1992 Investor's Journal #99 Blue Foil parallel

Year: 1992

Manufacturer: Investor's Journal

Set: Investor's Journal Magazine Inserts

Card Number: 99

Card Type: Color Foil Parallel

Parallel Set: Blue Foil

Print Run: 1750

I love learning new information about my Yount collection.  Recently I noticed an auction that had two of Robin's 1992 Investor's Journal insert cards up for sale, only these weren't the gold foil one's I had seen before and have in my collection, no these were color foil parallels.  And my first thought was what the??!!??   So I started doing some research. If the internet and the sports card blogging community had been around back in the early nineties I'm sure I'd have no problem knowing everything there is to know about these weird magazine inserts.  Unfortunately we were not, but the information is out there. Sort of.

If you're old enough to remember, and I know plenty of us are, the boom of the collectibles market back in the 90's you might remember seeing some of these card investor magazines.  The early 90's were an interesting time in collectibles not just in sports cards, but comic books, beanie babies, and tons of other stuff.  A push that started in the late 80's with a big nostalgia push, remember the comeback of the Monkees, 1960's Batman, and the Beach Boys?  Vintage sports cards really took off and of course people were looking at modern issues as an investment as well.  Something the sports card manufactures were all too happy about and were running their printing presses 24/7.  

This being pre-internet consumers and potential investors were hungry for information and guidance, something that magazines like Investor's Journal, Sports Report, Baesball Card Magazine, Card News, Ballstreet, Beckett, Sports Collector's Daily, and Tuff Stuff rushed to provide.  The 90's are also the era of the magazine insert card as most of these magazines offered insert cards in the form of panels that had to be removed and cut.  

To make this even more interesting publishers offered magazines like Investor's Journal that had limited print runs and/or even serial numbering to make the magazine itself and the cards inside even more desirable.  In the days of the million card or more print runs a card that had a stated print run of only 10000 made it pretty rare.  

A couple of the magazines, including Investor's Journal also offered a rarer parallel limited to 10% of the main magazine print run.  And so here we are with Robin's Blue Foil parallel.  I've found sources saying that this card was found in Issue #6, but I'm unable to verify that.  This card comes from the parallel issue.  Different issues had different colored foil parallels as well.  If you look around you'll find red, blue, silver, and copper.

I was able to pick this card up and Robin's other 1992 Investor's Journal parallel for a great price and the color foil looks great.  A great addition to the collection and I got to learn something.  Anyone remember these magazines back in the day?