1991 Score All-Star Fanfest/ National / NCWA Summer Convention

     Ok, so it's not a rainbow in the traditional sense of piles of meaningless, slightly different variations, but who would have thought such a set so far out of the collector's main stream would have three different variations?

     In 1991, Score issued a set of 10 supposedly up-and-coming prospects that were expected to make some sort of impact over the next few years, and they were given away at the 1991 All-Star Fanfest over the MLB All-Star weekend in Toronto, in a little sealed plastic wrapper like Post used in the 90s for cards issued in cereal boxes. They also came with a random 1991 Score World Series trivia card like were issued in every pack of Score. To save a little effort, they also gave out pretty much the exact same set at the 1991 12th Annual National Sports Collectors Convention in Anaheim, California. The only difference? That little line of text on the lower red stripe on the reverse of the cards. Incidentally, Score also produced a set of hockey cards, featuring some of the greats of the day, using almost the exact same design (the colors were slightly different).

     I'm guessing the last one was perhaps a proof or example printed up without the lower banner to show how the cards would look. I bet they were never intended to see circulation amongst the general public. While I've seen several of the Fanfest and National sets once I started to notice them, I've seen this particular variation blank variation listed once on CheckOutMyCards.com. Of course, that may simply be because no one ever posts scans of the backs of cards on eBay or Sportsbuy.

Here's the full checklist of the sets, in case anyone might be "super collecting" Ed Sprague:

Score Title Card (blank backed)
1. Ray Lankford
2. Steve Decker
3. Gary Scott
4. Hensley Meulens
5. Tim Naehring
6. Mark Whiten
7. Ed Sprague
8. Charles Nagy
9. Terry Shumpert
10. Chuck Knoblauch

     I almost have to think they were shooting for the 2nd or 3rd string of actual prospects....I mean, this is 1991, and no Todd Van Poppel? No Jeff Bagwell? I-Rod? Mo?

     Beckett doesn't acknowledge the existence of the National set, but SCD lists both sets together, mentioning the separate events. Neither mention the existence of the blank variation. I have no idea what the print run was, but I imagine loads of these sets didn't survive any farther than the trash cans by the exit doors at the events (especially after kids opened them and saw who was in it!). In 2006, SCD gave the set a whopping $2 book value. Beckett was a little kinder, but not by much. The Fanfest set is pretty easy to find on eBay, the National set slightly less so.

****UPDATE (25 June 2019) ****

   Thanks to a collector over at TradingCardDB.com, I now know that there was a fourth version of this set, issued at the 1991 National Candy Wholesalers Association Summer Convention. "1991 Score NCWA Summer Convention" is what was printed in the red stripe on the reverse of the cards.

    Sets were issued for hockey, football and baseball.  The hockey sets seem to be the most common, followed by football, with the baseball sets being extremely rare.  Or at any rate, the baseball sets are so unknown that I've only seen a few of the individual cards, but no complete sets, and they are not cataloged by any of the usual entities.

Dave Winfield - Traveling Man (Part 4)

    As aging All-Stars get to the point in their career where their long-term contract prospects have dried up, but they're still producing respectable numbers, their opportunities lend more toward the short-term, hired gun variety.  In Dave Winfield's case, it was also an opportunity to play in front of his hometown. Dave was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was a star baseball and basketball player for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, so it was an easy decision for him to sign with the Twins, joining a roster that included another future Hall of Famer, Kirby Puckett.

     Winfield signed with the Minnesota Twins in mid-December 1992.  By that time, the first series of all the main 1993 sets had already been printed and were already being shipped.  As a result, Winfield would appear as a Blue Jay for the first couple months of the baseball season.  However, given the move to multiple series and the expansion of sets issued around the start of the season, there were a lot of non-update type cards to feature Dave in his new duds.  I'll just take these alphabetically.

Dave Winfield - Travelling Man (Part 3)

       Having renewed his value on the free agent market, after the 1991 season, Winfield headed north, and took his talents to Canada where he played a big role in a hugely talented 1992 Toronto Blue Jays team. As mentioned in an earlier post, it was with the Blue Jays that Dave finally picked up his World Series ring. However, despite having a great season with the Jays, Winfield became just another of those high profile hired guns, spending just the one season, winning the gold, and moving on to greener ($$$) pastures.

     With a new team, came another appearance in the year's update sets.  Donruss took a different approach than all the other companies, and rather than issue their update cards as a standalone boxed set, or as another series, they instead included them in specially marked 1992 factory sets.  But they didn't include the whole update set in the box, they just included four cards from the 22-card set in each box.  To help confuse matters for collectors, Donruss issued at least three different factory sets in 1992.  There was the blue box that included a few 1992 Studio preview cards.  There was a red box, sponsored by Coca-Cola (I think it included the 1992 Donruss Coca-Cola set), and there was another red box with a special sticker on the shrink wrap indicating the presense of the 1992 Donruss Update cards.

     So here you are, at the end of the 1992 season, you've already busted countless packs of 1992 Donruss.  Stacks of the blue & white cards scattered around or in sorting boxes.  And since your favorite player was traded, you know there's at least one more card to get.  But to do so, if you can't find anyone selling the singles (good luck!) you basically have to go buy "packs" of 792 (+4) cards in hopes of catching the ONE card you are looking for.   It is no wonder that the 1992 Donruss Update cards are some of the most difficult to find for collectors.

     Due to the nature of how this set was distributed, price guides hugely undervalue these cards.  It took me 3 sets to find this one.  The first set I picked up was in a blue box, because I didn't know any better.  After that wasted $10, I did a little more research to figure out what I should have been looking for.  My second set, another $12, in the proper red box, unforunately did not contain a Winfield.  I did get the McGwire, however.

     I quickly put those four cards on Sporlots, and between them, made back $10 of the $12 I had spent on the set.  That still left me with another complete 1992 Donruss set.  Sure they're much better quality than all previous years, but still, Leaf let the presses run, so there is no shortage of these and I already had several hundred cards from opening packs years ago.  In the last three years, I've managed to sell a whopping FOUR cards from this set on Sportlots.

     Thankfully, set #3 landed me the card you see above.  And another 792 useless 1992 Donruss cards.  So all told, the card above probably cost me something like $25.  And to this day, I have still never seen another.  I'm sure there are still thousands of them buried in unsold, unopened and unwanted 1992 Donruss factory sets.  A bit of maybe useful information, the UPC code on the red box sets is 0 10700 82149 2.  The much more common blue sets are 0 10700 82150 8.

     Fleer, thankfully, took the more sensible approach to issuing their update set, and as they had been doing since 1984, as a boxed set.  Much easier to find, much cheaper to pick up.

     Score and Topps did the same, which resulted in my finding the rest of Dave's traded/update cards for around $1 altogether.  Not a bad deal.  I didn't include Upper Deck's 1992 offering because they issued their cards slightly later than Donruss and Score and managed to sneak him into their Series 2 that year in his new duds.

Since the Jays had only signed him for a year, it was only a matter of time before Winfield made yet another appearance in another year of late season update sets.

Hensley Meulens, truly a "rising" star!

    I first caught this story about a week or so ago, on a Dutch site, and didn't say anything because I thought it might just be a gag. Then I saw it repeated again today:

Bam-Bam's odyssey is truly out of this world

     Apparently, Bam Bam is headed for the final frontier, courtesy of Space Expedition Curaçao, a new space program supported by Curaçao's government.

Or you can read the original snippet in Dutch:

Retourtje ruimte voor Hensley Meulens

      Naturally, when I found this, I had to figure out which card or cards to attach to the post.  What better than his "Rising Star" issues from Score? 

      Starting in 1989, until 1992, Score released a 100 card set of Rising Stars, and a 100 card set of Superstars. The sets were sold in large, plastic blisters, along with a magazine-style book with slightly more thorough biographies of each player. Aside from super-hyped rookie Gregg Jefferies holding the #1 spot in the inaugural set, there wasn't any particular order to the card numbering.

      They were usually sold for $9.95-$12.95 almost anywhere baseball cards were sold. The 1989 issue was fairly popular, but as with the regular 1989 Score base cards, were so over-produced that supply far outpaced demand, and even today, these sets are very easy to find unopened, usually for less than $5 (plus shipping & handling).

      I'll go back and research the checklists, but Meulens has got to hold the record for most appearances in Score's Rising Star sets.  Had 1992 not been the final year of those sets, one has to wonder if he would have made a 5th appearance!

     In any case, I guess all that rising amounted to something after all.  Perhaps he will keep these specific cards in a pocket of his flight suit as he blasts off into space, thinking to himself how the Yankees had given up on him too soon.  Godspeed, Mr. Meulens!