Why are these numbered?

Here’s another blog entry that is more question than answer. Does anyone know why these are numbered? Hand-numbered? I am lucky enough to have one of these 1992 Pro Line Portraits of Deion Sanders, but mine isn’t hand-numbered. I have no explanation. There’s no number. The card is stamped. It all seems official. But where would the hand numbering come from? Please let me know, if you know.

Biggest gainers, and what they have in common

In updating the market data page recently, I started thinking about which cards have gained the most in book value since I started the blog. These are the ones that came to mind.

DEION SANDERS

Oh, I wish I had jumped when that reader offered me the whole nine-card set of “Prime Time” for $60. Being an analyist on “The NFL Today” and “NFL GameDay” drove up his prices some after his baseball and football playing days were done, but it wasn’t until he transitioned from “Neon Deion” to “Prime Time” to “Coach Prime” that prices really took off. Ten years ago, you could buy his autographed Pro Line Portrait or Profiles cards in the $15 to $20 range. Now they’re reach $50 to $80.

BILL BELICHICK

The Pro Line cards of the former Patriots coach (that sounds weird) probably have gained the most in the past decade. This card is widely recognized as his rookie card, and to have 1,000 signed ones inserted into packs in 1991 makes this a holy grail for New England Patriots collectors. Any time there’s crossover between collectors of different things (like when you have Elvis collectors and stamp collectors both champing at the bit for U.S. Postal service Elvis stamps), there’s an increase in value. Here you have fans appreciative of his six Super Bowl titles competing with fans of the Pro Line set. You used to be able to buy this for less than 10 bucks. Now you’d be lucky to get it for $200. They seem to be selling in the $300 to $350 range consistently.

DON MATTINGLY

Here’s another example of crossover collecting driving higher prices for a collectible. New York Yankees fans had this card in the $20 to $30 range shortly after the 1992 Pro Line set was released. Now we’re routinely seeing prices twice that high, or more. Although Donnie Baseball never won a World Series, he’s still a giant in pinstripes history. His autographed card in this set will rise steadily because of that alone. But when he became a manager, he added more collector interest. He’s led the Dodgers and the Marlins in the dugout, and now we add Los Angeles fans to the mix.

JIM HARBAUGH

We’re seeing an increase in prices now that he’s won the national championship as the University of Michigan’s football coach. The days of finding his cards in the single digits are long gone. Now we’re looking at prices in the $20 to $30 range. And prices are climbing. If he finds success at the helm of the Los Angeles Chargers (out of habit I initially typed “San Diego Chargers” there before I corrected myself), the book value of his Pro Lines will go up more.

So what do these four have in common? Coaching! One of these cards is a coach card, and the other three players became coaches after their careers on the field were over. Harbaugh, for example, had a decent career but other than being a quarterback wasn’t a big star. He had one season where his passer rating topped 100, and he made his only appearance on a Pro Bowl roster that year. UPI named him its offensive player of the year in 1985, when the Colts when 7-5 with Harbaugh as a starter. He was not Montana, Brady or Mahomes. But the values of his cards increased as he found success on the sidelines.

Will any other cards from the Pro Line sets rise in value because a player finds success as a coach? My guess is time is running out. Some of the players in the sets were in their 20s when the cards were produced, which puts them in their 50s now. If they haven’t been involved in coaching before now, they’re unlikely to start. There are three notable former University of Colorado players in the set: Kanavis McGhee, Alfred Williams and Mike Pritchard. But Eric Bieniemy, who didn’t have a card, is a one-time Buffaloes player who is high in the coaching ranks in the NFL and could get a shot at a head-coaching job at some point. There probably are others in the set who are involved in NFL or college coaching that I’m not aware of. Best of luck to them. And if you know who they are, maybe it would be wise to buy their cards now, before the prices go up.

I bought the whole nine-card Rypien set

It was a little expensive, but I bought the entire nine-card Profiles set for Mark Rypien, quarterback of the Washington Redskins.

It seems certain that Rypien didn’t return his signed cards to the Pro Line folks. They weren’t in the packs, and they are very hard to find. Here is photographic proof that he autographed at least some of the cards. So let me ask some questions: Why didn’t he sign and return them? Why did he sign any of them? How many did he sign? What happened to the ones he did sign? What did he do with all the rest (my guess: straight to the garbage). How did the few signed copies actually get out into “the wild.” Did he give some away? Did he keep a pile of these cards around the house to have something to autograph whenever needed? Say, a niece or a nephew is visiting and they want an autograph. Does Ryp go over to the closet, pull one of these out of a box and write his name on it real quick?

The cards I bought are in immaculate condition. Simply pristine. So did Pro Line send him cards that were cut? If they were in sheets, wouldn’t this nine-card Profiles set be riddled with crooked cuts, ragged edges and sketchy corners? If the company sent cards that it had cut in advance, that’s 1,000 copies of nine separate cards. Did they mail him nine boxes of cards? Two 5,000-count boxes? The logistics alone are mind-bending.

Every time it seems like I get some answers, more questions arise.

Digging a little deeper into the specific nine cards I bought, all the signatures are large. They’re all on the front. Rypie included his jersey number with each signature, and he even used 14 instead of 11 on card 2 of 9.

The embossed seals are, when looking at the fronts of the cards, in the lower right on eight of the nine cards. Card 1 of 9, the only horizontal card in the nine, is the exception. If you’re holding it horizontally, with the top of the card at the top, the stamp is in the lower left. But then, if you flip it over and rotate the card to its vertical orientation, the stamp is at the top right, which is noticeably out of place to any collector of the set.

A view of the back of card 1 of 9.

The embossed seal on the back of card 5 of 9. It’s a milestone for me to add these to my collection. I was lucky to find the auction on eBay and was lucky to have to funds to afford the purchase. If you check out the market data, you’ll see each of these cards has only one price after it. Those would be what I paid for these nine. From there, with some simple multiplication, you can figure out how much I paid.

Here are more photos of the fronts of the cards.

Some words of wisdom from a long-ago Beckett guide

Here is some insight from an old Beckett price guide about 1991 and 1992 Pro Line cards.

• It has been reported by collectors that an autographed card is found with a frequency of about one per three boxes of 1991 Pro Line.
• All cards were signed in varying numbers with no prints being announced, therefore some are considered much more difficult to find.
• Other cards were returned late by the featured player and did not make the pack-out for the 1991 product. These cards were distributed later through one or more of the following means: at the 1992 Super Bowl Card Show, a mail order contest through Impel Marketing, or in packs of 1992 Pro Line.
• Reportedly, an Emmitt Smith card was produced and just a few were actually signed and released at the Super Bowl Card Show. Only a handful of this card and the Tim McDonald card are known to exist. (I assume this to refer to a 1991 Emmitt Smith card, which I have written about here on the blog.)
• Cards with signatures cut short are considered to have major defects.
• The autographed Santa cards are also not considered part of the set.

Where did these come from?

Gerry Gartland, a friend of the blog, years ago asked me what these were. I asked him to send pics, and he did. Then I dropped the ball and got locked out of my email account. Password didn’t work, and I didn’t know how to get back in. I emailed Google, and their answers were frustrating and unsatisfactory.

YEARS later, I just discovered that the account is available to me, and I’ve started combing through 6,000 emails I’ve received in the interim. And the photos from Gerry were there. I apologize, sir, for this taking so long. However, interestingly enough, the timing couldn’t be better. Despite not knowing what these signed and hand-numbered Santa and Mrs. Claus cards are, I noticed an auction for TWO SETS of these on eBay currently. One sold for $274, and the other is still there for the same price. I’ve never had a desire to own any of the Santa cards, but this is so bizarre I might change my mind.

Gerry’s recollection of how he came to own these isn’t very detailed: “I believe it came to me by Bill Barron via the Eagles great PR Director Jim Gallagher in the early-mid 1990s.” Both cards are hand-numbered in red ink out of 500 in thick plexiglass with “Christmas 1992” etched at the base. They were packaged in a red velvet sacks with a leather tag sporting the Pro Line logo. They were, in Gerry’s words, “presented in a white box, which has (an) NFL shield with Christmas garland on it.”

Gerry mentioned in an email that he was planning to sell his on eBay. His set in the photo is numbered 330/500. The ones in the auction photo currently on eBay are numbered 374/500.

Great details, but still a little vague on the origins of this product. How were they distributed? Who were the lucky 500 who got them? Were they gifts to people in the league? In the card industry? The card hobby? As with many Pro Line oddities, there are so many more questions than answers.

Here are the photos Gerry sent me:

And here are the photos that are posted with the current auction:

Gerry’s photo quality is a little better, but the timing of this auction and my return to my email account couldn’t have been better.

And please note a major difference between the two sets of cards: On Gerry’s card of Mrs. Claus, Santa has signed the photo on the nightstand. On the Mrs. Claus card being auctioned currently, no autograph from Santa on the framed photo in the lower right corner. If it had that second autograph on the Mrs. Claus card, I strongly would’ve considered buying it. Still thinking about it, though. Hurry up and beat me to it if you’re interested!

1991, 1992 Santa mail-in ads

I never set out to acquire any of the Pro Line Santa or Mrs. Claus cards, but despite that, it’s surprising how often the Kringle family comes up on this blog.

Here we have a 1991 ad for the Santa Claus card. I don’t even remember it being a mail-in offer, but I suppose that’s correct, not just because we have evidence above but because I don’t remember pulling a Santa out of a pack.

The advertisement says it’s the only way to get a Santa card and that there would be only 20,000 made. I’m not sure how the autographed ones were distributed. Randomly among the 20,000 people who mailed in $10 or 10 wrappers? Dunno.

The 1992 ad says it’s gonna cost ya one SASE (per card) with a 52-cent stamp, 10 1991 wrappers and 10 1992 wrappers, which is kinda cheeky. And the first 10,000 people to reply would get a Mrs. Claus card. Interesting is that you could order more than one.