Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Pack Sampling: 1992 Pro Set Series 1 jumbo pack


It's 2020. Do you know where your children are?

Hopefully everyone had a safe New Year's Eve! I'd say that as long as long you're not seeing pink elephants right now, and are still in possession of all of your digits, than you probably didn't go overboard last night. As for my rockin' evening, I read some, had a beer, watched As Young As You Feel, and was asleep by 10:30pm; so in other words... I had myself a typical Tuesday night.

I have no idea if anyone's actually reading blog posts today, but I'm doing one anyway. I'm not one for resolutions, and I don't see much from the last decade (or the previous one for that matter) that's worth looking back on, so instead I'm gonna open up a now 28 year-old pack of cards, and bore the snot out of everyone by posting about it.

I've been jonesin' to open today's pack pretty much ever since I laid eyes on it back at September's card show. I had no idea whether a dollar was too much to pay for it or not, but I had never opened a pack of 1992 Pro Set before, and it was a jumbo pack, so...

And yes, you read that right, I've never opened a pack of 1992 Pro Set before, and after opening it, I realized that I've also apparently never owned a single card from the set before. I don't how this happened, because I've certainly opened enough packs/boxes of the three previous years. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I believe I came up with answer though: 1992 was about the time I stopped collecting football cards (big mistake on my part), so this is probably why this set is new to me, because for all intensive purposes, it is!

Normally I'd try to show all of the pack's contents, but with 31 cards (plus a game piece) in this particular pack, it's not really doable. Instead, I'll just be looking at the keepers, and on the off chance someone needs anything from this set, I will list the numbers of the non-keepers at the end.

The first card out of the gate was this John Elway insert. The pack says that this set was randomly inserted in packs, but seeing as how it was right on top, I can't help but wonder if these were much more common in the jumbo packs? Aside form the placement of his right hand, it's not bad looking card, the gold bits are attractive, especially since they haven't been sullied from 17 years of being handled.

This guy was pretty good, still holds a ton of records too. Although I did see that his most games played (382) record might be in jeopardy, well, that is if Adam Vinatieri has enough left in the tank, as he's only 18 games away from breaking Morten's mark. Speaking of Adam Vinatieri, if he plays even a single game next season, he'll break George Blanda's record for oldest player to plan in an NFL game.

This is a great image, although it's one of the few times that Pro Set logo, as well as the name bar, feel sort of intrusive. I was reading a thing a while back, and someone said that had he played for anyone other than the 49ers, John Taylor would be considered the second best wideout of all-time, as sharing duties with Jerry Rice really hurt his overall numbers. There probably is a lot of truth to that statement, but had he played for anyone other than the 49ers, he probably wouldn't have as many rings, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that those rings are probably more important to John, than being higher up in the all-time receiver rankings.

I was already on the fence about doing so, but after getting the '94 Finest refractor from Marc, and now this, I'm gonna be adding John Taylor to my list of player collections. I need to go see if I already have any more of his cards though...

The backs are pretty standard for Pro Set, which is a good thing.

As mentioned, I've never seen this set before, so I was kind of surprised to see seven different subsets represented within this pack, and I don't even know if that's all of them. I didn't even realize too that Warren here had some weird powder on him until after I got done scanning the card, the powder came off, but I didn't want to take the time to re-scan the card.

I can't recall if I've already talked about it on here or not, my apologies if I already have, but I've been watching a lot of older games on YouTube as of late, and it's amazing how many guys from the late 80's and early 90's that I've either forgotten about entirely, or had forgotten just how good they were -- Steve Atwater being one of the latter. After watching a few Broncos games, as well as some of his highlights videos, I've decided to add Steve to my list of player collections too.

I have no real reason for doing so, but I always feel like I have to keep any cards featuring the Matthews clan.

Another subset? I haven't looked to see if there are anymore Innovators cards, but if there are, I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is my favorite of the subsets.

Interesting! Looks like I now have another name to add to the list, thankfully though, Pete's got less than ten cards, so this "collection" shouldn't be too hard to complete.

Yet another subset? You sure don't hear much about Dave anymore! I don't have many Seahawks in my team binders for random cards that I like, so this'll be a welcome addition.

Now I know for sure that this one is indeed a subset, and it looks like a fun one. And pulling cards of Barry Sanders is always a good thing, getting one is about as close to an inserts as one can get without actually pulling an insert.

Overall, I really like the look of the cards, although from what I've seen , for some inexplicable reason, Pro Set changed the base set design for series 2, and it wasn't for the better! I was hoping to pull a Reggie Roby (he's got a card in both series), obviously I didn't, but I'm still really happy with the purchase, and would most likely buy more (series 1) packs if I ever come across them.

As for the extras, I don't want to have to look through anyone's 1992 Pro Set needs, so if you do by need anything from this set, here's a list of what I'm not keeping: 10,15,44,56,71,89,99,135,145,147, 187,199,207,226,237,242,270,293,327,332,337,354,388. And remember too, these are all free for the taking :)


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

24 comments:

  1. Nice you put this on here today; really enjoyed reading it.

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    1. Thanks Kevin, I appreciate you stopping by!

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  2. Atwater could HIT!! One of the best hitters ever. Well done Jon, glad that you went "out of the box" for this post.

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    1. Yes, and I really miss that style of play! Thanks, it's like that saying "You need to think outside of the box, otherwise you might just end up in one".

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  3. Great post. I'm sure I opened more than a few of these back in the day but really don't remember these. Nice photos and pull. Fun way to start the year.

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    1. That happens to me too, especially on the blogs, somebody will show something that I'm pretty sure that I've seen before, but upon seeing it again, I can't remember if I have ever actually seen it or not.

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  4. Fun pack to open. Your new PCs are starting to overlap with some of mine, as I also collect Atwater and hang onto Morten Andersen, Taylor, and the Matthewses (even if I don't necessarily seek them out). I'd be interested in #s 10 and 15, by the way.

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    1. I guess it's a good thing that some of these guys had the bulk of their cards produced in the era that they did, that way no one has to fight and/or overpay for them, as there's enough copies for everyone!

      And as mentioned in my email, your cards have been set aside.

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  5. Not a bad-looking set. I collected very little football, random packs in 94 and 95. Happy New Year, P-Sleeves!

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  6. Loved Pro Set football...right up to the point where they switched from this to a different design for Series Two. I don't know why they did that. This one seems very much like their previous designs, but I was fine with that.

    Anyway it's nice to see these again.

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    1. This first series is really nice looking, and like you said, looks like a Pro Set set, but that series 2 though, if I could use that barfing emoji here, I would :)

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  7. I had tons of Pro Set in 1989, 1990, and 1991 but hardly any in 1992. I think it wasn't as widely available or produced, possibly due to Pro Set's financial troubles? That's how I remember it. More likely there were so many higher-quality sets that were selling well, shops didn't bother stocking this stuff.

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    1. It all sounds plausible to me. They were having difficulties, but by '92, they certainly would've have more competition than they did, say back in '89. If it was produced in less quantities though, the online prices certainly don't reflect it, as boxes can be had for next to nothing, although as usual, the shipping charges are a bit prohibitive.

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  8. Oh wow, a walk down memory lane for sure! Happy New Year!

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  9. It's always fun to see what people get from old packs like this one. Thanks for posting! (Also, I haven't opened a pack in ages. Might have to do something about that in 2020.)

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    1. You heard it here first folks, Gregory needs packs, lots of packs... don't worry Gregory, we got you :)

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  10. Loved seeing all of these names from the past. Best of luck on your John Taylor PC. My whole family except me are 49er fans... and my dad was especially a big fan of Taylor. The good news is he's very affordable for being such a popular player in the Bay Area. I think I've seen his autographs at shows for under $5.

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    1. Thanks. He seems to have a lot of different Pro Line autos out there, a lot more than I've seen other players have. I'm sure that there's some reason why, I just haven't looked in to yet.

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  11. I'm in almost the same boat as Chris above. I've got tons of '89 and '90 Pro Set (many in unopened clear cello packs that were stadium giveaways back when the Raider were playing at the L.A. Coliseum). But I'd never seen 1992 Pro Set. Thanks for sharing, Jon.

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    1. Sounds like you're sitting on a gol.. er... uh... tin mine with all of those unopened packs :)

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  12. I have never see those gold inserts. I am impressed!

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    1. Looking at COMC, they seem to be pretty common, so if you end adding them to your sets list, I don't imagine that you'll have too much trouble in getting them.

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