1998 Tucson Sidewinders Jones Photo - Hensley Meulens

     Pursuing a player collection of a lesser known, yet widely traveled slugger can be a challenge.  What makes that pursuit all the more satisfying is when something like this turns up out of the blue.  Not only was I not looking for this photo, I had no idea it even existed as none of the main hobby resources have any record of this set.  A little research reveals that in 1998 (and presumably all the other years these were produced), these photos were given away at Sidewinders games, at Hi Corbett Field in Tucson, in packs of five photos.  The photos I received came in these envelopes:

     Given that there are sixteen photos here , I'm going to assume there are at least four more to the set,
possibly eight (previous sets contained 24-25 photos).  These are the photos from the lot I received:

Bryan Corey
Nelson Figueroa
Ben Ford
Hanley Frias
Karim Garcia
Ron Hartman
Peter Kolb (Trainer)
Garry Maddox
Barry Manuel
Hensley Meulens
Vladimir Nunez
Stephen Randolph
Mike Robertson
Rob Ryan
Jeff Suppan
Ephrain Valdez

     The same seller also had another lot of Tucson Toros photos.  After receiving everything, based on when the various players coincided on Toros rosters, there were 17 photos from 1993 (another undocumented set) and 5 from 1997.  The 2000 (and final) edition of the Standard Catalog of Minor League Baseball Cards only listed 5 photos from the 1997 set (presumably a single game's giveaway), so those, plus the photos in this lot make at least 10 in the set.  Here are the players in each:

1993		1997
Mike Brumley Jim Bruske Mike Capel Steve Carter Fred Costello Ed Dixon Dave Engle Tony Eusebio John Hudek Jim Lindeman Terry Mathews Joe Mikulik James Moulton Luis Quinones Jeff Robinson Donne Wall Bruce Walton Rodney Windes		Brian Banks Mark Davis Matt Grott Ron Belliard Jeff Huber Bobby Hughes Frank Kellner Travis Lee Sig Roberson Jack Voigt

   I scanned all of the photos that showed up today and they can be seen in the following Picasa albums:

1993 Tucson Toros Jones Photo
1997 Tucson Toros Jones Photo
1998 Tucson Sidewinders Jones Photo

     I've added checklists for all three to the SportsCardForum.com Inventory Manager.  The photos are unnumbered, so I alphabetized and numbered based on that, so if I find more photos in the future, the "card numbers" will be adjusted.  As usual, these are all available for trade or sale, except for the Karim Garcia which has already been claimed.  All photos have now been sold.

-----UPDATE (14 December 2011)-----

     I have now found references to Toros sets from 1995 and 1996 (given away to the first 500 lucky fans) and a second Sidewinders set from 1999.  This helps lend a little credence to sets having been issued each year from 1987 to 1999.  Now I just need to find evidence of sets from the missing years and being the extremely slow process of building checklists.