1994 Denny's Hologram - Mo Vaughn

The 1994 Denny's hologram cards may have been their best. When Denny's first partnered with Upper Deck in 1991 for their Grand Slam promotion, the holograms were good, but not great. Of course, at the time, we thought they were awesome. But Upper Deck improved their hologram cards every year, and the '94 was amazing (you can't see the full effect from the scan).

I remember going to the card store next to the train tracks in Kirkwood back around that time and seeing a few Mo Vaughn cards on display. I had never heard of Mo Vaughn, but I was captivated. He was huge. And he had a very cool look about him (you can see it in the Denny's card), and a cool name. He had to be good. I bought his 1991 Fleer Ultra on the spot. Turns out, Mo Vaughn was good - averaging about 38 home runs per year from '95 - '00). But knee injuries wore him down, and his career only lasted 12 seasons. I can't remember when or where I got the Mo Vaughn Denny's card. If I had to guess, I'd say someone gave it to me.

The frustrating thing about the Denny's cards is that you still had to pay for them. They weren't give-aways with a meal purchase. So you had to go to Denny's, buy a meal, and then buy the card. This did give them an air of premium value, but it also meant that kids didn't collect them.

Included below is a 1995 Denny's card of Tim Salmon. Notice how Upper Deck introduced a cool combination of a hologram and regular print. They did something similar in the 92-93 Hockey series and it looked awesome, some of my favorite cards ever were those hockey holograms.