Karefully Kut Kraft (Kard #700)

In terms of milestone cards on this blog, this is probably the kookiest.

Card Number 700: Kraft Home Plate Heroes, 1987; #44

This card was originally part of food packaging - most likely a famous Mac'n'Cheese packet. The original Kraft Dinner, as serenaded by Barenaked Ladies in their song, If I Had a Million Dollars. Back in 1987, someone very carefully cut along the dotted lines and voila, created a baseball card!

This card image was licensed from the Player's Association rather than Major League Baseball, through Michael Schechter Associates, who specialised in this sort of promotional material. The lack of a Major League Baseball licence explains why Tony's hat is heavily airbrushed. 

The cardback is... well, it would have been the inside of the box.

I think that scan might be upside down. How coud you tell?

Kraft printed two players on each box, but mixed and matched them a bit, so pairings exist of Tony with a few other players, including George Brett from the Royals and Jim Rice from the Red Sox. I'm sure someone is trying to collect all the different pairings of all the cards. There are 122 listed on Trading Card Database. 

So, although you would know which players you were getting when you picked up the box, it wouldn't be as easy as just looking for two players you didn't already have. You might end up having to buy a dupe of one player to get the other one you didn't already have. That was a bit of marketing kunning from Kraft, there.

As you have probably guessed, I am a fan of oddball cards like these. In one way they recapture the essential essence of trading cards - even down to being part of the packaging that would usually get thrown away. (The first cigarette cards were printed on the cardboard stiffeners inserted to prevent the packets from getting crushed. How many ended up in the bin?) Great care has been taken to preserve something that is quite literally garbage. One person's trash is another's treasure... quite literally. 

For comparison purposes here are the other milestone cards on my blog.

#100 - DonRuss "Tony Gwynn Tribute", 2015; #4 (June 2020)

#200 - Topps, 2000; #468 (July 2020)

#300 - Pinnacle. 1996; #336 (August 2020)

#394 (my blogging target) - Topps, 1985 All Star Card; #717 (October 2020)

#400 - Pacific Invincible Seismic Force (running photo variant), 1999; #16 (October 2020)

#500 - Topps Rookie of the Week, 2006; #22 (November 2020)

#600 - Topps Power Boosters, 1996; #1 (February 2021)

Total: 700 cards

Cereal freebies: Part 1

These"oddball" cards by Post arrived in the post from Gawain last week. 

Post is a massive cereal company - currently the third largest in the world. C.W. Post who founded the company spent time at the sanatorium run by John Harvey Kellogg and was inspired to develop his own breakfast cereal. The first cereal sold by Post was Grape Nuts, one of the few America brands readily available in the UK. I always think it's the most misleading brekfast cereal, as it contains neither grapes nor nuts, and is more like eating shards of concrete rather than food. Still, to each their own. 

For several years in the early 90s, the Post company included baseball cards as giveaways in their cereal. (They'd actually first done this in the early 1960s as well.) I've previously blogged cards of Tony that Post produced in 1990(#413) and in 1991(#46).

Card Number 688: Post Cereal, 1992; #26

These cards were licensed by the Major League Baseball Player's Association (MLBPA) rather than Major League Baseball, so the logos and team names have been rather skillfully erased from the photos of Tony. These cards were printed by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA) who arranged print runs of promotional baseball cards for a lot of companies back in the 1980s and 90s.

The back is a fairly solid design, with a photo of Tony and a decent stats box.

Major League Baseball was less protective of franchise names in the early 90s so even though the Padres name and logo have been removed from the photos, the word 'Padres' appears on the front and back of the card. 

Card Number 689: Post Cereal, 1993; #8

Wonky scan! Sorry.

A bunt photo! 

Tony was quite happy to bunt when necessary. He devotes a section in his book Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player to "The Art of Bunting". Tony felt it gave opponents something else to worry about, causing the infield to shift and opening up holes a batter could punch a ball through. Tony went on to list the five type of bunt - can you name all five? Answers at the bottom of the post!

This is a nice looking card, with a black border similar to the Pinnacle cards issued in the same year. The back has dispensed with the big stats box and has added a little write-up, which mentions his option to play in the NBA with the Clippers.

Somehow in this joblot of oddball cards I managed a complete run of the three Post Cereal cards that I didn't have already.

Card Number 690: Post Cereals, 1994; #13

Another slightly wonky scan. My bad!

This design looks like the love-child of a DonRuss card and a Fleer Ultra card. It is very green. The designer has also gone for a fancier logo for the set - this is part of the "Post 94 Collection".

The back really emphasises the write up at the expense of the stats. There's some slightly confusing syntax in the first sentence, though. The Padres were playing the Rockies when Tony recorded his 2000th career hit, but it wasn't his 2000th career hit against the Rockies. (Who were in their debut season in the Major Leagues!)

For two years in a row the cardback write-up predicted Tony's eventual election to the Hall of Fame. 

Come back tomorrow for Cereal freebies: Part 2!

Total:690 cards

Answer: According to Tony, the five types of bunt were: The Sacrifice; The Drag; The Push; The Slug; and The Swinging Bunt. - Tony Gwynn's Total Baseball Player pp 49-53.

Tidying up my mistakes!

I was perplexed recently because the number of cards left to post on the blog combined with the number of cards I had blogged didn't tally with the number of cards I had recorded on Trading Card Database. I was missing two.

I decided to try and find them, thinking I might have misfiled the scans. After a few different false starts I looked on an Excel spreadsheet I'd started compiling in an idle moment and soon discovered my mistake. I had two cards numbered 48 and two cards numbered 253.

In one sense it doesn't matter what arbitrary numbers I apply to cards on this blog. On the other hand it was very annoying!

I felt I had a couple of options to fix this. One was to go through and renumber every single card in every single blogpost since the 26th May. That would be well over 450 cards in about 190 blog posts. I really didn't want to do that. It would also mean every card I'd specially selected as my 100th, or 300th or 394th(!) card would be wrong.

The other option would be to remove one of the #48s and one of the #253s and renumber them. I decided to do that instead. So this post features two cards that have been on the blog before but with new, higher numbers. One of the cards is my favourite card made by Score, and the other is a fun 'oddball', so in a sense it works out.

I have left the references to the cards in the original posts, because otherwise some of the comments on those posts wouldn't make sense. If you are one of my regular commenters, then thank you for keeping me honest!

Card Number 514 (originally misnumbered as 253): Score, 1996; #378

I originally blogged this card in a Monday Mixer on 10 August. 

There have been enough baseball card insert series featuring stars, as in the astronomical objects, that someone could put together a decent-sized collection. They would look lovely all together as well. (On this blog, I've already blogged about star-themed cards by Allen & Ginter and Topps!)

The fielding photo on the front is made by the dirty smudge all over Tony's shirt. 

On the back we get a solemn portrait shot.

There's another entry into my collection of adjectives applied to Tony Gwynn on the cardback. Here he is "a class guy". It certainly reads as if the cardback writer was "star struck".

ADDITIONAL NOTE: I've just recognised the portrait photo! It's the same one used on Tony's Pinnacle card in 1997. Here's the Pinnacle card for reference:

'Card' Number 515 (originally misnumbered as 48): Fantastic Sam's Disc, 1988; #18

This was originally included in my very first post about "oddballs".

There are almost 1,000 franchises of Fantastic Sam's Hair Salons across America (or at least there were before the pandemic; hair salons have been hit bad).

These discs are similar to discs given away by several other businesses in the late 80s. They were printed by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA), who produced cards for a number of companies to use as freebies in the 80s and early 90s. They are about the same size as a poker chip (or a pog, if you remember pogs).

The discs open up like a tiny booklet, so you get a front...

...a middle (with a few pertinent player stats)...

...and a back.

The disc advertises a 'Superstar Sweepstake' where you could "Win a pro player for a day!" I'm intrigued by this. Which pro player had they roped in for this? What would you do with them? Could you send them to run errands for you? So many questions!

You have to scratch off the little foil panel to see if you won a prize. Whoever received this one wasn't particularly bothered about winning a prize. The foil is pristine.

So, there we go. My collection is tidied up. My numbering is now correct! Was it all worth it? Have your say in the comments!

(REVISED) Total: 515 cards

A couple more oddballs

'Oddballs' are cards that aren't released by the big manufacturers (although they might be made by the big manufacturers for another company). They aren't often that odd, but they are hard to categorise and file so they all end up getting lumped in together. I have put some up on the blog before, way back in May!

Card Number 413: Post, 1990; #5

These cards were available in packs of 3 inside boxes of breakfast cereal (like Marshmallow Alphabits, pictured here.)

It's a close up photo with no recognisable team logos. That's because these cards weren't licensed by Major League Baseball. However, they did include the team name, unlike logoless cards released in 2020.

The card was produced for Post by Michael Schechter Associates (MSA), who produced cards for a few different companies. I can't find the company online now so I think it has ceased trading.

Card Number 414: K-Mart Superstars. 1990; #5

This was produced by Topps as an exclusive for K-Mart. The 33 "super glossy" cards were sold in a box like a deck of playing cards.

The back of the card is fairly dull, with a stats box and a one line factoid.

I like this card because it reminds me of visiting a K-Mart in Brooklyn on one of my trips to America. This may sound ludicrous to American readers (and I know there are a few of you), but wandering around a K-Mart, Target or Wal-Mart is always something I look forward to when planning a trip to the USA. Give me ten minutes in a card aisle in Target and I'm usually a very happy bunny.

Total: 414 cards

Bank Holiday Bonus - some oddball freebies

It's a Bank Holiday, which means a free day for me off work. In keeping with the theme of the day, here are some cards that were originally free giveaways.

This kind of baseball card is often referred to as an 'oddball' because they weren't issued by the main manufacturers, or sold in packs in stores. And some, as we will see, aren't even technically "cards".

All today's cards arrived in various joblots. I love it when oddballs turn up alongside the usual selection of junk wax from the main manufacturers.

Card Number 46: Post Cereal 1991; #10

Post aren't a well known breakfast brand in the UK. Originally set up as a rival to the Kellogg's company, they now sell the kind of crazy sugared cereal mocked mercilessly in Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. Back in 1991 they also gave away baseball cards.

I quite like this card. It's a decent close up photo of Tony at bat, ready to receive a pitch. The blue and yellow borders set the card off nicely.

The back is a bit dull. The card is copyright MSA, which stands for Michael Schechter Associates, who produced a whole load of promotional cards and items for various big brands.

Although MSA only had a licensing agreement with the MLBPA, they still used the Padres name on both the front and the back of the card. The pictures looks airbrushed, though. This was before the licensing agreements restricted the use of the team names to cards printed under a MLB license only.

Card Number 47: Duracell Power Player, 1993; #14

Duracell is a well known brand of battery in the UK, so no explanation needed.

This is cool card with Tony sliding into base. You can see the picture has been photoshopped to take out all the detail on his shirt, though - not just the word Padres but the pinstripes too.

The MLBPA logo is on the front of the card, showing its semi-official status. They still use the team name, though.

The back is colourful with a little headshot and a nicely laid out stats chart. Here we see this is another card produced by MSA.

And finally, a card that isn't really a card.

'Card' Number 48: Fantastic Sam's Disc, 1988; #18

Due to an error in counting, I had two cards numbered 48, which I only discovered months later, so this card has now been relocated and renumbered as #515

If you want to see it in full, then check out my post from 2 December!

So, those are my Bank Holiday Bonus cards. I hope you enjoyed seeing these oddballs.

Total: 47/394