Thursday, November 29, 2012

1996 Danbury Mint 24 kt Gold Baseball Cards

Were you collecting in 1996? Do you remember these babies?

 24 carat gold baseball cards! I remember seeing ads for this set of 50 cards in Beckett magazine but I never bought any. I got this and 4 more from a friend of my daughter who collected cards in the mid-1990's. He talked his Dad into buying the first installment of this subscription set. He can't remember what they cost but they cancelled after the first shipment. The set included a nice album with gold leaf printing and his name printed in gold (I removed his name).

The album pages held 4 cards, each slot with a players name and facsimile signature.
I know next to nothing about these. There was no information available in Danbury's website. There are a number of individual cards being sold on eBay from $3 to $30 depending on the player. There are a number of complete sets, with albums, being sold, ranging from $90 to $250. Based on one offering there seems to have been a second 50-card set produced.


The cards are normal sized cards which are encased in plastic. They look to be embossed but it's hard to tell as the plastic casing is pretty stiff. They are very light so I suspect they are gold foil on a paper backing.
There was only one Phillie in the set, Richie Ashburn. I put a bid in on the Ashburn on eBay.
 I think the cards are attractive but I'm probably not going to attempt to complete the set.
The guy who gave these to me is now a Star Wars collector. I'm more of a Star Trek nerd myself, but we get along. He also works at NASA and gave us a rockin' private tour last summer through the mission control center at the Johnson Space Center near here. He actually works on Mission Control for the ISS. How cool is that?

Thanks for the cards Eliseo!

4 comments:

Fuji said...

I remember these. A few weeks ago, a guy had a binder of these at the flea market. He was asking $5/card which seemed steep to me, so I passed. Might have to track a few of these down on eBay.

Hackenbush said...

I have a copy in my Ron Santo collection. Otherwise I wouldn't go out of my way to collect them.

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