29 December 2012

Checklist Translations: 2008 TSC La New Bears



    Sometime in the mid 2000s, Taiwan Sports Cards (http://www.taiwansportscard.com.tw/), more commonly known as TSC, began producing baseball cards for the CPBL.  In 2008, very similar to how BBM releases sets for each of the teams every year, TSC released pack-based sets for the Brother Elephants, Sinon Bulls and the La New Bears.  The sets featured the full assortment of inserts to be expected from a BBM pack-based team set; autographs, memorabilia cards, photo cards, etc.

16 December 2012

Checklist Translations: CPBL All-Star Players 1990-1994 ( 職棒五年明星賽球員卡 )

     In the early years of the CPBL, in addition to the main base sets, the league also issued sets for the annual CPBL All-Star series.  Similar to how the NPB does things, the CPBL often had multiple All-Star games each year, and each year the rosters were split into a Red Team and a White Team.  The team alignments for those would vary year to year so there wasn't really a set National League/American League style competition.

     I'm not entirely sure how these were issued, but there was typically a collector's album produced for the sets.  Below are the checklist as I've been able to construct along with the links to jackli7751's photo albums, the numbering is his, but is not actually on the cards.  Unfortunately, I don't think he has posted on his blog about the All-Star sets, yet.

1990 CPBL All-Star Players

Album: http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16845472

Card front:


14 December 2012

WANTED: Tuff(y) Stuff or My Tuffy Rhodes Want List

タフィ・ローズ


     I've begun updating this list to include images of as many cards as I can find in hopes that it might help out anyone with access to the Japanese cards, but perhaps not an encyclopedic knowledge of what they all look like.  Many thanks to those that have helped make this list smaller (or longer as the case may be).

20 November 2012

Checklist Translations: 1996/97 ProCard Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) Series One

     While this set covers the 1996 season, and shows 1996 on the front, it was actually released in early 1997.  Roughly 25,000 boxes were produced with 36 packs per box and 10 cards per pack.  Of the two sets issued by the main manufacturer in 1997, this was the cheaper set.  The set consists of 258 cards.  The set is broken down as follows:

001-175 cover the base cards for each team
176-181 are the team logo cards
182-187 are the Team MVPs (limited to 5000)
188 is a redemption card for a gold version of the MVP of the Year (limited to 5000)
190-211 are the various statistical highlights and record breakers for 1996 (limited to 6000)
212-220 are the 1996 statistical leaders
223-229 are the die-cut Golden Glove Award winners
230-238 are the Best Nine selections (limited to 10,000)
239-246 are acetate cards of the monthly MVP award winners (limited to 10,000)
247-258 cover post season champs, CPBL HR milestones and the big yearly awards (mostly limited to 10,000)

     There was also an insert set, limited to 999 cards, covering the nine league leaders (effectively the same players as cards 212-220).  These have the look of a commemorative stamp, with a perforated color photo in the center of the card.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27942109

The league leader and award winner subsets are shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41480276

The die-cut Golden Glove Award cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41827165

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814906

The standard base card front and back:
Pascual PerezSheng-Feng Tsai

17 November 2012

Checklist Translations: 1995 A-Plus Card Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL)

     [Intro paragraph coming soon]  While this set covers the 1995 season it was actually released in March of 1996.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27785920

The annual award and league leader cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41452379

The Gold Glove cards can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41808883

The base cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814900

The standard base card front and back:


13 November 2012

Checklist Translations: 1994 Chinese Professional Baseball League (in progress)

     For the 1994 set, the CPBL expanded their flagship set to 506 cards issued in two series.  The first 176 cards covered the individual players, organized by team. Cards 177-182 were the team checklists  All of the cards from 183-235 are serial numbered on the back, in quantities that one would assume were limited in 1994 (though even for Taiwan, the numbers see high, given the likely population of collectors in Taiwan in 1994).  Cards 183-188 were team logo holograms; 189-197 covered the 1994 Gold Glove winners; 198-206 was the Best 9 subset, which is meant to depict the best all-around player for each position in the league (an award that seems common in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, but not in the US).  The usual annual awards and league leaders are covered by cards 207-217; they feature a color photo of the player against a holographic background.  Cards 218-220 represent home run milestones during the 1994 season.  221-224 cover the main season awards (Manager of the Year, ROY, MVP, Most Improved).  Cards 225-232 cover the Monthly MVPs selected over the course of the 1994 season.  These would be analogous to the MLB Player of the Month awards.  Cards 233-235 depict the top team from the season's first half, second half and over all champion...which ended up being the Brother Elephants in all three cases.  The next 270 cards, from 236-505 represent the winning RBI for each game of the 1994 season.  The last card of the set, #506, is for Wu Fu-Lien, but I'm not really sure what the significance is.  In any case, the 1994 set represented a substantial increase in cards over previous years.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27540320

The award winner/league leader subset can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41424839

The Gold Glove subset can be seen here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41791036

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814886

The standard base card front and back:

05 November 2012

1989 Topps/LJN Baseball Talk series

    In the late 1980s and early 1990s, companies were trying all kinds of ideas to draw in more customers.  About that time, LJN was a company fairly well known for electronic toys and video games.  For 1989, LJN teamed with Topps to produce this set of talking baseball cards.  Each oversized card featured a recording in the form of what amounted to a miniature vinyl record attached to the back.  Rather than go into any further detail, feel free to peruse the Wikipedia entry on the set and player.

30 October 2012

Checklist Translations: 1992 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     Moving on to 1992, and comprising at least 110 cards. For the first time, team logos are displayed on the front, and I suppose a brand logo (?) of sorts on the top left.  The only color scheme for this issue is on the players' names in the upper right corner on the front.  As with previous years, the cards are plastic with rounded corners.  A special album was issued to hold the set and was available to order on the backs of the 5-card packs.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27390664

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814816

The card front and back:




27 October 2012

Checklist Translations: 1991 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     For the 1991 season, the official CPBL set was expanded to 103 cards (which seems a very odd number for a set), and were still issued on plastic with rounded corners, slightly smaller than the standard size.

The set is described in this blog post:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/27357188

The cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814806

     The card fronts have borders matching the teams' primary color, and as seems standard for almost all non-American cards, the players' uniform numbers are displayed prominently:

 

21 October 2012

Checklists Translations: 1990 Chinese Professional Baseball League

     In the past couple of weeks, I found some resources for information on older baseball card sets from Taiwan.  The main resource is this blog and accompanying album:

中華職棒言舊苑
言舊員怪e紅傑克的懷舊蒐藏與歷史記錄
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog

     Everything is in Chinese, so I've had to make liberal use of Google Translate, but beginning with his first post, the author has been posting on the history of baseball cards issued in Taiwan since 1990, just after the Chinese Professional Baseball League was formed.   Thanks to this wonderful blog, I am now aware of some 60+ sets for the CPBL, the short-lived Taiwan Major League as well as the Chinese Taipei national team.  Now the door has opened to a new world of cards, I am attempting to assemble checklists for all of the sets referenced and add them to the SportsCardForum.com Inventory Manager.

09 September 2012

Team Issued Cards and Fan Packs

     As I scour the web for information about uncatalogued cards, one of the main areas of interest is always Major League team-issued cards and photos.  I've posted a bit about some of these in the past:

1987 Cleveland Indians Photocard
Team-Issued Stadium Give-Away Sets in Japan
1994 Chicago Cubs Old Style team issue photo card
1992 or 1993 New York Yankees postcard set (update)

    They can range anywhere from fully featured baseball cards to over-sized photos to postcards to simple black & white cards with blank backs.  They have been around for nearly as long as the hobby, but they definitely don't get the love or attention they deserve.  These days, the most common way to acquire them would be as part of a "fan pack" from a team.

26 July 2012

18 July 2012

DEAL. OF. THE. YEAR. (brought to you by the letters F, B and I.


     In a previous post, the phrases "nearly impossible to find for anything less than $50 each" and "will likely be forever on my Dave Winfield Want List" were employed in an attempt to express how unattainable this piece likely would be for my collection.  But then, by sheer dumb luck, this happened:

     Never underestimate what is possible due to an obscurely worded eBay listing.  This complete box was listed and as "Dave Winfield/NY Yankees, Vida Blue/KC Royals Card Disks, Bantam Box" and sold with a only a single bid for the grand total of $13.95!  Yes, Johnny, dreams really do come true.

02 July 2012

Team-Issued Stadium Give-Away Sets in Japan (Part II)

** POST IN-PROGRESS **

(expect this to be a very long post)

     To follow on to the previous post on team-issued sets from Japan, I'm going to list all the sets I've dug up so far and ask that if anyone has information on any set not listed here, please drop me a line.  This post will serve as a to-do list for building checklists, a plea for new information and a list of what I've discovered so far.  I'll add thumbnail scans when I find them and a * next to those that have at least partial checklists in the Inventory Manager at SportsCardForum.com.

     Credit for a very large portion of these checklists (and sample scans) goes to the Antique Baseball Shop blog in Japan.  If you are interested at all in Japanese player pins, that blog is a gold mine.  It's also hugely useful for promo cards.  The news pages for the individual teams also yielded a lot of information for cards that were distributed at specific games as promotions.

14 June 2012

Team-Issued Stadium Give-Away Sets in Japan

     As I've mentioned frequently here, a major source of frustration for the player collector (and probably for the type-card collector as well) is the lack of documentation for certain areas of the hobby.  An excellent example of this problem are the team-issued cards given away at the ballparks in Japan.  Most teams have been issuing cards, often multiple sets a year, for decades now, but these represented a major gap in contemporary price guides and checklist catalogs.  Gary Engel has included a few in his books, but mainly just Orix BlueWave sets due to the inclusion of Ichiro. When I asked him about it he explained that his interests tended more toward the vintage areas of the Japanese hobby, and that with all the still-undocumented vintage issues he still had to cover, and not having the resources of the likes of Sports Collectors Digest in its prime, he didn't have the time to spare to modern team-issued sets.  Given how much effort it has taken me to simply compile and translate checklists for mainstream sets each year, I understand his point completely.

13 June 2012

The Buffaloes Bombers

Fresh off a sold-out engagement in Japan...
 the Dynamic Duo...
the Masters of the Long Ball...

For one night only!



Norihiro Nakamura and Tuffy Rhodes!

02 May 2012

1988 New York Yankees Press Player Identification Photo



     I'm not sure what the technical term for this item would be, but for the price, I couldn't pass it up as an addition to both my Hensley Meulens and Roberto Kelly collections.  I've seen lots of these popup on eBay in the last year, mostly priced beyond what I'd want to spend, but this is the only one that has featured two players I collect with a starting bid of under $10.  It's just too bad it didn't also have Dave Winfield on it!

     Presumably, sets of these were available to the media as a way to help identify the players on the teams, and given the inclusion of Meulens on this one in 1988, I have to conclude it was distributed during Spring Training, as Bam Bam wouldn't see big league playing time until August 1989.

28 April 2012

Japanese baseball card box break videos

     While I am probably one of the last people to delve into the online video box break scene, now that I've finally started watching some of these, I realized there was the usual gap in the hobby's awareness due to the language barrier.  To help with that a bit, I'd first like to direct you to the YouTube channel for user TakaTanakaGiants.  He's an American teacher, baseball fan and card collector currently living in Japan.  As such, he has access to the wonderful world of Japanese trading cards, and has been posting videos of his finds for the past several months.

19 April 2012

A signature and a surplus of silk...starring Dave Winfield


      I try not to do it very often, but this past week I picked up a larger lot for a single item.   I was unaware of the existence of the above piece until I saw this lot, so I dropped the minimum $9.99 bid.  I'm not really sure what the proper terminology is for this, but it is the "postcard" version of the Z Silk cachet for the 9th Freehold Classic Sports Memorabilia Show.  A little Googling turns up several similar cards for other players, connected to other "Sports Memorabilia Shows" such as:

14 April 2012

1990 ProCards AAA Promos





     Yet again, my saved eBay search caught a Hensley Meulens card I did not even know existed. Undocumented by neither Beckett nor the Standard Catalog of Baseball cards, this promo set was probably issued sometime shortly after the 1990 Triple A All-Star game, but before the issue of the 1990 ProCards AAA set.  In an odd move, ProCards released their big 800 card, pack-issued set after the end of the 1990 season, so the back of the promo likely refers to the fact that the set would include all of the 1990 statistics on the card backs.  Below is the actual 1990 ProCards AAA All-Star card for Meulens:

13 April 2012

Good Ideas Super Star Action Pop-Ups (1988-1989)



     I caught this a month or so ago in the course of my usual daily eBay Winfield hunt. Having no idea what it was or from whence it came, upon its arrival in the daily post, I plunged deep into the murky depths of the web seeking enlightenment. As happens more often than not, ManOfSteal over at Rickey Henderson Collectibles had the scoop. He'd picked up his 1988 Rickey Pop-Up years before. A few questions back and forth over on the Freedom Card Board Rickey Henderson Collectors Thread didn't reveal too much more aside from the fact that there are 1988 & 1989 series.

07 April 2012

Shut up and deal! Playing cards and baseball

     Baseball and gambling. Two things that go together like, well, baseball and gambling. For nearly as along as there has been baseball, there has been gambling on baseball. And in an effort to combine the two in a more collector friendly way, for decades there have been baseball-themed decks of playing cards. Most teams have offered their own souvenir decks of cards adorned with the team emblem for awhile, but fortunately for the card collectors among us there have been several sets depicting actual players.

     Sadly, there was never a Columbus Clippers set of playing cards during Hensley Meulens three years with the club, but fortunately for me (and by proxy, for you) between Dave Winfield and Dave Henderson I have several to show off (Roberto Kelly has a couple, but I've not managed to pick them up yet). From 1990-1995, the U.S. Playing Card Company issued several sets of stars, rookies and teams (always with the disclaimer "Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players Association do not approve of any form of gambling." tacked under the top flap of the box), and also several sets for specific teams.

    I managed to snag some sets from 1990-1994 as they were released.  Not sure why I missed the 1991 set.




    In 1991, Dave Henderson made the starting lineup of the American League All-Star team, and that rated him inclusion in the U.S. Playing Card Co's 1991 All-Stars set:




    There were also two variations of this set. The first was a set with a silver edge, which doesn't really show up in a flat scan, but if you had a stack of them, the edge of the stack would be silver instead of white. The other variation was sold in Canada under the International Playing Card Co. brand. Both of those versions typically command about 2x-5x what the standard set goes for.  I have the silver version, I'm still hunting the International version.

    The U.S. Playing Card Co. continued the trend in 1992, issuing another All-Stars set, very similar to the previous years as represented by the New York Yankees' Roberto Kelly:




    In 1995, under their Bicycle brand, the U.S. Playing Card Co. issued a set for the Toronto Blue Jays featuring players from the previous 10 years. Somewhat surprising for a set covering that 10 year span is the absence of cards for Dave Stieb, Lloyd Moseby and George Bell considering the inclusion of Cecil Fielder and Fred McGriff and multiple cards of players from their 1992 & 1993 World Champion rosters.  However, that set included not just one, but two different cards of Dave Winfield.




    Fast forward to 2005, and a company called Parody Productions began producing "Hero" sets.  Now known as Hero Decks (you can see their site at HeroDecks.com), they have issued sets for multiple teams across several sports and all manner of other novelty sets covering different genres (military heroes, politics, entertainers, etc).  In 2005, one of their first sets was a Heroes of New York set featuring the best of the Yankees lineups from the team's history.  Dave Winfield scored a spot as the 7 of Hearts for one of the greats of their 1980s teams.



   The selection of Hero Decks was expanded greatly in 2008, adding sets for Seattle, Chicago, Minnesota, Cleveland and others, and along with the new teams came a new set for the Yankees.  Winfield was still seated in the 7 of Hearts slot and the set had been updated a bit to include more career details for each player and featured a new pinstripe design on the back.



    And as the Hero Decks sets were arranged in a sort of best of a certain decade format, Hendu was represented in the Seattle set, having been their starting center fielder for a good chunk of the 1980s.






17 March 2012

5 more boxes. I'm coming to get you Bernie...


This can't end well....




 Box 1 (8 total) Results

Regular sets

Set 1
163/165 (missing 66, 142)

Set 2
115/165

Set 3
8/165

Set 4
1/165

1 Jose Lima #143 wrong back error

Diamond Star sets

Set 1
35/165 (including a Tony Pena with a damaged Lime Rock stamp)

Set 2
1/165


NO BERNIE BRITO DIAMOND STAR!


Box 2 (9 total) Results

    Collation in this box seems a bit different.  In several packs, I've run across consecutively numbered cards next to each other.

Set 1
159/165 (missing 27, 51, 79, 109, 142, 161)

Set 2
108/165

Set 3
7/165

Set 4
2/165

2 Jose Lima #143 wrong back errors

Diamond Star sets

Set 1
34/165

1 Jose Lima #143 wrong back error

NO BERNIE BRITO DIAMOND STAR!


Box 3 (10 total) Results

Set 1
164/165 (missing 142)

Set 2
118/165

Set 3
5/165

2 Jose Lima #143 wrong back errors

Set 1
35/165 (including a Jose Cano with a damaged Lime Rock stamp)

Set 2
1/165

NO BERNIE BRITO DIAMOND STAR!


Box 4 (10 total) Results




      Eleven packs into box #4 (11 total) and we have Bernie!  To add insult to injury, not only did it take me some 4+ years, and 10 1/2 boxes, to find this card after I started searching for it, when I finally get one, not only is it off center, but after scanning and attempting to crop and straighten the image, I find that it's even slightly diamond cut!  Is that some sort of cruel irony?

     My more modern scanners just don't scan reflective surfaces well, so I had to go old school and do a bit of deep closet archaeology.  To capture the glory and the sheer, devastating awesomeness that is this card, I actually had to find all the cables, download antiquated drivers and software to hook up this museum display of equipment:




    That is a UMAX Vista S-12, complete with PCMCIA SCSI adapter, next to an IBM ThinkPad iSeries 1500, running Windows 98 (not even Second Edition, just plain old Win98).  The scanner is probably from 1997-98 and the laptop is from 1999 or so. 



    These cards fall one per pack.  There are 36 packs per box.  I had to go through 371 packs to find this card.  Holy crap!  Actually seeing the number is the slightest bit disturbing.  At 9 cards per pack, that's 3339 total 1993 Lime Rock Dominican Winter Baseball cards I've waded through and 371 Diamond Stars (potentially two complete sets, if not for duplicates).  I've only managed to sell 403 of these in the past 4 years, and trade a handful more.  Discarding the cards that were found damaged, that leaves me with some 2900 or so cards left, plus one unopened box (though the shrink wrap is gone and the Lime Rock seal is no longer intact) and 15 stray packs.

     Overall, pack collation was pretty good for this set.  I never got the same card twice in a pack.  I never got two identical packs.  Being fairly glossy cards, on both front and back, there is a tendency for cards to stick together.  A little flexing and crackling and they do come apart.  Rarely is there any paper loss due to the sticking.  Unfortunately, the cards were not very evenly cut, so there is a tendancy for bent corners on cards that, being stuck to the cards around them, might protrude a little beyond the end of the stack.  As the cards are black all the way to the edges, there is also a tendacy for a little white to show whenever there is a ding or the occasional peeled corner.  So if anyone was ever to grade any of these, there would be very little chance of ever getting a perfect PSA 10 or SCG 100.  The three most difficult cards in these boxes seem to be the corrected version of #142, the Raul Mondesi rookie prospect card, the Diamond Star version of #142 and the Diamond Star Bernie Brito.

    At least my search is over.  Never again will I be tempted to buy another box, open another pack.  I'm left with only one remaining card to complete the Bernardo Brito Baseball Card Experience...assuming that card even exists.  



     Each pack contains an offer card between the last card and the rest of the cards.  For some reason, despite these not being part of the set, Beckett list the offer card in their system.  These are the two offer cards, one for magazine subscriptions and one for a 1994 Raiderettes calendar and video:







10 March 2012

Oh Bernie, Where Art Thou? (update)

My three new boxes of 1993 Lime Rock Winter Baseball arrived today, so I rushed home at lunch to rip into a box. Wouldn't you know it? I'm now 0 for 4 on picking up that Bernie Brito Diamond Star!

Interestingly, there are a couple of errors I've now seen repeated in the set. Of course, there's card #3 of Victor Silverio which is actually a photo of Miguel Batista, but there is also at least one consistent wrong-back error with Jose Lima on front and Raul Mondesi on the back. In this box, I actually got the Diamond Star version of that same misprint! I think there's at least one more wrong-back, which may also be Mondesi/Lima, but I'll have to double check. I also encountered one Diamond Star with what appears to be a sort of inverse version of the Lime Rock logo with the gold in the exact opposite of how it was normally applied to the card. I'll get a scan up later.


In any case, expect to see my stock of these cards replenished on Sportlots this evening.

---------UPDATE---------

Ok, make that 0 for 5! (but I picked up three more of those Lima/Mondesi errors and even another Diamond Star of the same error! AAARRRHHHHH!!)

********UPDATE - 2*********

The way these packs are collated, from the bottom, there is a base card, the offer card (there are offers for magazine subscriptions for Inside Sports, Card Collector's Price Guide, Sports Card Trader and Baseball Digest or the a 1994 Raiderettes calendar) and then the Diamond Star insert. Just to add insult to injury, every so often, that last card (the one I see first as I rip open the foil pack from the seam on the back) is a base card of Bernie Brito. Mocking me. Because you KNOW, if I get a base card of Brito, I won't be getting a Diamond Star of Brito in the same pack. These Lime Rock monsters were diabolical.

/////////UPDATE - 3\\\\\\\\\\

Found yet another misprint....a Diamond Star with no gold foil at all. The impression of the logo is clearly visible where it was stamped, there's just no foil over it. Halfway through box 6. Still no Golden Bernie.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ UPDATE 4 /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Well, as it turns out, there are two version of the box:




However, all the packs and cards are still the same.

But, as is my curse, box #7 refused to yield  the much sought after Bernie Brito Diamond Star. In the next week or so, if all goes well, I should have another 5 boxes arriving. The adventure continues!

Do not abandon home!  The Bernie Hunt continues in Part 3: I'm Coming to Get You Bernie

25 February 2012

Winfield in the Round (Part 1) - [Insert Brand] Discs


     While you don't see them so often anymore, in the past 40 years, there have been a great many sets of the rounded persuasion issued by a multitide of companies.  Rather than stretch these out over a dozen posts, I thought I'd just tackle all of the circular cards currently collated in my collection, from oldest to most recent.  Since there are so many, this will be a multi-part post.

1974 McDonalds Discs


     Given that the Padres were owned by Ray Kroc,  it should come as no surprise that he should use his newly acquired baseball team as a way to cross promote with McDonalds.  What is more surprising is how little actual McDonalds/Padres branded merchandise was actually produced.  I suppose Kroc was more interested in having others pay him for sponsorships than effectively paying himself between the Padres and McDonalds.  In any case, in the year Kroc purchased the San Diego Padres, local McDonalds released a set set of 13 player discs, along with this nifty baseball-shaped holder to store them in. 

1977 Burger Chef

     Burger Chef, which according to Wikipedia, by the early 1980s was second only to McDonalds in the number of franchises across the United States, issued a set of 216 baseball player discs attached to the packaging of their Fun Meals (an idea McDonalds later stole for the Happy Meal...lawsuits soon followed).  The Fun Meal boxes were organized by team, so I ended up picking up a whole set of the Padres complete with original boxes to snag this Winfield.  The discs are standard Michael Schechter & Associates fare, with MLBPA, but without MLB licensing.  AS a result, they looked exactly like a dozen other disc issues from 1975-1980.  The backs of the discs all feature characters of the Burger Chef franchise (Burgerini, Count Fangburger, Burgerilla, etc).  For a franchise that was so large, I honestly don't remember ever seeing one in my life.  The chain was eventually bought by Hardees and most of the locations were either converted, or sans new franchise deal, converted into local restaurants or just shuttered.

1981-1982 FBI Discs
      The 1982 set of discs, issued on the bottoms of bottles of Fanta's Bantam flavored fizzy drinks, are fairly well documented and nearly impossible to find for anything less than $50 each.


     In recent years, an even more rare, and thus hugely more expensive, 1981 set has been uncovered and slowly documented.  The 1981 will likely be forever on my Dave Winfield Want List.

1983 Roy Rogers Discs/Lids

     In 1983, the Roy Rogers chain of fast food restaurants in New York issued a set of 12 Yankees discs as drink cup lids.  Measuring about 3.5" in diameter, they can be found either with the red plastic rim attached, or like this one, with the rim removed.  The lids all had perforations just about where the player signature starts for inserting a drinking straw.  Finding lids with both intact rims and unpunched straw holes can be a challenge.  I finally picked this one up in a lot of discs (Griffey, Nettles and Randolph) on eBay for about $7.  This was a long search that I am glad to have finally concluded.


    For the definitive guide to these next items, have a look at Eric Swartz's 7-11 Slurpee Coin Web Site


1984 7-Eleven Super Star Sports Coins

     After a limited test release in 1983, 7-Eleven issued three regional 24-player sets of these lenticular 1.75" diameter discs, free with purchase of a large Slurpee.  The numbering on these sets never made any sense to me, but Winfield was in the Eastern region's set.

1985 7-Eleven Super Star Sports Coins

      With the apparently great success of the 1984 discs, as a follow up, 7-Eleven issued a whopping six sets in 1985, five regional and one for the World Champion Detroit Tigers.  While no players appeared in all six sets, Dave Winfield was in five of them.  Again, the only way to tell them apart is by the color on the reverse.



Southeast was blue with the letters "DT" at the bottom.










 East was black with the letters "JH" on the bottom.












Southwest was purple with the letters "PJ" on the bottom.

I actually found this one in the middle of the street in Texas back in 1985 before I even collected cards.  Not really sure why I kept it.

West was green with the letters "DH" at the bottom.










The Great Lakes region was an auburn color with the letters "AC" on the bottom.










     In 1985, there were also promos issued.  Dave Winfield had two.  One that was 2.25" in diameter with a black border on the reverse and the letters "DH" at the bottom.  The other is much larger, approximately 5" in diameter, featuring the same photo as the other 1985 coins, but with nothing on the reverse.

1986 7-Eleven Triple Stars

      7-Eleven went a slightly different direction in 1986, picking groups of three players for each coin.  Again there were multiple regional issues, but Winfield only appeared in the East set, pictured above.

1987 7-Eleven Super Star Sports Coins

     In 1987 7-Eleven returned to the original formula of regional sets of individual players for each coin.  Dave Winfield appeared only in the East set, which had a greenish back and the letters "CM" at the bottom on.

...to be continued...