Cards: Topps Stadium Club 1994, Topps 1994, GameDay 1994
Acquired: IP 7/11/15, Houston Oilers 25th Anniversary Party
See Also: Steve Jackson
All smiles from Steve Jackson, the matridee of the Houston Oilers 25th Anniversary Party and president of Steve Jackson Foundation as everything for the event seemed to go off perfectly. Dapperly dressed in a plaid jacket, Steve was incredibly friendly, even going so far as to invite any and all Houston Oilers fans to the afterparty at Prospect Park. Once I finally got to him, he was more than happy to sign all these cards for me.
He knew I was a true fan when I talked to him about the Oilers 10-3 win over the San Fransisco 49ers at Candlestick Park in 1993. It was the first time in over 10 years the 49ers had been held without a TD in their home stadium. Jackson would seal the deal, picking Steve Young off in the endzone as TE Brent Jones committed a flagrant facemask to try to get Jackson to drop the ball.
Jackson also knew exactly what moment the Topps 1994 took place as well, telling me that if they had instant replay back then in 1993, this play would have sealed the game against the Chiefs in the playoffs. Still Steve managed to pick off Joe Montana as well, but the Oilers fell 28-20. A valuable and impressive special teams contributor, Steve played with the Oilers through their transition to Tennessee, and has since spent time coaching at the pro ranks.
At the time of the production of these cards, I was completely out of the market. Both of the Topps relesases (base Topps and Stadium Club) are daring in presentation, but garish by today’s standards. The Stadium Club entry is a complete departure from their previous entries. Abandoning the style completely that distinguished Stadium Club from other entries, I’m not really sure if it had a positive impact on sales. The Topps 1994 base card with its rounded design is a nice departure from the angular designs that Topps settled into there over the last 15 years or so, but the type feels completely out of place, with the formal script and the square sans serif occupying the same space so near eachother. Again nothing but good things to say about Gameday. The card lets the picture do most of the talking and keeps everything neatly at the bottom.
When Lance’s ‘trainee’ asked for his autograph, Dishman asked the kid how old he was. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was too young to remember the Oilers or because he looked too young to be in the bar. Anyway it was a good laugh. When I approached Cris, he threw me off. He told me that he’d sign anything as long as it didn’t end up on EBay. I had already paired down my selection of cards, because I did not want to go into a bar with a long box- so I left probably 5 or 6 additional Dishman cards in the car. I am not sure how he felt. He signed what I had and reaffirmed he’d sign anything else as long as it didn’t end up on EBay. Maybe he was actually hoping I had more. I then told him that I felt like after that humbling preseason game against Minnesota (in which he intercepted a pass and got busted showboating at the 2 yard line) he really turned a corner and became one of the best DBs in the league for a few years there. He stopped for a second, looked at me and told me that, “It meant a lot that I said that.” I told Cris that I wasn’t going to sell them, that I was a true blue fan thru and thru, and he and I had even talked on SotL for a bit. After telling him that I was ‘the guy with the mask on’, he smiled briefly at me and finished signing.
Cris had some pretty good cards, and despite signing a few for me over the years, he still has a pretty deep selection of decent action shots, even on bad looking cards. I rarely, if ever got Pro Set Platinum cards signed. They provided me nothing different than the base Pro Set. While they were daring with the blank canvas and full color photo, the logo is gigantic and garish. Still the card itself is a great photo of Cris. Unfortunately by this time I had already begun to scale back my card consumption, or else the Skybox ‘Colors’ set would’ve been a must have. It may have been a combination of things: Discovering girls, a market being flooded by too many products, drop in quality, etc- but whatever it was my interest in the product had dropped off the map by 1993.
