtless Kirby Puckett.

And O-Pee-Chee decided they could stand on their own, with no help from Topps, when it came to premium cards. So they rolled out an unprecedented (for them) second set that summer of 1991 — O-Pee-Chee Premier.

OPC positioned Premier as a premium brand, ready to stand toe-to-to with Upper Deck, Leaf, and whatever Topps, Fleer, and Score could throw into the fray. To pull off that feel, the cards were printed on premium white cardstock with a fairly clean design and color photography front and back.

The checklist also featured just 132 cards, sold in packs of seven, with 36 packs to a box. It was the first standalone OPC issue, one not connected to Topps, since 1937.

Collectors were already starting to feel the overload that came with so many new issues bombarding them, and they were lukewarm on Premier from the start. Today, the set is like most others of the time — still plentiful, still not valuable from a monetary perspective.

OPC kept up the good fight for a while, but the writing was on the wall early on, and they killed Premier baseball (but not hockey) after 1993.

Along the way, they added to the rookie card glut, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if your player collection includes names like Brian Barnes, Steve Decker, Pete Schourek…or Ray Lankford.

As for Lankford, he pretty much lived up to his end of the “prospect” bargain, putting together a fine 14-year career that produced 1561 hits, 238 home runs, 258 stolen bases, and an All-Star selection.

And, of course, about as many baseball cards as you could ever want.

Dads Eat Old Orange Bubble Gum

As “groundbreaking” as that Lankford OPC card was, there’s no doubt that the classic O-Pee-Chee runs that paralleled Topps sets are what most collectors think of first when we hear, “baseball cards, eh?”.

I once spun a yarn — a true one, at that — about how the prospect of trying some years-old orange bubble gum enticed my dad to drop some change on a few 1978 OPC wax packs.

My reward in the deal? A nifty “now with Texas Rangers” Al Oliver card.

Read all about right here!

—

That’s all for today — happy Hump Day, and all that.

I hope at least some of your hours or minutes are filled with bubble-gum-flavored cardboard memory dust. You know mine will be.

Thanks for reading.

—Adam

---

Like these stories and want to support them? Now you can Buy Me a Coffee.

---