Something different, I think

Since I was tired of looking at Tiffany's face at the top of my other blog, I decided to grab a box from the garage to see if I could find anything interesting.  Of course, it's not hard considering the shear volume of boxes that are out there.  So today I wanted to share with you an odd find that I had never seen before.

Behold, a set of 1992 First Edition Baseball Hall of Fame Heroes Cards, err Official Baseball Card Stamps.  What in the world are baseball card stamps.  Well in 1992, the St. Vincent Philatelic Services, Ltd. decided to manufacture and release a 12 card set of standard size cards featuring some of baseballs well known HOFers.  Of course, being the Philatelic Service that they were, the cards doubled as peel-away stamps and are actually official legal postage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The cards have an interesting design, featuring a head shot of the player in a black/white/sepia color over a faded gold two tone background.  The borders deckle edge to simulate a stamp design and there is a clean yellow boarder around it.  Each card has enough for $4.00 worth of postage. 

The backs feature a plain white background with all the pertinent text you would expect to find on the back.  Everything from when they were born, died, where they were from, and their position are printed on the top.  The states included most, if not all of their playing history including World Series stats. 

As you can see by the back of the box, the players include Ty Cobb, Whitey Ford, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth.  The set also features Satchel Paige which is kind of cool since you don't see many cards of him out there other than from the last 10-15 years.  The sides of the box are also printed with the inscription "A Unique First In The Trading Card Industry" on one side, and "Baseball Card Stamp Set Is Legal For Postage" on the other side.  Here are a few scans of some of the cards, both front and back.

Here are 9 of the player stamps.  You can click on the image to zoom in and get a better look.

 

And here is what the backs look like.

I couldn't find much about these anywhere so I really don't know what the print run was.  Since it was in the early 90s I can only imagine it was quite large.  Plus, if people actually peeled them and used them, that could make the print run less.  I'm still not sure if they were actually printed in St. Vincent or the Grenadines or if they came out of some dusty warehouse in Miami.  I check around on Ebay for sales of these.  You can pick up sets anywhere from about $5 all the way up to $40 depending on where you look.  There are even FDC versions already on envelopes floating around out there.  

Definitely something a little different. But that is always expected when you pull a random box from the garage.