The first new Yount of the year, isn't even real yet.

I was searching on eBay the other day and noticed that Mr. Yount has a die-cut card available from Topps' Golden Giveaway promotion.  

There are gold versions of this card too, no idea how much rarer they are than the base.

And there's the super rare 1/1 gold inlaid parallel.

I find it amusing that people are already selling the die-cuts on ebay.  Topps states that these won't even be available to ship till mid-April and then allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery.  So if you buy this card from a guy on ebay you have to wait till at least mid April to get it, well past the 45 days to file a claim and these sellers also offer another option of trading for the card you buy, but since you can only trade for like items on the giveaway website that means you have to trade another die-cut for the card you bought.  Seems like both options are a losing proposition right now.  I'm going to wait till these get in hand before going after the base and the gold, but it's nice to see that Robin is going to have a few new cards this year, plus I have a feeling he should make it into a few of the inserts in Series 2 or Update.

Homemade oddballs?

It's been awhile since I posted, I know, my Yount obsession is on the back burner.  With nothing new coming out and most of Yount's cards going for way too much on the Ebay it's been sparse in the new card area.  

One trend I noticed starting to pop up are these ZeeNut cards being put out.  Now while I'm no vintage expert I know that the original ZeeNut cards were put out a long time ago, for a more precise definition we go to the internet, but I make no claims to the accuracy of this information.

Zee-Nut cards were put out by the Collins-McCarthy candy company from 1911 to 1938.  The Zee-Nut's are categorized as E136 and E137 in the Standard Catalog.  Collins-McCarthy also put a out another issue that is the E135's.  

There were various styles the 27 years that the company issued baseball cards.In 1913 the company began putting coupons on the cards that could be redeemed for premiums and the like.  A card with the coupon still attached is worth quite a bit more than with the coupon removed, obviously.

Here are some examples of the originals

With coupon

But what to do these really cool old timey cards have to do with Robin Yount.  Is this the next Topps vintage insert?  Maybe, but as I was perusing eBay I came across a seller selling Zee-Nut cards. New Zee-Nut cards.  As a matter of fact there's a few sellers selling these.  And not just baseball players, movie stars, other sports figures, ect.

That's when I spotted this little guy.

I had no idea what to make of it.  I had never actually heard of ZeeNut, until I did a google search to find out more.  It's obvious this is somebody or somebodies taking it upon themselves to make their own cards.  I couldn't find any info on these cards themselves, but the message boards where the ZeeNut collectors hang out was all about how these cards are screwing up their ebay searches.  

Regardless I only paid a few dollars for this card.  I didn't know what to expect, but once I got this in hand I have to say, whoever made it did a pretty good job.  The paper stock isn't very thick, about the feel of the Topps Kimball's, but the printing and die cutting was very well done.  I've seen multiple ZeeNut Younts on Ebay since I got this card.  And the asking price is way more than I would pay for a homemade oddball.  But I'm not ashamed to add this little one to my Yount Collection.  Here take a gander.