1991 Wild Card Football

Welcome to Sports Card Stories.  Where I blog about sports cards (and maybe some non-sports/entertainment cards) that are just a little bit different.  Every card has a story- just some are more interesting than others.

1991 was probably the apex (or nadir depending how you look at it) of the sports card boom.  The National Convention achieved attendance records that haven't been challenged since.  There were several major release offerings for every major sport, all printed to excess.  In fact, there was so much cardboard used that paper manufacturers clear cut every tree in the Mojave Forest for card production, leaving the arid desert that we know today.  

When speculators moved on to the next thing, billions of cards were orphaned.  The past year has finally seen some of these cards find new homes in the new card boom. 

Wild Card football came on the scene in 1991.  Though this issue soon fell to the bottom of dealer's junk boxes, there was a huge innovation.

First, "parallel" inserts.  This might be the first pack inserted parallel issue.  Now we take it for granted that card manufacturers insert all kind of limited inserts which mimic the design of the base set.  Topps has about a dozen full set parallels each year of just the base set, from platinum and printing plate 1 of 1's to Gold inserts where there are a couple thousand copies.

Wild Card inserted random stripe cards.  Stripes came in 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 1000 values, as pictured above.  The 1000 was the scarcest.

The gimmick was that stripe cards could, at the owner's option be exchanged by Wild Card for the same number base issues.  If you found a 10 stripe John Elway, you could send it in and receive 10 John Elway base.  If you found a 1000 stripe Nick Lowery, you could send it in for 1000...Nick Lowery.  Who wants 1000 cards of a kicker?

These were hot for awhile because of the chance to find these scarce stripe cards.  It was reasonably possible to put together a stripe set up to 50, the 100 and 1000 was trickier.

I wonder how many of these were traded in.  Probably not too many.  I can't imagine you'd be better off with 1000 Brett Favre rookies than 1 1000 stripe Brett Favre.  There's got to be Favre player collectors that covet that card.  Even though a regular Favre Wild Card is only a dollar or $2, and unloading 1,000 of them is going to be rough.

Boxes of Wild Card go about $70.  Before the current boom, you could catch loose packs of these for 3 or 4 to $1.  Wild Card doesn't exist anymore, so you can forget about trading in your stripe cards.

1992 brought Topps Gold, Topps Gold Winners (a story for another day), and Leaf Black.  By 1993 set parallels blew up and by 1995 most sets from any sport had at least one parallel. 

It all started with Wild Card.  They get the credit.  They get the blame.  They're like the weird uncle that no one thought about who invented something that people take for granted today.