Winfield in the Round with Corners (Part 4)

     When perusing the offerings on eBay while hunting for these various circular issues, one will encounter any number of "uncut", "proof" or just plain "square" versions of almost every MSA-produced disc.  In most cases these are not, in fact, proofs, they are simply pieces cut from a larger poster.  From about 1985-1990, a great many of these MSA discs were accompanied by a mail-in offer to order the complete set as a poster.  The posters were intended to exist as just that, a poster.  They were almost always without borders or perforations and not intended to be chopped into pieces anymore than was the cover of a Red Foley's Best Baseball Book Ever was intended to be hacked to to bits and sold as "cuts".

Winfield in the Round (Part 3)

1989 Cadaco Ellis

     This is one of those issues I used to see in the big price guides and had no idea what it was.  Then I happened across a copy of the Cadaco Ellis All-Star Baseball game in a Walden Books in the mall (yes, this was years ago).  Sadly, I was an extremely brainwashed mainstream soul in those days, so concept of playing a board game that wasn't produced by Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley was somehow foreign to me and I didn't give this game a second thought.  For most of the years the game was produced, these were just blank discs with players names on them and no pictures like this one:

     But by 1989, everyone was getting a license from MLBPA, so Cadaco Ellis added player photos to the discs, courtesy of Mike Schechter & Associates.  Here is a good website that explains the game, and apparently still creates new discs for players, even though the actual game is no longer produced.  I imagine it has a following similar to the various statistics based games like APBA.

Winfield in the Round (Part 2) - More MSA Madness

    All throughout the mid 1980s, Mike Schechter & Associates continued to churn out promotional tie-ins for the MLBPA.  Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on the item), Dave Winfield figured into most of them.

1985 MSA Thom McAn / JOX

Checklist Translations: 1998 C&C 1997 Chinese Pro-Baseball (CPBL) [COMPLETE]

    In 1998, Golden International Corp. (國堡國際股份有限公司), was enlisted to produce the yearly cards for CPBL.  The company produced two different sets, C&C and Diamond, that represented different price points in the hobby, similar to how Score issued both Select and Pinnacle or how Fleer issued Ultra and Flair.  Neither set was big on presenting statistics or biographical information, instead focusing on the photography, offering quality color photos on both sides of the card.  The C&C set was the pricier of the two offerings, selling in 1998 for 50 yuan (Taiwan New Dollars), which was roughly $1.60 U.S.  Production was reported at 8,000 boxes of 36 packs each.  Not sure exactly how many cards came per pack, and I have been unable to find any images of the packaging.

     The C&C set consisted of 221 base cards, organized by team in the order of the standings for the 1997 season.  In a move that I'm surprised I've never seen with an American card company, the base checklists for both the C&C and Diamond sets are identical.  The insert sets in the C&C set covered the more standard subjects seen in most CPBL sets, Best 9, Gold Gloves, Monthly MVPs and seasonal Award Winners.  Being the "high-end" set, the C&C inserts all feature some manner of die-cutting.

• All-League Best 9 (9 cards) limited to 5555 cards
• Gold Gloves (9 cards) limited to 5555 cards
• Monthly MVP (8 cards) limited to 3200
• Award Winner (14 cards) limited to 1200

The set is described in this blog post, from which almost all of the information in this post was derived:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28095699

The Award Winner set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41504267

The Best Nine set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41712934

The Gold Glove set is shown here:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/41846662

The standard base card front and back:

Chao-Huang Lin

Checklist Translations: 1998 Diamond 1997 Chinese Pro-Baseball (CPBL) [COMPLETE]

    For 1998, yet another company, Golden International Corp. (國堡國際股份有限公司), was enlisted to produce the yearly cards for CPBL.  Looking at the company's website today, I get the impression that the CPBL was basically price shopping each year, looking for the best deal from whichever printing company they could get, similar to how minor league teams tend to switch between Grandstand, MultiAd/Brandt and Choice Marketing or just printing the sets locally.  As such, until TSC came along, it doesn't seem like there were actually any real "sports card companies" in Taiwan, just marketing companies contracted to produce the sets.

    The company produced two different sets, C&C and Diamond, that represented different price points in the hobby, similar to how Score issued both Select and Pinnacle or how Fleer issued Ultra and Flair.  Neither set was big on presenting statistics or biographical information, instead focusing on the photography, offering quality color photos on both sides of the card.  The Diamond set was the cheaper of the two offerings, selling in 1998 for 30 yuan (Taiwan New Dollars), which was roughly $1 U.S.  Production was reported at 8,000 boxes of 24 packs each.  Not sure exactly how many cards came per pack, and I have been unable to find any images of the packaging.

     The Diamond set consisted of 228 base cards, organized by team in the order of the standings for the 1997 season.  There were two unnumbered checklists covering all of the base and insert cards. The insert sets were all serial numbered and covered the usual subjects:

Hot Rookies (11 cards) limited to 4500 cards
HR Hitters (11 cards) limited to 4500 cards
Power Pitcher (7 cards) limited to 3500 cards
Record Breaker (7 cards) limited to 3500 cards
The Franchise (7 cards) limited to 2400 cards
Career 100 HRs (3 cards) limited to 3200 cards
Autographs (3 cards) limited to 100 cards

The set is described in this blog post, from which almost all of the information in this post was derived:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/blog/post/28105481

The base cards can be seen in this album:
http://jackli7751.pixnet.net/album/set/16814924

The standard base card front and back:

Ted Wood

Feng-An Tsai