Anyone else remember the trading card company known as Wild Card?
If you're unfamiliar with Wild Card... they entered the hobby in 1991 and produced collegiate basketball, collegiate football, and NFL trading cards. One of the things that separated them from other products was their "Stripe Redemption Program"... where they randomly inserted cards with stripes into packs, like this one:
Stripes came in denominations of: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 1000. When you pulled one of these cards, you could redeem them for multiple copies of the specified card. For example, if you sent in the above Larry Johnson card, Wild Card would send you 20 copies of the same card, but without the stripes. Obviously, the higher the number, the rarer the card.
These days, 1000 stripe cards still command a decent dime on eBay. Example: a 1991 Derrick Thomas 1000 stripe recently sold for $51.
Another cardboard concept that made Wild Card unique were their use of "wild cards" or "surprise cards". These cards were issued as part of the base set, but collectors had the opportunity to redeem them for special cards or sets.
For example... collectors who pulled and redeemed the above "wild card", received a special ten card set which commemorated Super Bowl XXVI:
126A Mark Rypien, 126B Rickey Ervins, 126C Darrell Green, 126D Charles Mann, & 126E Art Monk
126F Thurman Thomas, 126G Bruce Smith, 126H Cornelius Bennett, 126I Scott Norwood, & 126J Shane Conlan
Like most early 90's products, Wild Card overproduced these sets... which means they're practically worthless. Beckett lists the set at $3, which isn't bad since 40% of the players are enshrined at Canton.
Anyone else miss the ingenuity that Wild Card brought to the table back in the 90's?
Happy Hump Day everyone... and sayonara!
8 comments:
I liked this product. I still have a ton of it.
I would have loved to see the expression on collectors' faces when they redeemed those 1000 cards. Can't imagine opening a box to find 1000 of the same player.
It's funny... I didn't buy a lot of the NFL product either back in the 90's. But 20 years later, I have learned to appreciate the ingenuity.
Lol... back then there were a fair share of collectors buying in bulk. I remember being at a high school card show and seeing a guy with three or four 800ct boxes filled with Jerome Walton. Insane.
Any 1000 stripes?
The other side of the spectrum was that you could trade in reverse as well. For example, you could send in 10 copies of a card for a ten stripe version of that card. The postage alone for doing this is probably what sent Wild Card out of business. I sent a bunch of the basketball cards in to trade and never got a thing back because the company folded. I opened a few boxes of this stuff when it was new.
Thanks for the info... didn't realize it worked both ways. Imagine collecting 1000 of one card... crazy.
I have a few of the redemption cards still and two sets of the wall cards from the 90s which today I could still redeem them
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