Time for another Leaf Gold Rookie. Still a ways to go in the 1991 set, and then we’ll get to 1992. Reggie was another of the early prospects that I learned about, included with a class of Wil Cordero and Dan Opperman. He was often compared to Eric Davis, who was a superstar at the time and one of the players that I really admired. Reading that made me instantly want every one of his cards I could find, which was not much back in 1989. Come 1991, he had a card in the Upper Deck Final Edition set and the Leaf Gold Rookies, so of course I snapped up those as soon as I could. I believe I traded for Reggie’s Gold Leaf card through a friend who had pulled it from a pack.
I think Reggie falls in the same category as Zeile: good but not great. Injuries held him back a lot (like Davis), and of course he bounced from team to team, which couldn’t have been good for him overall.
I have to comment on this card: the photo is pretty weak by Gold Leaf standards. The color coordination, which was the set’s strength, is still there, but you can just barely see Sanders’ face and the pose is only so-so. Kind of disappointing.
Oh, and here’s a 1991 Final Edition card of Sanders with Ryan Klesko, since I wasn’t sure where else to put it:
