Die 2012 Diving Ducks Limited Edition Baseballkartensammlung

    GO DUCKS GO!!!  Behold, my latest international acquisition, all the way from Austria!  No, not the place with the wombats and wallabies.  Austria; the place by Germany and Switzerland.  In Europe?  The place with the history.  Das land von baseball!

    Celebrating 25 years of Diving Ducks baseball, the team from Weiner Neustadt of the Austrian Baseball League issued a set of 18 cards.  The set documents the players from the team's anniversary season.  I learned about this set entirely by accident as I was compiling my International Baseball Keyword Cheat Sheet.  Sadly, of the six teams in the Austrian Baseball League, only the Ducks had baseball cards, and them only this one set.

     The cards could either be bought from the team's webstore as a complete set for €10 or in packs of 5 cards for €1,50 each.  Since shipping TO the United States is a lot cheaper than shipping FROM the United States, when I finally figured out how to register, I had to pick up a set and some packs.  About a week after my order, the following arrived in the mail:

    The "card stock" is really more of a highly glossy paper.  These are about as thick as your average Wired magazine cover.   Aside from the high gloss coating on front and back, they have about the same weight as the Alaska Goldpanners cards from the mid-1990s.  The fronts feature an assortment of action and closeup shots (no studio portraits/mugshot-style photos), the player name and number.  Faintly against the photo is the "GO DUCKS GO!!!" text.  Along the very bottom of the front, in tiny stylized text is printed "diving ducks baseball cards - limited edition 2012".  On the top 40% of the backs is another action photo along with the players' 2012 batting and pitching stats, as well as a "25 YEARS DIVING DUCKS BASEBALL WR. NEUSTADT" vertically along the either the right or left side.

  

   The cards are unnumbered, but do feature the players' uniform numbers on then front, so I've checklisted them accordingly.

3  Martin Cuperus 4  Armin Alteneder 5  Jan Alteneder 6  Krisztian Völgyes 7  Matthias Scheicher 12 Victor Torres 13 Clemens Seiser 14 Christian Scherz 15 Ferdinand Obed 16 Sebastian Scheicher 20 Ryan Kroko 21 Julio Diaz 22 Clemens Cichocki 23 Manfred Heisler (Coach) 27 José Ortiz 31 Jayson Wall 46 Claus Seiser 75 Elias Perez