1991 Topps Operation Desert Shield

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Topps Baseball Operation Desert Shield

Year:  1991

Card Number: 575

Card Type: Base

Card Attributes: Operation Desert Shield Foil Stamp

 One of the cooler and unique cards from the early 90's are these Operation Desert Shield foil stamped 1991 Topps Baseball cards.  According to the Standard Catalog these cards were produced for our overseas troops during the first Iraq war.  About 6800 sets were produced making these cards very limited for the time and  while a lot of the cards never made it overseas, being stopped by supply personnel and sold to hobby shops some did make it overseas and probably never made it back to the US increasing the scarcity.
Do to that there are quite a few fakes that took advantage of the premium price these cards bring.  Here is a link to a Cardborad Connection on the cards and how to spot fakes. After looking through the list I'm fairly confident my card is legit. Probably the most valuable in the set is the Chipper Jones Rookie.

Packs and boxes are indistinguishable from the regular issue and the backs are also the same as the only difference in the cards is the gold foil stamp in the upper right hand corner.

This is definitely one of the rarer cards in my collection from the early 90's and one of my favorites. I don't keep a lot of my cards in screwdown holders, but this one most certainly is.  Anyone else have any of there favorite players from this set?

2000 Fleer Tradition Club 3000 Die-cut Insert

Card Manufacturer: Fleer

Card Set: Fleer Tradition

Year:  2000

Card Number: NNO

Card Type: Insert

Insert Set: Club 3000

Note: This insert set was released over multiple Fleer baseball products in 2000.

A great insert card celebrating Robin's 3000th hit and entry in to the 3000 hit club.  This card was inserted into Fleer Tradition along with George Brett and Rod Carew.  But there are other cards in this theme that were inserted in Fleer's other releases in 2000 featuring all the other Club 3000 members.  

This insert also features a four other relic parallels. There's a bat card serial numbered to 250, a jersey card numbered to 440, a hat relic numbered to 100, and a bat/jersey dual relic card numbered to 100.  I've seen a few of these, but haven't added any to the collection, they are still really pricey whenever they come up for auction.

The card is die cut and the player name is printed in holofoil. All the cards in the set are unnumbered.

2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1982 Commemorative Medallion

Manufacturer: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Set: Milwaukee Brewers 1982 American League Champions Medallion Collection

Year:  2007

Card Number: NNO

Card Type: Medallion/Coin

Here is a great oddball I picked up a few years ago.  These medallions commemorate the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers American League Championship.  The set consisted of 23 medallions.  You had to buy a paper, clip the coupon, find a store that still had these in stock, and hand over $2.99. Coupons were put in papers from April 23, 2007 through May 18, 2007. There was also an album you could put all your medallions in. I'm not sure if the albums were inserted in the papers or were available where the Medallions where sold.  This set had all the big names and some names you probably didn't know unless you're a Brewers fan.  Rollie Fingers, Paul Molitor, Cecil Cooper, and more all had coins.

I'm not sure what day Robin's medallion coupon came in the paper.  A really cool oddball commemorating the best team and season the Brewers ever put together.

1982 McDonald's Milwaukee Brewers Glass with Ben Oglivie

Manufacturer: McDonalds

Set: 1982 Brewers Glassware

Year:  1982

Number: NNO

Type: Drinkware

I featured this glass a while back with the rest of my drinkware, but I figure I'd feature it again all by itself.

These glasses were available at McDonalds back in 1982 and produced by MSA. I'm assuming these were only available in Wisconsin.  I couldn't find any other baseball teams offered, but there was a football set featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers, commemorating their 50th season. I'm not sure when these were offered, if it was early in the year or later after the Brewers had won the pennant and League Championship.  There are 4 glasses in the set.  This glass featuring Robin Yount and Ben Oglivie and ones featuring Ted Simmons and Rollie Fingers, Cecil Cooper and Gorman Thomas, and Paul Molitor and Pete Vuckovich.  I don't remember what I paid for the glass, but it wasn't very much. You can find these for about $5 a piece or less and full sets for under $20.  I love the old oddball stuff like this and I love the fact that you get two players for the price of one.  One of these days I might have to pick up the rest of the set, especially one with Rollie for his player collection.

Kewl Free Stuff Man!

Mark over at Mark's Ephemera had a post about Getty Images allowing noncommercial use of it's images for blogs and social media by embedding them.  I had to give it a shot and found the great photo of the unveiling of the new Yount painting commemorating Robin's 20th year since retirement. Plus it features two other Hall of Famers and former Brewers Hank Aaron and Rollie Fingers.

1994 Score Gold Rush

Card Manufacturer: Score

Card Set: Score Baseball

Year:  1994

Card Number: 13

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Set: Gold Rush

I figured I'd throw another 1994 parallel card out here. These were all the rage too. As collector's we were craving anything different from the over produced base cards of the late 80's and 90's and the card companies delivered with their parallels.  Topps had it's gold foil, which turned into the monster that Topps parallels are to day, Donruss had it's Special Edition, Upper Deck had silver scripts, and Score had Gold Rush.  According to the Standard Catalog these were inserted one per pack. 

Score eventually became an imprint of Donruss and so did Pacific which all eventually became Panini, which keeps the foil board cards alive today.  These are pretty nice card and the scan doesn't do it justice.  

Robin retired at the end of the 1993 season, but was featured in all the major 1994 early releases, so while Robin missed the circus that the insert and parallel revolution would become we do get a few nice examples for the collection.

1993 Highland Mint Bronze card

Manufacturer: Highland Mint

Set: The Highland Mint Baseball Collection

Year:  1993

Number: 223

Type: Bronze Mint Card

Serial Number 1511/5000

Found another great oddball while digging through the collection. This time it's a 1993 Highland Mint - Bronze 1975 Topps Mint-Card.

The "card" comes in this neat portfolio.

You can see that the product was produced with Topps, MLB, and the MLBPA.

Another cool thing is the number on the bottom of the spine, 1511, is the serial number of the piece.

There's a little bit of wear and tear on the inside spine of the case.

The cards come in a thick lucite holder and are very nicely done.  The bronze edition is limited to 5000.
There is also a silver edition of this card according to the Standard Catalog.  The silver card are limited to 1,000 copies and have 4.25 troy ounces of silver in them. I thought that there was also a gold level issued, but I that might just have been for the 1994 Michael Jordan set.

Each piece come with it's own COA as well.

The MSRP for these was $50 for the bronze back in 1993 and $235 for the silver. Both cards can go for much less now, with bronze cards ranging in book price from $15 to 50 depending on the player.  Robins card back in the 2011 Catalog booked for about $40.