Some Weirdo Mets Cards
September 14th, 2009 by slangon
When I got back into collecting a year or two ago, a lot of it had to do with digging up my old Trapper Keeper® full of cards that I had from when I was a kid. That basically became the foundation of my collection and has grown exponentially from there. Some of the cards were cool. Some of the cards were duds. Most of the cards were Mets.
I’ve done quite a bit of researching the different cards that I have, but two of them I’ve had a devil of a time trying to find any information on.
I actually don’t really remember too much as far as how the hell I even obtained them. The nearest I can recall is trading my younger brother for them. When I asked him about them, though, he doesn’t remember them at all.
Both cards are printed on really thin card stock, as far as baseball card stock goes.
The first card is of Lenny Dykstra.
The front is very simple. Square corners, pretty glossy photo of Nails during warm ups, small white type at the bottom for his name. No company logo, no set name, no nothing. Doesn’t really tell us much.
The back is just as simple. Black type on white card. What you see above is all there is. Year. Set name. Player name. Card #.
I’ve done innumerable web searches for every possible combination of all those words, and got nothing. The only additional info I’ve been able to gather has been finding a few other players from the same set. Seems that Tony Gwynn was in there, although the website didn’t list the #. Apparently, there was a Series III of this set, in which Mike Schmidt was #55. Will Clark was #7. Mark McGwire was #76. Finally, Dale Murphy was #’s 15 and 29. I’m assuming that this goes along with the Series III discovery.
The second card, which is of Kevin McReynolds, is just as mysterious.
It’s pretty similar to the Dykstra Action Superstar, except this one uses black type and has rounded corners (On purpose. This card is a bit beat up, but it’s not that bad). Again, not really any usable clues on the front.
The back has one more piece of info than the Action Superstar. At least this one tells us that there is 60 cards in the set. Other than that, it’s just player name, year of issue and card number. I’m not sure if “Indiana Blue Sox, Inc.” is technically the set name, or if it’s the manufacturer, but we can just use it as both for now.
Again, exhaustive internet searches turned up bupkis, other than a handful of other cards from that set. Keith Hernandez was #16. Once again, Dale Murphy had two Indian Blue Sox cards, #’s 19 and 26. I wonder if that means there was multiple series of this set as well? Kurt Stillwell was #8. Actually, that Stillwell card looks quite different from my McReynolds, which further leads me to believe there was more than one series of these.
That’s it as far as anything I’ve been able to find on the interwebs. Has anyone out there ever seen or heard of these cards? I’d love to hear about it.
Do some searches on cards from the era called “Broders”. They were unlicensed and created by a man named, strangely enough, Broder.