Card Manufacturer: Star
Card Set: Stellar
Year: 1991
Card Number: 28
Card Type: Base
Star cards. So mysterious and colorful. I'll be honest information on the Star company is pretty sparse. Tony L over at Off Hiatus Baseball cards had some info and I think he left it here in a comment a while back. Something about illegally printing Michael Jordan cards eventually got the company shut down.
Anyway, Star had a bunch of different sets from the late 80's into the early nineties. Most sets were player specific and featured different astronomical names. Like Nova, Stellar, and Millennium. They also put out a bunch of minor league team sets. Set came in bags or, with some of the smaller numbered sets, in hinged crystal cases.
If I remember Stellar was a set the featured 9 cards from the same players and was one of the higher end sets being limited to only 500, or so it is printed. The set was numbered from 1 to what ever and the players filled those sets with their 9 cards. Robin is featured on cards 28 to 36 in this set. Each card featured a different picture and the back featured different stats and facts.
This is the first card of Robin's run in the set. The back features his full stats up to 1990. We can even date the photo on the card to 1986. We can tell by the Sully patch on the sleeve. The patch memorialized Bob Sullivan. He had been the teams equipment manager since the team came into existence in Seattle and passed away prior to the 1986 season.
Yeah, CB, it was something to the effect that Star reprinted a bunch of old basketball cards using the old printing plates and tried to sell them on a TV shopping network as being the real deal even though they were printed over a decade later.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the easiest to read, but this old web forum has a discussion on Star's downfall: http://www.sportscardforum.com/archive/index.php/t-1421121.html
Also, this article from 1997 is good: http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/When-you-wish-upon-a-Star-look-out-3084535.php
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