Monday, April 24, 2017

1995 Mr. Turkey Baseball Greats Tug McGraw

It's hard to pass up on a card issue called "Mr. Turkey Baseball Greats". At least it is for me, if the player in question is a Phillie. And not just any Phillie, but Tug McGraw, one of the heroes of the 1980 Phillies World Series championship. Post-career McGraw cards are rare anyway, and he's as likely to appear on such a card as a Met or a Phillie.


Although the copyright is 1994, both baseballcarddb.com and beckett.com list this as a 1995 issue.

It's kind of a weird set. The other four cards are Bob Feller, Al Kaline, Boog Powell, and Warren Spahn. Mr. Turkey was (and maybe still is) a trademark of the Bel Mar Foods Co., a meat packer in Michigan. If the company still exists (I did a bit of searching, but it wasn't exhaustive), the company may now be owned by Sara Lee.

What these 5 players have to do with each other or an upper midwest meat company is beyond me. And I have no idea of how they were distributed. I imagine they were stuffed with the gizzards in fresh turkeys available in Michigan supermarkets.

Note that the cards were not licensed by ML Baseball. Tug's cap is air brushed, but that's clearly a Phillies uni, not a Mets uni.

4 comments:

Tony Burbs said...

Gotta love the nineties, when you could find baseball cards paired with your processed meats, your batteries, your new underwear and in your breakfast cereal. Good times.

Fuji said...

I was gonna write something... but Tony's comment was 10x better. I agree with everything he said.

NJ9780 said...

Im confused about were they come up with the values of the cards. I actually have this set complete are you interested in it. I'm brand new to selling baseball cards so hopefully im not to direct in my approach

capewood said...

A direct approach is sometimes the best but I have no interest in the rest of the set. I was only interested in the McGraw card because I'm a Phillies collector.