As many people will remember from their childhood, the late 1980s and the early 1990s saw an explosion in the sports memorabilia market. Card manufacturers jumped on the opportunity and flooded the market with millions of cards, basically killing a major part of the industry by the late 1990s. One of the side outcroppings of this surge in popularity was Kenner's introduction of Starting Lineup figures. These were a childhood passion of mine, and I'm sure most people have had an old Don Mattingly or Bo Jackson in their room at one point or another. This blog is a pretty good poke at some of the players that had plastic casts made, and probably would have been better off just being additional Bo Jacksons. http://www.sharapovasthigh.com/2009/09/40-most-undeserving-mlb-starting-lineup.html
A lot of ex-Astros on that list: Ashby Carr Oberkfell Young Andujar Cedeno Roger Cedeno Thompson James Wilkins
I would love to have an Andujar Cedeno action figure. A friend of mine pointed out that he combined the name of two Stros' greats.
They should've given this guy a hook up... Rollen Stewart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollen_Stewart I have more memories of that guy than most of the players listed on that blog. Of course, I primarily remember him from NFL games...but, dammit, he's still deserving. His John 3:16 sign holding career lasted longer than most MLBers.
This is equivalent to what we would be saying 10 years from now if they had made the following figures: Willy Taveras Chris Burke Jason Hirsch Taylor Bucholz Adam Everett Morgan Ensberg Jason Lane Daryle Ward Humberto Quintero
It seems there are really obscure players, and then there are REALLY obscure players that didn't make all-stars and statistical leaders. Since many of you are baseball cards enthusiasts, please answer: do the card companies make a card of EVERY player in the season, or only a select few?
How dare they mock Alan Ashby?! An Astros good guy from back when I actually gave a flip about baseball. I'm not sure, but can they just rename that list to "here are 40 guys that probably didn't use steroids"?
At the time that starting lineups were first released (1988), the general trend of baseball cards was to release just about everybody in the league, including prospects that weren't even in the league yet. It was not uncommon for a complete set of cards to have 750+ cards in the set. Starting lineups came out with their first two initial sets, in 1988 and in 1989, with a similar concept. Release a lot of players for every team. Basically, every major league team at the time had at least 5, sometimes 6 or 7 figures released, and, they weren't necessarily the same players from 1988 to 1989, thus you get a ton of "common" players in those sets. Less so in 1990 and forward, as Kenner scaled back production to smaller sets and focused on "stars" and rookies to an extent. But even then, you still get duds mixed in. The distribution model was of both national and regional releases. They would release "all-star" cases of players nationally. So you could buy Wade Boggs and Don Mattingly from coast to coast. They then released team cases regionally. So while the allstars were available everywhere, the common team players were only available in the city in which they played. Sometimes they got released to different regions randomly as well. For some reason, for example, Houston got cases of Bengals players. So, that Ashby figure languished on the shelves in Houston only. They did this for all sports until 1991, when all players were released in various assortments nationally. This leads to a very interesting point, which is stated in the article a little bit: the crappier players often demand high prices today. They were released regionally, often in low production numbers (there were 100,000 Don Mattinglys and 3,000 Alan Ashbys). When they languished on the shelves for 2-3 years, many were sent back and destroyed. (An interesting example is this is some Broncos players released in 1990 were on shelves in every Toys R Us in America for 2 years. Nobody bought them. They were mostly destroyed. They now bring premium prices in the 100s) So now, a resurgence in the market place has occured. Some players (especially 1988 and 1989 football) command hundreds and hundreds of dollars due to scarcity. Try to find a Bill Fralic, an offense lineman for the Falcons at the time. Nobody bought offensive lineman, and he was only available in Atlanta. They were mostly destroyed and some estimates have there being less that a dozen of so sealed examples left. Often sells for around $1,000 or so in great condition, and often into the couple thousands for a highly graded one. Anyways. I've nerded people out enough for a wall of text.
I still have my Ken Griffey Jr from the first time they made it with the Coin still wrapped and never opened.
Travis Lee and Pokey Reese were decent players. The rest of them are in their rightful place, can't believe Rafael Belliard isn't on there, but luckily someone spotted his futility from being stuck in canteen bottle and went over shot genius who came up with the idea to give Rafael Belliard his own figurine. This guy was so amazing that his career batting average (with at least 20 games played) is astounding .245. He only hit 2 home runs and drove in 142 RBIs . . . in his entire career, which spanned over 17 seasons and 1,154 games. He would've taken the cake for rewarding a player who did absolutely nothing in his career, played 17 years, and accumulated a $4.65 million lifetime earning. Oh, I'm sorry he did help the Braves to the World Series, twice, in which he practically became unrecognizable player on the roster when he actually did something to help the team against the Twins and Cardinals. In 91, he hit .375 against the Twins and .666 against the Cards in 96. .666 = That means that Belliard was spawn from Satan. More Clunkers below: http://www.displaycaseart.com/images-88fb-picts/88lee.jpg http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ineup+figure&ndsp=18&hl=en&sa=N&start=18&um=1
I have so many of those things in mint condition in an attic somewhere. The least deserving NBA one I can think of was Pooh Richardson.
Make sure there aren't any 1989 or 1988 regional football wasting away in your attic. You'd be shocked at the prices.
There very possibly could. I had 2 original Jordan's, the entire 96 basketball collection, Mark McGwire on the A's, man all kinds of things. It seemed like memorabilia in general dropped in price when Clinton left office.
