Hobby Oddities: Cards Mounted On Cheap Plaques

Every card show has that one dealer with a booth jam-packed with them.  It wouldn’t matter if the card show consisted of only three dealers.  I guarantee that one of the three is selling base cards mounted on cheap plaques.  We’ve all seen them.  Where do they come from?  Why do they exist?  Do people really buy them?

I guess the plaques are suppose to make the base cards more desirable.  My running theory is that they’ve always targeted people who don’t know much about the hobby.  They’re hoping to catch that person who thinks if a card is mounted on a plaque it means that it’s special and/or valuable.  Rarely is that the case.  Sentimental value for certain individuals is really the only thing they have going.  Perhaps owning one brings back some great childhood memories.  The Big Apple Card Company out of Sunrise, FL was a major contributor to their mass-production.  Various other companies issued them too.

Odd, cheap, and annoying accurately describe these things.  They’ll never disappear.  If there was an all out nuclear war the only things left would be cockroaches and these plaques.

Flashback Product of the Week: 1986 Cheap Toys with Crummy Candy Series 1

One of my favorite things to do when it comes to the Flashback Product of the Week posts is to go off the regular path and explore some really obscure products.  This is going to be one of those times.

When I think of pop-culture from the 80’s, a few things come to mind.  One thing that sticks out the most would have to be Garbage Pail Kids.  Garbage Pail Kids are basically Cabbage Patch Kids from hell.  They aren’t cute and cuddly.  Instead these little guys/girls are horrific, ugly, and down right insulting in some circumstances.  That’s what makes them so awesome.

Garbage Pail Kids aren’t limited to their 2-D cards and stickers.  They have a strong collector following when it comes to their toys.  In 1986, Topps decided to release Cheap Toys with Crummy Candy, which has to be the most straight forward product title in history.  I could see today’s card manufacturers putting names to their products that actually reflect whats inside, i.e. 2012 Lots Of Base Cards & One Plain Colored Relic Worth Little To What The Box Cost.  Boxes contained little green bags that had a candy wafer, (1) figure, and a checklist inside.  Series 1 has a ten characters – Leaky Lindsay, Double Heather, Brett Sweat, Muggin’ Megan, Alice Island, Adam Bomb, Crater Chris, Graffiti Petey, Thin Lynn, and Brainy Janey.  You would think a product such as this wouldn’t be too complicated.  They’re just cheap little figures.  How far in detail could they possible go?  That’s the wrong question to ask.

While doing research for this post, I came to the conclusion that this figure set is almost as complicated and diverse as the Old Judge tobacco cards.  What started with ten figures who each have four colors – blue, red, peach, and green, has exploded into hundreds of figures with different variations.  These variations include material the figures are made of, colors, copyright dates, and different distribution types.  The list goes on and on.  Its far from an easy set to complete.  Figures of the four basic colors are worth about $10.00 a piece, but than you come across a rare neon yellow version like the one pictured below and you can look to spend around $80.00.

Of the two Series that Topps released, I believe Series 1 is in higher demand.  Sealed boxes of Series 1 continue to sell for hundreds of dollars.

If you have any questions about Cheap Toys with Crummy Candy or Garbage Pail Kids in general, I highly recommend checking out geepeekay.com.

The Lowest of the Low

This morning I was thinking about a topic I could blog about and I came across these relic cards.  Does anyone remember these things?  In my opinion they have to be the lowest form of a relic card.  Companies haven’t made a ton of cards like this, probably because of all of the complaints they have received from collectors.  The relics inside these cards were worn by the athletes just for the photo shoot and wouldn’t even come close to something they would wear on the field.  I don’t mind Event-Worn materials as long as it is something they would actually wear in a game and not some gimmicky piece of sweatshirt or leather helmet worn for two seconds.

On an upside, for those collectors looking to save some money but still want to purchase a rookie card featuring a relic worn by their favorite player, these might be right up your alley.  They usually sell for a lot less than cards containing regular pieces of material.