There are some things I will never experience again. Carnation breakfast bars (not those abominations that came out in the 90s and later), tuning in to MTV at anytime to watch a music video and finding baseball cards on food packaging. There have been a few food issues in the past decade or so, but they are mostly packaged in plastic and slipped into the packaging. We have to keep everything in gem mint condition, or at least the illusion of it.
Oddball and food issues used to be everywhere. Boxes of mac and cheese, cereal and gelatin mixes had cards that you could cut out. Convenience stores had their own cards, coins and other paraphernalia. Sometimes they were regional, so you couldn't collect the whole set, unless you traveled. Hmm. That almost sounds like a tactic the companies would use today.
Now, Post cereals had the exact same checklist for their 1963 set. The only difference is that the Post cards have a wider red line than the Jello counterparts. In fact, the album where you could collect your cut out cards encouraged you to complete your set by collecting from both brands.
The Jello set has 200 cards, and the White Sox have eleven cards.
35 - Joe Cunningham
36 - Nellie Fox
37 - Luis Aparicio
38 - Al Smith
39 - Floyd Robinson
40 - Jim Landis
41 - Charlie Maxwell
42 - Sherman Lollar
43 - Early Wynn
44 - Juan Pizzaro
45 - Ray Herbert
Especially if you don't care about condition too much, these cards can come relatively cheap. Mickey Mantle was never a White Sox player, so you won't find any extremely high priced cards for the Pale Hose in this set. Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio will probably be the highest priced on the secondary market. Even then, you can find decent copies for well under $10.
I'll admit it. I miss cards on the boxes of Jello and other groceries. It was just another way to stay connected to the game and to the hobby. I don't anticipate ever returning to these glory days of food issues, but it would be cool if it did.
4 comments:
Yeah, it's a shame that brands can't put out baseball cards without going through Topps. There was that one Marketside Pizza set at Walmart about a decade ago but I think that's the last one I saw in the wild.
That Marketside pizza was the one I was thinking of when I wrote "last decade or so".
Brett said it perfectly. It's a shame... because I'd totally buy products that had cards on their packaging. A few years ago, Post produced some MLS cards on some of their cereal boxes and I bought it mainly for the cards.
Absolutely. I used to be more enticed to buy if they were offering baseball cards with the product. I wasn't aware of the MLS cards. Very cool!
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