Big City Lights

As anyone who has ever lived in a city can tell you, there's just something about the city's skyline that becomes instantly recognizable.  As card designs have stagnated, skyline shots have become few and far between on cards.  Why go to the extra effort to include the city's personality when you can use generic images like flags or maps as the card background?

But one of my recent flea market excursions yielded some great skyline shots from the early 90's.  The backs of these cards have more creativity and effort put into them than most modern releases.  But c'este la vie.

Leaf was never one of my favorite products, but they absolutely killed the design in 1993-94 hockey (as the baseball set - not sure about football from that year.  The card backs feature two different skyline shots pretty much capturing the same angle of the skyline, one at night and the other during daylight.

Both shots look great, and reflect the city before the giant healthcare signs that now cover the top floors of the largest skyscrapers took over the city skyline.

The cards feature fantastic photography, and features the great 90's Pens unis. To top it off, the club still included many of the players from the Cup teams a few years earlier. And let's be honest - star power always helps a well designed card.

But football was able to get in on the action too.  The early 90's Pro Line sets featured some insanely cheesy photos of players out of their pads and in the heavily promoted sideline gear.  The cards just scream 90's.  And I love it.

This card of former TE Eric Green catches the city from the south end.  Just out of view on the left is the Point where the rivers meet to form the Ohio.  The card features a nice skyline shot, if you can look away from those terrifying zebra print shorts.  Oh, the 90's.