1948 Smiths Oakland Oaks

Set size: 25

Front Design: A black and white posed photo fills most of the 2" x 3" card, with a small white bar at the bottom containing the player's name, position, and the card number.

Back Design: Red ink provides a short career biography and a Smiths clothing store advertisement.

Parallels and Similars: You're not seeing double, and I haven't posted the same set twice. The 1947 Smiths set looks identical, though the card stock on the '48 series is better and has a glossier finish.

Distribution: Unknown, though like the 1947 version it was probably given away at the stadium.

Thoughts: The '47 Smiths set was the second set I reviewed here, and now by post 14 I'm reviewing the other Smiths issue. It's all about the luck of the draw (or scanning order). See the 1947 set description for some more thoughts, but you have to admire the text on the back, describing what looks like some I'm-just-glad-to-be-here rookie as "rugged." Billy Martin and Casey Stengel (as manager) are the lone highlights of this team set.

Additional Links: Of course, Number 5 Type Collection beat me to this set by several months, and his card is in much better condition than mine.

2006 Upper Deck Ovation Nation - Independence Day Edition

Set size: 15

Front Design: An action shot serves as the background, with the player's national flag overlaid on top of the action photo. A portrait adds a third layer on top of the flag. The WBC logo, set name, player name, country they represented in the WBC, and position all appear on a green-tinted world map.

Back Design: The national flag appears a couple more times, as does the portrait. A small recap of the player's performance in the WBC completes the back.

Parallels and Similars: Four printing plate parallel sets exist, as does a signature parallel for three players.

Distribution: Randomly inserted at 1:19 odds into packs of 2006 Upper Deck Ovation.

Thoughts: The 2006 Ovation insert sets all have attractive designs. This set is a patriotic tribute to WBC players, and certainly a fitting choice for Independence Day! This card came in a recent case break through The Daily Dimwit. If I didn't have too much on my plate, I would try to build a mini-master set of Ovation. Being that this insert set honors the WBC, I need to add it to my Team USA want list.

Additional Images: Blooper time! My scanner auto-finds images when I tell it to scan photos. It can pick out several cards at once, up to all nine cards that I could possibly fit. White space confuses the scanner, though, and white borders and white spaces on cards are troublesome. Every time I scan cards, I have to ensure it kept the whole card and nothing but the whole card, but the preview window is much smaller than it needs to be. I didn't notice this until it was too late:

Why, it's a nice Ken Griffey Jr. patriotic mini! This reminds me of a modern version of those Allen and Ginter minis.

Who needs the rest of the card, anyway?

Happy Independence Day!

2009 Enterplay Fak Pak Standees

Set size: 88 standees (35 players on two different cards, plus 18 trivia and mini-game cards)

Front Design: If left intact, each card is a square, with the player's name, position, team logo, jersey number, MLB/MLBPA logos, and a photo with a cropped inset photo. When assembled into a standee, the bottom border and player fold out from the rest of the card front.

Back Design: The player's silouette in mirror reverse from the front image appears over a closeup background of a baseball. The player's name and cropped photo are in the upper left. A small quiz with answers is on the horizontal edges, and instructions on how to assemble the standee appears on the bottom. The card number is in the lower left corner.

Distribution: Sold primarily through Target and Wal-Mart, packs contained two headline cards (#1-35), two player standees (#36-70), one trivia and mini game card (#71-88), and one tattoo (a separate 22-card set).

Thoughts: This looks like a fun set, and it is something I would collect at the right price. The image and card stock is high quality. Despite having both MLB and MLBPA licensing, they are not listed in the Beckett database. It appears that the 2009 issue is the only one issued, though Enter-Play continues to make standees for a variety of licenses. While writing this post, I couldn't find any baseball listings on eBay (I didn't try for too long), so I have doubts as to whether it was actually issued, or if it was only a limited test release, or just ignored by the collecting public.

Additional Links: Enter-Play's Product Page is located here, with a checklist and images of all the player and headline cards (#1-70). Thankfully Enter-Play still exists, as there is not much out there on this set.

Additional Images: Card back:

1984 Tigers Wave Postcards

Set size: 35 postcards

Front Design: Each postcard features two pieces of artwork: one action shot and one portrait. The player's name appears in a banner beneath the art.

Back Design: The Tigers logo appears in the upper-left, with copyright information on the bottom left. The remainder of the back is essentially blank to serve its purpose as a postcard.

Parallels and Similars: None known.

Distribution: Issued by Batter-Up during the 1984 season.

Thoughts: This card came to my collection courtesy of the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame blog. While Rusty looks quite goofy in his portrait, the art is attractive and this may be a set I eventually attempt to complete. The Tigers won the World Series that year, so the postcards unintentionally serve to commemorate that victory.

Additional Images: Back of Post Card:

1989 Cadaco Ellis Discs

I adjusted some of the colors on the template so the blog text is black on a lighter background. If you view this blog in the template (instead of through your own reader) and anything is difficult to read, let me know. Yesterday's black-text post was caused by crazy manipulation of the Blogger system while writing the post due to the connection issues the night before, but now all text should be black by default.

Set size: 63 discs, approximately 3.5" in diameter

Front Design: An airbrushed color player photo appears in the center of the disc, surrounded by a black ring with the player's name. Team name and position are beneath the name in a yellow ring which also contains a series of numbers to be used in a game. There are several errors in the set; four were corrected and the error versions of those cards can hold a slight premium.

Back Design: The black-on-white backs contain up to five years of career stats and biographical information. The team name and league may or may not be listed on the back

Parallels and Similars: Future yearly issues of additional discs follow identical layouts, but can be distinguished by the last year of stats on the back of the card. Note that my 1989 disc has a copyright year of 1988; the statistics data is the best way to judge the issue year of this set. Cadaco games issued prior to the 1989 edition did not contain color photos.

Distribution: The discs were issued with and intended for use in a board game. The numbers on the front of the card correspond to the player's career statistical likelihood in various game situations. Complete board game sets are valued around $20.

Thoughts: Without context, the numbers on the front have no meaning. The backs are plain and as a stand-alone set these discs have no interest. I've never played a Cadaco game so I'm a bit interested in the meanings for all those numbers. As you can see in the hi-res scan, the image quality is somewhat low, but expected in a product like this (they're game pieces, not collectibles).

Additional Images: Disc back: