The Bronze Age of Baseball Cards (The Remix)

You know a set is pretty cool when it comes in a wooden box.  What you're looking at is a complete set of the 1995 Topps Legends of the 60's Medallions that I picked up back in September on eBay for $76.24 ($56 + $14.99 shipping + $5.25 tax).  It represents my most expensive eBay sports card purchase of 2021.

According to Beckett, Topps offered these bronze medallions to their Stadium Club members on a one card per month basis.  Each card sold for the ridiculous price of $39.95.  That means the entire 12 card set would set a collector back $479.40.

I'm guessing there weren't a lot of collectors who dished out that kind of money for these which explains why these aren't as common as most 90's trading cards.

This checklist and writeup comes from SCD's 2008 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards.  After fourteen years, it features pretty accurate values for this set.

Now if you're wondering if you've seen these cards before on my blog, you have.  I built a hand collated set two years ago which I showed off here.  Normally I wouldn't go out of my way to purchase a set I already own, but when I read about the custom wooden box that accompanied it... I knew I wanted one of those as well.

By the way... if you'd like to see each bronze medallion up close and personal, then click the link above.  I scanned the front and back of each card along with one of the booklets the cards were originally shipped in.

While were on the subject of bronze cards from the 90's, here are a few more:

The year after Topps produced those heavy bronze medallions, they created a bronze subset in their Finest product.  1996 Finest was split into two series... and each series consisted of three colored subsets: bronze (common), silver (uncommon), and gold (rare).  What you're looking at above is a complete set of Series 2 bronze cards that Dennis over at Too Many Verlanders sent me a few weeks ago.

Here's a closer look at some of my favorites in the set:

He also sent me these bronze bordered parallels:

1996 Score Dugout Collection #10

1996 Score Dugout Collection #45

1996 Score Dugout Collection #103

The mid 90's definitely seems like The Bronze Age of Baseball Cards.  What do you think?

Then again card companies also used a lot of silver and gold in their products.  Dennis also sent me these...

1996 Score Gold Stars #24

1996 Donruss Press Proof #61

These two cards feature gold foil and are brand new additions to my Hideo Nomo and Rickey Henderson PC's.

The next four cards also feature gold (or silver), but more importantly... they also opened my eyes to something new about this twenty-five year old set:

1996 Flair Silver #374

1996 Flair Gold #374

1996 Flair Silver #376

1996 Flair Gold #376

I have always thought the silver versions were the base cards and the gold were a rarer parallel.  Then I read this post and my mind was blown.  Fleer actually produced each color in equal quantities.

By the way if you have extras of these laying around and you're looking to trade... Dennis is building each of these 400 card sets.  Click here for his wantlist.

Getting back to the bronze trading cards, Dennis also sent me this memorabilia card of Kurt Suzuki:

2007 USA Baseball Bound for Beijing Materials #GU-9

It's not a bronze parallel, but Team USA did win the bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics.  Unfortunately, Kurt Suzuki wasn't on that team.  However according to the back of this trading card he was a part of the Team USA qualifying team in 2006.

Another Team USA item that Dennis included in his care package are these two McDonalds cups:

 

These are a blast from the past.  I totally remember collecting these back in 1992.  Good times.

Thank you Dennis for this very generous care package!  And thank you to everyone who took the time to read this post and relive the Bronze Age of Baseball Cards.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!