Card of the Day: Dale Murphy 1992 Topps McDonald’s Baseball’s Best #30

Product Highlight: 1993 Topps/McDonald’s All Time Greatest Team Trading Card Glasses

McDonald’s has been making collectible drinking glasses for decades.  I never really got into them, except for when they made a set for the movie Batman Forever in 1995.  Topps and McDonald’s teamed-up in 1993 to bring collectors a set of ten glasses.  Printed on each glass is a Topps baseball card.  If you purchased any Extra Value Meal with a Coke Classic you had the opportunity to buy one of these 16-ounce All Time Greatest Team Trading Card Glasses.  Each glass features the player’s facsimile signature too.

Here’s the checklist:

• #1 Nolan Ryan 1969 Topps #533
• #2 Johnny Bench 1970 Topps #660
• #3 Lou Gehrig 1961 Topps #405
• #4 Joe Morgan 1973 Topps #230
• #5 Cal Ripken Jr. 1985 Topps #704
• #6 Brooks Robinson 1961 Topps #10
• #7 Roberto Clemente 1961 Topps #388
• #8 Willie Mays 1957 Topps #10
• #9 Babe Ruth 1962 Topps #139
• #10 Carl Yastrzemski 1970 Topps #10

The first nine glasses were sold nationally.  In order to get the tenth glass, you needed to live in the Boston area.  That makes Carl Yastrzemski the rarest of them all.

Flashback Product of the Week: 1986 McDonald’s

McDonald’s is an American institution.  Although I don’t eat fast food very often, I do find it tasty.  Just don’t watch all those news reports about where the ingredients come from and how the food is made.  All that matters is that it tastes good.

Growing up I had tons of birthday parties at McDonald’s.  Piles of their Happy Meal toys followed.  Back to the Future: The Animated Series, Batman Returns, and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! are all kids shows that I remember receiving Happy Meal toys from.  If I remember correctly, the Delorean toy had actual sparks that shot out the back.  The back wheel could easily come off too and posed a choking hazard.  Ah to be a kid again during a time when safety wasn’t the top priority.

The 1980’s was filled with a lot of popular football sets.  You have rookie cards of Joe Montana, Dan Marino, John Elway, Warren Moon, Jerry Rice, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, and Barry Sanders.  One of the most comprehensive football sets to come out of the 80’s wasn’t made by a major card manufacturer though.  It was issued by McDonald’s.

While making a purchase at McDonald’s during a specific 4-week period in 1986, you should have been given a football card with a coupon attached.  These were regionally issued.  That means McDonald’s restaurants near Philadelphia only gave out Eagles cards.  Ones near Atlanta gave out cards featuring Falcons players.  It goes on and on from there.  You would need to make multiple trips to McDonald’s in order to obtain every player from that team.  If the McDonald’s you were visiting wasn’t near an NFL team, they provided you with an All-Stars card.  The All-Stars cards are exactly what they sound like.  Instead of having cards from one team, it was a set made up of players from across the NFL.

To make it even harder, McDonald’s decided to use different colored foil for the scratch-off portion of the card each week – week #1 blue, week #2 black (gray), week #3 gold (orange), and week #4 green.  You would’ve needed to eat a hell of a lot of fast food just to get all the cards from your region.  It gives me a heart attack just thinking about it.  Given that this was 1986 and there was no internet, it would have been a monumental task to complete the whole set.

Flashback Product of the Week: 1990 Score McDonald’s

The card stock these things are printed on probably tastes better than anything McDonald’s serves.

For the most part, card products from this period are basically worthless.  But there are always some exceptions.  When I think of 1990 Score, three key people come to mind – Emmitt Smith, Frank Thomas, and Bo Jackson.  Outside of those guys, there really isn’t that much to talk about.  A lot of great players have rookies from this time, but overproduction really drives down the demand.

One of the biggest flukes that Score made was a 40-card set that was issued when they teamed-up with McDonald’s.  There are twenty-five players, and fifteen trivia cards.  With an order of french fries and a soft drink, you would receive a four card pack.  This wasn’t the first or last time a fast food restaurant worked with a card manufacturer with some type of giveaway.  Usually they were mass produced and forgotten about years later.  But NOT this set.  The catch was that these cards were only available at eleven different McDonald’s restaurants between Idaho and Oregon.  Not only that, but they were distributed for only three weeks.  That’s what you call an exclusive promo.  If you didn’t live in those areas at that time, you weren’t gonna get any… at least not for that cheap.

I’m sure that this set has probably cooled off some over the last twenty-five years, but compared to other sets from 1990 it has superior value.  Complete sets sell for $200.00.  Individual cards have been known to sell for $40.00.  Why this set wasn’t offered nationwide is beyond me, but it never made it out of Idaho and Oregon.  Those dark borders can easily chip making it difficult to find examples in mint condition.  Remember, these were fast food premiums.  I highly doubt the people working at McDonald’s cared about keeping them in good condition.  Most packs probably got thrown into bags.  Too bad they didn’t include Frank Thomas.

“Pin-Up” of the Week: 2001 Tiger Woods – What Famous Characters Might Say About Their McDonald’s Fries Promo Pin

What we have here is a promotional pin made by McDonald’s back in 2001.  It features the likeness of Tiger Woods (but it also looks like Obama) accompanied by the phrase “McDonald’s Fries And Me… “Masterful””.  This pin is part of a set called What Famous Characters Might Say About Their McDonald’s Fries.  Other pins in the set feature Captain Kirk, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Elvis, Mr. T, and James Bond.  Its filled with quite the collection of real and fictional characters.  None of them are that rare, and can easily be bought for $5.00.  I think this is definitely one of McDonald’s coolest promos.

Card of the Day: Cal Ripken 1992 Topps McDonalds Baseball’s Best