After 12 seasons away, the Brewers brought police cards back for the current generation. Last year's set is damn near impossible for me to find--I didn't see any of them at a Milwaukee card show a couple of weeks ago (and yes, that's another story).
This season, the team went a different direction by all appearances. Instead of giving out a full team set, it looks like this year that the team is only giving out 6 cards:
The Brewers kicked this year's giveaway off like they always did--with a stadium giveway of the cards at Miller Park. Rather than just giving the cards away in cellophane packages, however, the team went all out this year--harkening back to the days of our youth with actual wax packs like those below.
These cards are pretty expensive on eBay right now, but I think they will come down in price over time. This is because the team has printed more than just the ones given out at the park to distribute to various police departments across the state to give out.
They only gave 1000 packs to each department, but unlike past years, these cards are not carrying designations for the individual departments. They all look the same--just like the ones you see here.
And, another reason that the cards will go down is that the giveaways have proven very popular--so popular, in fact, that the team printed MORE packs to distribute to 20 different police departments across the state--1,000 went to Wausau, from one news report.
So, perhaps I should have waited for this year's set price to come down, but I couldn't do it after getting shut out on last year's cards so far. I bought two packs and opened one at a price that felt just a bit extortionate.
The things we do for the cards that are cool.
The wax pack just makes it perfect! I'm not a fan of the recent trend of "comic" players and scenarios (ESPN does it all the time and it's awful), but I am so thrilled that you like the cards so much and even got them in hand. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I would have thought they were as cool if they didn't come in the wax pack. Just holding a new wax pack in hand was such a throwback. I wonder if Topps could do some sort of wax pack direct to customer sale that would be as cool.
DeleteWhile I agree with Peter on MLB's present treatment of its players as "super heroes" -- really terrible in a few ways -- the "comic" cards are fun and so much more advanced than those '80s Police cards. Pretty snazzy.
ReplyDeleteThey are definitely better than the 2-3/4"x 4-1/2" things on white card stock that were Police Cards in the 1980s!
DeleteThat is cool. Comic-style cards are fun in small doses, wouldn't want to see a large set of them.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Had there been a full set of 30 of these, it would get very old very quickly.
DeleteSuper cool. I like it when two hobbies come together into one item. Whether it's coins or stamps embedded into cards or cards designed to look like comic books... I'm 100% for it. The fact that they're working together with local police departments makes it that much cooler.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see them doing this again. I know other teams did those police sets, but the Brewers are the team I associate most with them.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely criminal that they look this neat.
ReplyDeleteThese are so cool and it's fantastic that they commissioned Pop Fly Pop Shop to do them rather than doing a cheap knockoff or AI slop. 9 total would've been nice for single page reasons but any more would've risked becoming tedious.
ReplyDeleteAlso, congrats on landing these. They seem to be pretty rare so far.