In 2004 Donruss hopelessly ruined their Leaf brand with a truckload of shenanigans. This card was shenaniganish, but was one of the cooler things from that set. This black & white card is an updated version of the Exhibit cards that were sold out of vending machines from 1921 to 1963. The Exhibits were postcard sized and had various backs including some that actually had a postcard back. While there are many different variations and over 23 different sets, the Exhibits cards are a fairly cheap and common way to pick up some good vintage cards. Leaf paid tribute to this set with this insert set. Unfortunately, Donruss put almost as many variations in the set as the original Exhibit company...
Here's the back. As you can see there are stats on the back. This pays tribute to the Statistic Back Exhibit cards from 1962-63. The 'checklist code' even states 1962-63. Neat, huh? The card is even numbered to 63 for 1963. Here's where it gets complicated: There are different variations of this card for each type of Exhibit card, all numbered to the year of the originals' issue. I can't find a checklist for '04 Leaf to detail every different kind,but there was a bunch of 'em all numbered to 63 or less. This was part of Donruss' go-to gimmick in the '00s: created a boatload of extremely low numbered parallels to create the illusion of scarcity. While the gimmick sucks, I like the retro cards and choose to ignore their unsavory nature. To further complicate things, the retail version of Leaf (which is a story in itself) had unnumbered version of these cards with blue ink on the front instead of black. So if you see one of these things remember that it's not as rare as it seems, but it's pretty cool anyway if you're into retro stuff. .
2 comments:
There are...
Two different versions numbered to 21 copies,
two numbered to 25,
four numbered to 26,
two numbered to 27,
20 numbered to 46,
six numbered to 63,
and seven numbered to 66.
Add 'em all up, and there are 1910 Exhibits of each player -- not including the un-numbered Blue "Second Editions."
Panini definitely took the numbering of cards to a whole new level. The good thing is that these days most of the cards can be found fairly cheaply, even those with lower print runs, since there are so many variations of each card. I've had fun picking up the different variations of the Piazza Polo Grounds cards when they show up cheaply. These I didn't even know about.
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