Tino Tuesday #39: 1998 Topps Mystery Finest Border #M8

I never really knew what this set meant. Mystery Finest. What was the mystery? You knew who you were getting. I believe that these cards actually had some sort of black cover that needed to be peeled away to reveal the front of the card. I never bought these back in the day, so by the time they got to me they had already been peeled, revealing literally no mystery for me. Interesting concept I suppose.

Now, this version of the card is bordered. There is also a borderless version. Plus Refractors. So in essence, there were parallels of inserts. That’s a lot of versions. Tino had his huge year in 1997, which resulted in him being included in a lot of 1998 insert sets. At the time, it was awesome. Looking back, it’s hell – I’ll never track them all down.

The card itself is nice. It’s very shiny and mirror-like. The baseball in the background is pretty cool and I like the texture of the card. The name of the player is just sort of squeezed in the bottom corner. The  back of the card is fine. Nice, large picture and a little factoid that was frequently seen on most of Tino’s 1998 cards.