Card of the Week: Fractal Materials Part II

1998 Leaf Fractal Materials #50
Moises Alou
Materials: Nylon and Cardstock

The Player:
Moises Alou, son of Felipe who both played and managed, batted .303 with an on-base percentage of .369 and an OPS of .885 in 17 years in the majors, about 15 of which he played in most of the games.  Alou had probably his best year in 1998 by batting .312 and hitting 38 HRs driving in 124 and scoring 104 runs himself.  He even stole 11 bases that year, only getting caught 3 times!  He got MVP votes in seven different seasons.

He also did well well for the Mets when healthy, but injuries prevented him from contributing as much as he or Mets fans would have liked.


The Card: As mentioned in my previous post on this subset nylon was one of four alternate materials used by leaf in their Fractal Materials parallel of their anniversary set.  Nylon was the second least common material with cards being numbered to 500 rather than 250 as with the wood one.  Again, the image on the front is printed directly on the nylon which is glued to a traditional cardstock back.


The Material: "Nylon is a polymer obtained by the condensation of diamines with bicarboxylic organic acids, or from omega-amino acids. In more specific terms, it is a polyamide, i.e. one of a class of polymers whose molecular chains are formed by regularly spaced -CONH- amide groups.

The story of the birth of nylon is inevitably intermingled with the duPont de Nemours family and the E. I. DuPont de Nemours Company and its inventor, Wallace Hume Carothers. "



The story starts during the Reign of Terror portion of the French revolution and involves an inventor who would commit suicide in Philadelphia in 1937 before the patents for nylon were granted.  There are actually two stories about nylon's development, and if you are interested I would suggest you visit: http://www.caimateriali.org/index.php?id=32 which is where I got the quote above.