Today’s Pittsburgh Pirates Card of the Day comes from the 1995 Topps Traded and Rookies set. It’s the first set of this long-running Topps series that didn’t come as a box set. There were other years where you could buy them in packs, but this is the first where the cards only came in packs. There are 165 cards in the set, which uses the same design as the regular 1995 set for many of the cards, though there are some subsets and inserts to make it different.
We are looking at one of the regular cards today. It featured outfielder Jacob Brumfield, who joined the Pirates in a trade made in October of 1994. He debuted with the Pirates six months later when baseball returned from the strike that wiped away the 1994 World Series. Brumfield was with the Pirates for all of 1995, then they traded him early in the 1996 season. He didn’t debut in the majors until shortly before his 27th birthday, and didn’t spend his first full season in the league until age 30. He ended up spending seven seasons in the majors, seeing time with four different teams.
Here’s the card that marks him joining the Pirates, even though it was put out almost a full year later. He’s card #56T in the 1995 Topps Traded set.
Here’s the front of the card:
While these cards went with plain white borders, those clearly aren’t your average looking photo borders. Topps made it look like the photo was hastily ripped out of a magazine (possibly?), while also giving it a shadow effect. That shadow color matches up to team colors in the set, so they were going for the gold there.
I was trying to decide between this card and the 1996 Fleer card of Brumfield, which had a cool pose. He has plenty of cards to choose from due to the era, when each company was putting out multiple sets. I haven’t used a card from the regular 1996 Fleer set either. Brumfield has appeared here twice now in 3+ years of daily articles, so maybe I’ll use him as the 1996 Fleer card for when I finally get around to that set. The photo here sold me on this card. It looks like he was smiling for the camera, but the photographer took too long. Then he got an inch on his side and the guy snapped it as he was scratching.
Brumfield was 6’0″, so that’s either a giant bat that he’s using, or he’s kneeling down for the photo. There’s a photo on the back that seems to point to the latter.
Here’s the back of the card:
The back adds another two photos for Brumfield. These cards used what was called Diamond Vision for the bigger photo on the back, which looks like he’s leaning on the bat. If you look hard enough, you can see the trademark credit to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation at the bottom. I’m not sure I’d want credit for that because it’s a strange look for a baseball card. The smaller action shot is much better looking in my opinion.
Brumfield had a nice feel good story when he finally made it to the majors nine years after being drafted. The Kansas City Royals did most of the work developing him in the minors, then let him go right before he debuted with the Cincinnati Reds. The Pirates actually gave up a pretty good prospect when they acquired him, sending 1992 second round pick Danny Clyburn to the Reds. Luckily for the Pirates, Clyburn didn’t pan out. He played 41 games in the majors over three seasons. They got -0.1 WAR from Brumfield during his time in Pittsburgh, then his 1996 trade to the Toronto Blue Jays provided nothing of value in return.
If you’re interested in this Brumfield card, there are no examples of note currently on Ebay. There are about 15 options, all under $5 delivered, but you shouldn’t pay more than $2, so always watch those shipping charges.
