This may have been discussed before so if it has please walk me off the ledge and point me to the answers.

In another thread we had gotten on to the discussion of nailing down the first autograph card inserted into a non-sports release. Bill Mullins posted the list as follows: (Note I added Chuck Jones)

So nothing prior to 1988, then.

FWIW, this is what I know of for early (1991 and before) NS autos:

1988 - Imagine "Night of the Living Dead" green border
1988 - Imagine "Grande Illusions" Tom Savini
1990 - Imagine "Scream Queens"
1990 - Imagine "Night of the Living Dead" red border
1990 - Upper Deck "Comic Ball I" Chuck Jones
1991 - Collect-A-Card "Vette Set" Mario Andretti
1991 - Comic Images "X-Men" Jim Lee
1991 - Comic Images "Boris" Boris Vallejo
1991 - Historical Images "Defenders of Freedom" Norman Schwarzkopf
1991 - ProLine "Portraits" NFL Wives
1991 - Star Pics "Soaps of ABC"
1991 - Star Pics "Twin Peaks"

Yesterday I started to think about the other firsts in non-sports card history and realized I don't know many of the answers. Things such as first chase set, embossed card, hologram, lenticular, foil, sticker signature, cut signature, border-less and sticker card as they pertain to licensed sets sealed in packs and boxes.

I thought it would be cool to lay it out as a dynamic group project. If someone posts a set feature, title and date it is the obligation of other members to try and find an earlier time frame.

After some digging my first two entries are:

First Non Sport Hologram

Upper Deck Comic Ball 1 (1990)
Impel Marvel Universe Series 1 (1990)

Have not been able to find which one was released first.


First Lenticular set

Topps Pee Wee's Playhouse (1988) 12 card Wiggle Toys subset.

My memory is that Comic Ball came out before Impel Marvel Universe. But I could be wrong. I suppose I could go downstairs and dig out the first few issues of NSU and see if they shed light . . .

A Dec 9 1990 newspaper article said the Comic Ball cards were available "beginning today, with national distribution by the end of the month."

An Oct 8 1990 newspaper article about cards said that Impel would have the Marvel cards on shelves "soon". And a Dec 17 article said that they had been released the previous week.

So I suppose they came out at essentially the same time.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

First Lenticular set

Topps Pee Wee's Playhouse (1988) 12 card Wiggle Toys subset.

1963 Abby "Monster Magic Action" cards came with a lenticular lens you held against the cards, and when you moved the lens, the image in the card became animated.

1971 Kellogg's "Indian World 3-D Picture Cards" was a lenticular set distributed in cereal boxes.

And various unchecklisted, undocumented Cracker Jack cards were small lenticular prizes in the box. Many of these predate Pee Wee.

quote:

first chase set

This is a "is this a promo?" type question -- you have to define what you are talking about before it can be answered.;

Were sticker sets from 1960s Topps cards chase sets? What about the Finger Puppets, Knock-knock jokes, foldees, etc. subsets of 1968 Topps Laugh-In? Were the holograms from Comic Ball/ Marvel Universe chase cards? What about the Pee-Wee Herman subsets you mention above?

Other candidates:
1989 Topps Nintendo had scratch-off inserts.
1991 Star Pics All My Children had 6 cards for other ABC soap operas.

Several of the 1991 Desert Storm sets had low-production cards, available as randomly seeded or case inserts or mail premiums.

1991 Brockum RockCards had Grateful Dead inserts.

At the time, the first non-sport chase cards that I recall anyone actually chasing were the holograms. If you discount those, then the 1992 Impel ST:TNG had a set of bonus cards.

In retrospect, though, the Brockum Grateful Dead cards would be it. I just don't recall anyone actually chasing them at the time.

Hi Bill,

I think he wants pack-pulled cards specifically and perhaps factory set bonus cards though we could talk about various firsts across the hobby too.

There are at least two guides for Cracker Jack prizes. I have one of them, "Cracker Jack Toys: The Complete Unofficial Guide for Collectors" (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1997) by Larry White. I got it for Christmas a few years ago. It helped me with the cards I have and get an idea what's out there. And yes, there were lenticular cards going back to the 1950's, the old "tilt cards." The company was still inserting them into the 1990's.

That Cracker Jack book is fun to look through. It's a whole other world of collecting with a card connection to non-sports. I have only a few of the toys left from all the boxes I ate over the years at my grandparents' house.

Jess

This message has been edited. Last edited by: catskilleagle,

I remember King Kong (Eclipse) had an embossed E1 card as a chase card in 1993. Skybox might have started embossing cards with the Art de Bart cards from their first Simpsons set that year.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
I remember King Kong (Eclipse) had an embossed E1 card as a chase card in 1993.

Embossed cards go much further back than that. See Kimball N182 Ancient Coins or T25 Actors. Of course, these aren't "licensed sets sealed in packs". For that, you need to jump to 1992 Chris Achilleos parallel foil embossed sets, and the 1992 Action Packed Birds of Roger Tory Peterson.

The very first hologram card I saw was in 1986 when Geo. Bassett issued a set of 24 Holograms in their sweet cigarettes/candy sticks Hologrems. The cards were sized 43mm x 83mm and there were two different backs - plain and red

I have found an image of the packet online as shown below:-

[IMG:left] [/IMG]

regards

John

There are too many firsts to consider and to say non-sport cards in general is way too broad a field. Vintage and modern, entertainment and food, DC/Marvel and comic related, popular and obscure, base and promo, you can break up the first cards in any number of classifications. Then there is the difference in how card collectors even define the terms.

Then there is the first "ideas", like first guaranteed autograph/sketch in every box or pack, first relic/prop, first inscription, first intentional variant hit, first stamp, first coin, first manufactured patch/medallion, first box to break $100 SRP, I mean I wouldn't know where to stop finding firsts in each class.

And in the end no one will agree on anything anyway.

Mykdude -- Ravens says we can't do this topic. sorry . . .

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:
Mykdude -- Ravens says we can't do this topic. sorry . . .

Actually it was a bit of humor about how tough it is to get consensus among card collectors about hobby opinions and also the fact that non-sport cards do have a variety of focused interests that different collectors tend to follow to the exclusion of other types of subjects.

It was by no means a topic stopper, but I'm sure you know that. After all, I didn't even insist that no one can post anything unless they provide a scanned picture of the cited subject, right Bill.

I thought of the Indian Motorcycles Series 1 embossed "1993 Indian Chief GBA" card (also from 1992) that was a random insert in the pack that contained the whole base set. There was a promo version of the card as well.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
I remember King Kong (Eclipse) had an embossed E1 card as a chase card in 1993.

Embossed cards go much further back than that. See Kimball N182 Ancient Coins or T25 Actors. Of course, these aren't "licensed sets sealed in packs". For that, you need to jump to 1992 Chris Achilleos parallel foil embossed sets, and the 1992 Action Packed Birds of Roger Tory Peterson.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

And in the end no one will agree on anything anyway.

I disagree with that.

quote:

Originally posted by JOHN LEVITT:
The very first hologram card I saw was in 1986 when Geo. Bassett issued a set of 24 Holograms in their sweet cigarettes/candy sticks Hologrems. The cards were sized 43mm x 83mm and there were two different backs - plain and red

I have found an image of the packet online as shown below:-

[IMG:left] [/IMG]

regards

John

Cool!

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:
Mykdude -- Ravens says we can't do this topic. sorry . . .

Actually it was a bit of humor . . .

And my response was meant to be tongue in cheek, but obviously came off harsher than it should have.

But seriously, if you post in the NS Obit thread . . .

Yeah those posted tongue in cheek remarks don't always translate well. Sometimes my wise cracks land like lead balloons and I wonder how I got in trouble.

I do try to stick to the regular obits, mostly.

An industry first Copperworks card.

Inkworks, Planet of the Apes.

Statue of Liberty card.

For all you non-sport know-it-alls here , what was the first set to have costume cards? or prop cards?

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:
For all you non-sport know-it-alls here , what was the first set to have costume cards? or prop cards?

More like know-nothing-at-all for me because I did try to look it up briefly before I gave up.

First, I'm glad you broke it up into two questions because costume cards and prop cards are two different things, although lately they have been thrown together under the term "relic". I beg to differ with that because any fabric swatch is a costume to me and anything not a clothing fabric would probably be better called a prop. Not really sure when the terminology turned to "relic", but you know the difference between a swatch and a prop when you see it.

Secondly, the reason I have no specific answer for you without research is that I really didn't pay much attention to costumes or props when the ratio was like 1:5000 packs. I only started noticing them when I started pulling them in good numbers and surprisingly, it looks like that was a lot more recent than it seems. For instance, I thought I was pulling uniform swatches and bat cards out of sports card products in the late 90s, in fact I'm sure of it. Yet the earliest Buffy set with Pieceworks, that's what Inkworks called its costume cards, looks like it might have been Season 6 in 2002. I was trying to check Allender's list to confirm that, but like I said, I give up easily.

The props from Breygent's Wizard of Oz, along with that Dorothy Dress bitty piece, were from 2006. Not nearly as far back as I thought either. To me the best props were in Breygent products like Dexter or The Tudors and then RA's Bond had some nice ones. Harry Potter props were OK too. All of that came out well into the early 2000's though.

So I'm sure someone will find very limited costumes or props that were issued in non-sport products before 2000, I just didn't realize that what seemed to be around for a long time really wasn't and we have just gotten used to getting these premium hits very fast.

The 2000 Topps X-Men set had costume cards, though I think they were "material used for the creation of". They should still count though I suppose. But there probably were costume cards issued in the 1990's.