Monday, November 16, 2020

A sampling of samples.

I never had a subscription to Beckett when I was a kid and I haven't bought a copy of the magazine in over 10 years. Not that I didn't want a subscription back in the day, but I hated spending money on anything other than cards when I was a kid. That meant that I only purchased price guides every couple of months and I typically used 800 count boxes instead of sheets and binders. I still don't like spending money on supplies. 

Promotional sample cards have been around for a while, but they reached their peak in the late 90's and early 2000's when they were inserted into copies of Beckett magazine. Since I didn't buy many magazines, I don't have a lot of sample cards. One of the collections I bought had a small stash of sample cards. Sometimes they are easy to spot and other times they are difficult to determine. For example, I nearly missed the Diamond Kings Roberto Clemente sample card.


Sometimes the player selection for these Promo cards is a little puzzling. For example Aramis Ramirez isn't a name that I would have expected to see on a promotional card, but maybe he was a bigger name than I remember. 

I have a couple of questions for the blogosphere. Answer any, all or none. Thanks for reading!

Have you ever, or do you currently have a subscription to Beckett?

What are the first sample cards that were produced? What year? What product?

Do you collect sample cards?

36 comments:

  1. A. Had a few different subscriptions to Beckett over the years, but the last one was around 10 years ago.

    B. No idea the first ones, but I feel like those mail order companies (like Renata Galasso) in the 70's and 80's would send samples with purchases. I also remember promo cards from the early 90's given away at the National. And specially marked 1991 Donruss factory sets contained Leaf preview cards.

    C. Yeah. I used to work at a card shop, so I had access to a lot of the Upper Deck promo cards. Plus I pick them up whenever I find them in dime and quarter bins. If I had to guess, I'd say I have 200 to 300 different ones (ranging from sports to non-sports).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did not subscribe to Beckett -- ever -- until I started writing for them. I now have subscription to Beckett Vintage (latest article in latest issue!)

    The first sample cards I remember are the ones from Fritsch catalogs. When you bought something, they'd throw in a sample from their Negro Leagues set. I think that was created in the early '80s.

    I don't collect sample cards per se, but I'm happy to have them in my collection. During the late '90s, when I wasn't collecting, we used to get all kinds of promotional mailings at the newspaper and sometimes there were some sample cards from Pacific (I had no idea what Pacific was at the time). Even though I wasn't collecting it was cool.

    Your point at the start of the post: normally I was like that as a kid, gotta spend money on cards. But I loved magazines and reading so much that money went to that too when I was a young teenager.

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