1991 Redemption Cards?

[sanjosefuji]

Anyone else remember the trading card company known as Wild Card?

If you're unfamiliar with Wild Card... they entered the hobby in 1991 and produced collegiate basketball, collegiate football, and NFL trading cards. One of the things that separated them from other products was their "Stripe Redemption Program"... where they randomly inserted cards with stripes into packs, like this one:

Stripes came in denominations of: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 1000. When you pulled one of these cards, you could redeem them for multiple copies of the specified card. For example, if you sent in the above Larry Johnson card, Wild Card would send you 20 copies of the same card, but without the stripes. Obviously, the higher the number, the rarer the card.

These days, 1000 stripe cards still command a decent dime on eBay. Example: a 1991 Derrick Thomas 1000 stripe recently sold for $51.

Another cardboard concept that made Wild Card unique were their use of "wild cards" or "surprise cards". These cards were issued as part of the base set, but collectors had the opportunity to redeem them for special cards or sets.

For example... collectors who pulled and redeemed the above "wild card", received a special ten card set which commemorated Super Bowl XXVI:

126A Mark Rypien, 126B Rickey Ervins, 126C Darrell Green, 126D Charles Mann, & 126E Art Monk

126F Thurman Thomas, 126G Bruce Smith, 126H Cornelius Bennett, 126I Scott Norwood, & 126J Shane Conlan

Like most early 90's products, Wild Card overproduced these sets... which means they're practically worthless. Beckett lists the set at $3, which isn't bad since 40% of the players are enshrined at Canton.

Anyone else miss the ingenuity that Wild Card brought to the table back in the 90's?

Happy Hump Day everyone... and sayonara!



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[whitney777]

Nice thread Fuji! I still have a decent amount of these. I don't remember ever redeeming the Wild Cards for the Super Bowl cards. I wish I had.

[rollandniles]

great memory! I have my share of wild card. Never pulled too many of the stripe inserts. I do have the SB set from the wild card. I liked their field force insert.

[Euro7star]

Wow i pulled some of the wild cards, no striped cards though. As a kid I thought the wild cards were just filler so i threw them away.

[sanjosefuji]

I wish I would have kept all of my stripes... but most of them were sold years ago when I sold the bulk of my collection. As for the Super Bowl set, I'll be giving one of these sets away this summer on my blog (during my annual summer contest).

Nice thread Fuji! I still have a decent amount of these. I don't remember ever redeeming the Wild Cards for the Super Bowl cards. I wish I had.

I really liked the Field Force insert set too. One of the guys who commented on my blog stated that the redemption worked in reverse too. If you sent in 1000 of the same card, you could receive a 1000 stripe of that card. I thought that was pretty cool.

great memory! I have my share of wild card. Never pulled too many of the stripe inserts. I do have the SB set from the wild card. I liked their field force insert.

Well... the good news is that they're not worth much anyways. Be glad you threw away Wild Card, compared to those who threw away their 50's sports cards.

Wow i pulled some of the wild cards, no striped cards though. As a kid I thought the wild cards were just filler so i threw them away.