Tino Tuesday #25: 1998 Collector's Choice Star Quest #SQ21

Growing up, I always loved Upper Deck Collector's Choice. They came out when I was in around fourth grade, and they were an affordable product from Upper Deck, so I naturally liked them. They were geared towards younger collectors - a lot of flashy colors and inserts. I really like the foil wrappers too and I remember exactly how it felt to open a pack of these. I also collected basketball cards at the time, so between these two sports and I had a good amount of Collector's Choice cards.

Every year, they had some sort of one-per-pack insert. Early on, it was Silver Signature cards. Then it moved to You Make The Play game cards, followed by Star Quest. I never quite understood Star Quest, and they tried making the inserts tiered into single, double, triple, and home run categories. It got a little confusing.

As for the design, the 1998 Star Quest cards were not my favorite. The lettering on the side of the card is weird...does it say "Star Quest" or "Quest Star"? I'm not sure what the small baseball diamond above Tino's name has to do with anything. I do appreciate them spelling out "single" - just so that there is no guesswork involved in which tier card this is.

The back is so-so. For an insert, I don't mind five years of stats. The nugget of text is informative for only being one sentence long. I like that there is a picture of him on the back as well.

Overall, not one of my favorite Collector's Choice card, but I don't overly dislike it either.