1952, 1953, and 1983-1998 Mother's Cookies

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

Mother's Cookies came into being in 1914 in Oakland, California, supposedly as a response to to Woodrow Wilson's declaration that Mother's Day would start being observed as a national holiday. According to the Mother's Cookies history website (and a Kellogg's press release), Noah Wheatley was running a newspaper stand at the corner of Market and Kearney in San Francisco when he decided to buy some cookie recipes from a customer.

A year later, he opened a one-man operation on 12th Avenue in Oakland and baked some 2,000 cookies a day. His vanilla cookies did very well despite the fact that he sold his cookies for $1 a box -- which is the equivalent of $24.41 today. Must have been some damn good cookies.

The bakery did well, but to expand the company, Wheatley had to sell his home and his piano to get the money for a larger facility. It panned out pretty well, leading Wheatley to move to a large facility at 810 81st Street in Oakland, where it stayed until 2006.At that time, sales had declined and costs had increased to the point where Mother's shuttered its Oakland manufacturing facility and moved production to Ohio and Canada.

Corporate ownership of Mother's changed hands on several occasions. At some point, a Dutch company called Artal NV bought the company. That's according to Wikipedia, whose entry on Mother's Cookies is an utter mess. The history section treats Archway cookies as a "sister company" from its beginnings in 1936 (it's not...it became a "sister" only in 1998) and spends half the history entry about Archway. Anyway...

At some point, Artal either changed names or sold itself to Beledia N.V. (which is Belgian or Dutch depending on whom you believe), because that is the company that sold Mother's along with 7 other companies to Specialty Foods Corp. in 1993. That takeover loaded up a bunch of debt on the company (typical), and Specialty struggled in its conglomerate form to be profitable.

Specialty first tried to double down with its purchase of Archway in 1998, but that did not work either. So, the combined Mother's and Archway companies were sold in one transaction to Italian giant Parmalat. That did not work well. Parmalat was the Enron of Italian companies in some respects, racking up massive debts and creating false financial statements tied to bogus billings to shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Mother's and Archway were lucky that they could be sold off as assets; the Parmalat scandal completely destroyed Parma Football Club.

Mother's was sold with Archway to Catterton Partners, a private equity company, in 2005. The first thing that these guys did was to close the Oakland operations in a cost cutting measure. That did not work well either, and the Catterton folks used the combined Archway & Mother's Cookie Company to book nonexistent sales to keep its lines of credit open with Wachovia Bank. Shortly thereafter, Archway & Mother's declared bankruptcy.

Mother's went away for a little while, and hipsters immediately went nostalgic for the brand's signature animal cookies -- creating t-shirts saying, "Goodbye, Mothers." That goodbye was a fairly short goodbye, however, as 2009 saw Kellogg Company purchase Mother's Cookies name/assets out of bankruptcy so that another generation can gnaw on those pink and white little animal cookies.

EXEMPLARS

These images are downloaded from The Trading Card Database. While I probably should have picked an exemplar from each of the one hundred eighteen sets that Mother's Cookies issued, I decided instead to use just one from each year.

1952

1953 

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

DETAILS
Mother's Cookies sets were incredibly popular among collectors in the mid-1980s through the 1990s. As mentioned above, there were a total of 118 different sets issued by Mother's Cookies. Two of those were in 1952 and 1953 and exclusively featured players and managers from the Pacific Coast League. Otherwise, starting in 1983 and ending in 1998, Mother's issued the following sets:

1983: Giants
1984: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1985: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1986: A's, Astros, Giants, Mariners
1987: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, Mark McGwire
1988: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Will Clark
1989: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey Jr., Rookies of the Year, Griffey Hand Cut, Griffey Uncut Sheet
1990: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Rangers, McGwire, Canseco, Clark, Nolan Ryan, Matt Williams
1991: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Rangers, Nolan Ryan 300 Wins, Ken Griffey Sr. & Jr.
1992: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Rangers, Nolan Ryan 7 No-Hitters, Jeff Bagwell, Chuck Knoblauch
1993: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Nolan Ryan Farewell
1994: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Mike Piazza, Tim Salmon, Piazza & Salmon
1995: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres
1996: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Mariners, Padres, Rangers
1997: A's, Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Rangers
1998: A's, Astros, Dodgers, Giants, Padres

EDIT: This list of sets from TCDB led to a discussion on Twitter that some of the other individual player sets other than the 1989 Griffey set may have also been issued in uncut strips/sheets. For example, Nick Vossbrink (@vossbrink on Twitter) pointed me in the direction of a tweet from Larry Robidoux (@mrdsgrumpy), who showed a photo of the Nolan Ryan 300 Wins set from 1991 as an uncut strip:



This discussion led me to a quick eBay search to see what I could find out there. Lo and behold, it appears that nearly every single-player set was available in an uncut form, even as early as the 1987 and 1988 Mark McGwire Sets:




When found in the wild in retail, the cards were issued in an interesting manner. Like most food issues, the cards were included in the packages of the cookies for which they were used as a promotional item (credit for this photo goes to The Junior Junkie on Twitter):

For the team sets, the cards combined the best parts of a stadium giveaway with the promotional aspects: while complete sets included 27 or 28 cards, kids going to games in the various cities in the 1980s would receive packets with just twenty of the cards in them. As Giants collector and SABR member Nick Vossbrink noted on the SABR Baseball Cards blog, the packet from the stadium giveaway included a redemption coupon for eight more cards. But, there was no guarantee you would receive the eight cards you needed.

Baseball Cards Magazine noted in October 1984 that these cards would be given away in this manner in varying quantities depending on the city in which the game was located. So, in San Francisco and in Oakland, 20 cards were given to the first 30,000 through the gates. In San Diego, the first 25,000 received their 20 cards, and in Seattle, only the first 20,000 received cards.

Starting in 1987, Mother's started issuing cards of individual players, as the cookie package above for Ken Griffey notes. Going back to the SABR blog, Nick noted that distribution until the early 1990s would include only area-specific cards. So, if you lived in the Bay Area, you were guaranteed either a card of either a Giant or an Athletic. But starting around that early 1990s timeframe, any of the sets that Mother's issued might show up anywhere that the cookies were found.

Also changing in the early 1990s were the stadium giveaways. Turning once again to the SABR blog, Nick mentions that the giveaway started to include 20 cards plus eight copies of some card -- like his 8 Alex Diaz cards. That led to kids running through the stadium trying to find someone to trade with to complete sets. Now that is a great idea to resurrect.

Nick was kind enough to send me a scan of the envelope that held the cards in the early 1990s. As you can see, it describes the fact that each envelope contained 7 of the same card and that everyone needed to help one another to complete a set.

HALL OF FAMERS:

Lots of sets here, so let's go!
1952: Joe Gordon & Mel Ott

1953: None.

1983: Frank Robinson

1984: Nolan Ryan (Astros), Rickey Henderson (A's), Joe Morgan (A's), Billy Williams (A's), Dick Williams (Padres), Rich Gossage (Padres), Tony Gwynn (Padres), Willie Mays (Giants), Willie McCovey (Giants), Juan Marichal (Giants), Gaylord Perry (Giants), Orlando Cepeda (Giants)

1985: Ryan (Astros), Don Sutton (A's), B. Williams (A's), D. Williams (Padres), Gwynn (Padres), Gossage (Padres)

1986: Morgan (Astros), Ryan (Astros), D. Williams (Mariners)

1987: Ryan (Astros), Yogi Berra (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Reggie Jackson (A's; single card and shared card with Canseco), Catfish Hunter (A's), Rollie Fingers (A's), D. Williams (A's), R. Henderson (A's), D. Williams (Mariners)

1988: Ryan (Astros), Berra (Astros), Tommy Lasorda (Dodgers), Sutton (Dodgers), Tony LaRussa (A's), Dennis Eckersley (A's), D. Williams (Mariners)

1989: Craig Biggio (Astros), Berra (Astros), Ken Griffey Jr. (solo 4-card set & Mariners), Lasorda (Dodgers), Eddie Murray (Dodgers), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gossage (Giants), Ryan (Rangers)

1990: Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Murray (Dodgers), Ryan (solo 4-card set & Rangers), LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gary Carter (Giants), Griffey (Mariners), Randy Johnson (Mariners)

1991: Griffey (4-card set with his dad & Mariners). Biggio (Astros), Jeff Bagwell (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Murray (Dodgers), Carter (Dodgers), Ryan (4-card solo set & Rangers), LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Jackson (A's), Gossage (Rangers)

1992: LaRussa (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Eckersley (A's), Gossage (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Griffey (Mariners), R. Johnson (Mariners), Ryan (Rangers & 8-card solo set), Ivan Rodriguez (Rangers), Biggio (Astros), Bagwell (Astros & 4-card solo set), Lasorda (Dodgers)

1993: Rod Carew (Angels), Biggio (Astros), Bagwell (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Mike Piazza (Dodgers), Pedro Martinez (Dodgers), Ryan (10-card solo set), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gossage (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Griffey (Mariners), R. Johnson (Mariners)

1994: LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Trevor Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners), Gossage (Mariners), Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers & 4-card solo set & 4-card set with Tim Salmon).

1995: Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers), LaRussa (A's), Eckersley (A's), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners)

1996: Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Lasorda (Dodgers), Piazza (Dodgers), Gwynn (Padres), R. Henderson (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), R. Johnson (Mariners), Griffey (Mariners), I. Rodriguez (Rangers)

1997: Murray (Angels), Carew (Angels), Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), Piazza (Dodgers), Gwynn (Padres), R. Henderson (Padres), Hoffman (Padres), I. Rodriguez (Rangers)

1998: Bagwell (Astros), Biggio (Astros), R. Johnson (Astros), R. Henderson (A's), Gwynn (Padres), Hoffman (Padres)

ERRORS & VARIATIONS:

For putting out cards for so long, Mother's Cookies did a really good job of avoiding errors. Across all those sets, there are only four errors listed on the Trading Card Database, and all went uncorrected.

1952: Misspelled Marino Pieretti's last name.
1984: Bob Schmidt's card actually features a photo of Wes Westrum
1991: Misspelled Jim Deshaies' last name.
1996: In stating how Rick Wilkins was acquired by the Astros, the card notes he was traded for Scott Service. Wilkins was actually traded for current Mariners manager Scott Servais.

All in all, pretty solid work.

MY TAKE

When these cards were first issued in my lifetime in 1983, they seemed as foreign as something issued in Japan to me. These cards are not rare by any stretch of the imagination, but they were not cards that showed up with any regularity in Milwaukee in the 1980s or in Atlanta in the 2010s.

I don't have any better take or more insight to add than Nick provides on his blog and on the SABR blog. I highly encourage you to read Nick's personal blog post (linked here) in addition to his post on SABR that I linked above. Both provide a ton of information about this set.

As for finding these on eBay, they are out there. With so many years available, if you like these cards, you can find them for sale there.

1981-1986 All-Star Game Program Inserts

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

Major league baseball was probably the first sports league to hold an All-Star Game. That first All-Star Game was not in 1933, however, but rather it was held on July 24, 1911 when a team of American League all-stars took on the Cleveland Naps in a game put together to benefit the widow of future Hall of Famer Addie Joss.

Joss had died from tubercular meningitis on April 14 after falling ill and fainting prior to a scheduled exhibition game against the Chattanooga Lookouts. Joss was a very popular player around the league, with the Baseball Almanac linked above quoting Walter Johnson as saying, "I'll do anything they want for Addie Joss' family." The All-Stars included Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, Home Run Baker, Hal Chase, Walter Johnson, and Clyde Milan, among others.

Perhaps thinking that the fans deserved something a little extra in their $3 program in Cleveland for the 1981 All-Star Game, someone made the decision to add small cutouts -- 180 in total -- of all the players for whom the fans could vote. The foldouts were repeated in the programs through 1986.

EXEMPLARS

All of these photos were downloaded from eBay auctions. Finding intact programs with the inserts is not difficult, though not every program for sale shows the inserts. And, I could not find a 1983 version quickly that showed the photos, so you're stuck seeing the backs there.

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

DETAILS

Each program contained fold-out pages containing the 180 players whose names appeared on the All-Star Ballot -- and representative pitchers -- during the years 1981 through 1985, and 260 in 1986. When separated, each "card" is about 1.25" x 2", assuming that the photo was cut out while leaving a thin white border.

Obviously, to get these cards first hand, you had to purchase the program. I have memories of seeing ads during certain games where one could send money to a P.O. Box and receive a copy of the program in return. I will admit that I don't know if the ad shows up in this televised version of 1982 All-Star Game -- a very good quality version from Montreal's Olympic Stadium with a very young Al Michaels on the call. 

I had to link to this wonderful version of the game, which is worth watching almost as much for the Montreal montage at the beginning as anything, but almost more for the brief interview of Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow. Also fun -- this game actually has all the advertisements included. There's nothing like watching 36-year-old Wendy's ads.

Another aside from that 1982 game: I'd completely forgotten about the fact that Robin Yount almost did not make the All-Star Game thanks to the fact that those damn Yankees fans thought Bucky Dent should be in the lineup ahead of him. Finally, I appreciate the fact that the Montreal fans booed Reggie Jackson.

Anyway, there is nothing I could find easily that provided information regarding how many programs were printed each year such that we could figure out how many of these inserts were printed.

Interestingly, these sets are not included in the Standard Catalog, though PSA includes them in the Player Collection sets in their registry.

HALL OF FAMERS

Considering that these inserts represent the starting lineups and the top pitchers from each team, the number of Hall of Famers is pretty high.

1981 (28)

Rod Carew, Tony Perez, Eddie Murray, Alan Trammell, Robin Yount, George Brett, Carlton Fisk, Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Paul Molitor, Jim Rice, Dave Winfield, Carl Yastrzemski, Rollie Fingers, Rich Gossage, Willie Stargell, Ozzie Smith, Mike Schmidt, Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Ted Simmons, Bruce Sutter, Don Sutton

1982 (27)

Harold Baines, Bench, Brett, Carew, Carlton, Carter, Dawson, Fingers, Fisk, Henderson, Jackson, Molitor, Joe Morgan, Jack Morris, Murray, Tim Raines, Rice, Cal Ripken Jr., Schmidt, Simmons, Smith, Sutter, Sutton, Trammell, Winfield, Yastrzemski, Yount

1983 (30)

Carew, Murray, Yaz, Ripken, Trammell, Yount, Wade Boggs, Brett, Molitor, Fisk, Simmons, Baines, Henderson, Jackson, Rice, Winfield, Bert Blyleven, Dennis Eckersley, Morgan, Ryne Sandberg, Smith, Schmidt, Carter, Dawson, Raines, Carlton, Fergie Jenkins, Ryan, Seaver, Sutter

1984 (27)

Baines, Blyleven, Boggs, Brett, Carew, Carter, Dawson, Fisk, Gossage, Gwynn, Henderson, Jackson, Molitor, Jack Morris, Murray, Raines, Rice, Ripken, Ryan, Sandberg, Schmidt, Simmons, Lee Smith, Ozzie Smith, Trammell, Winfield, Yount

1985 (28)

Carew, Murray, Ripken, Trammell, Yount, Boggs, Brett, Molitor, Fisk, Henderson, Jackson, Kirby Puckett, Rice, Winfield, Morris, Seaver, Sandberg, Smith, Schmidt, Carter, Dawson, Gwynn, Raines, Eckersley, Gossager, Ryan, Baines, Morris

1986 (25)

Blyleven, Boggs, Brett, Carlton, Carter, Dawson, Fisk, Gossage, Gwynn, Henderson, Jackson, Molitor, Murray, Puckett, Raines, Rice, Ripken, Sandberg, Schmidt, Seaver, Smith, Sutter, Trammell, Winfield, Yount

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

The only error in any of the sets actually comes in 1982, and it affects a recently named Hall of Famer. Rather than picturing Jack Morris, the photo is actually of Kevin Saucier. It's an easy mistake to make -- you know, all those white guys with mustaches all look alike, even if Morris threw right-handed and Saucier threw left-handed.

MY TAKE

I never had any of these when I was a kid, and I really did not know anything about them at the time. If I had, perhaps I would have come up with the $5 or so to get one of these programs. 

Of course, these were the good old days when voting for all-stars involved real ballots and potentially ballot-box stuffing.  That ballot-box stuffing was a legitimate enterprise -- when fans would talk their friendly ushers into giving them dozens of the punch-card ballots. Once obtained, poking out the chads of the players you voted for was like a kids version of the 2000 election in Palm Beach County -- you had better be sure you didn't leave any hanging chads! You'd end up with a ton of little rectangles of cardboard covering yourself. 

I can only speculate how these got to be listed on the Trading Card Database as "oddballs." It's probably the result of their inclusion in the registry sets for players with Beckett. After all, you have to have some more difficult to find items to make things interesting, right?

As I mentioned above, finding programs with these in them is not difficult. The programs will vary in cost, so shop around.

It's also not difficult to find these little slips of glossy paper for sale in team sets either on eBay or elsewhere. 

So, what do you guys and gals think -- are these "baseball cards" or are they just photos cut out of a magazine? Do you include them in your collections?

Edit: Since I wrote this post, it appears that the Trading Card Database and Beckett's stopped including the 1986 set in their listings -- perhaps because they have the photos on both sides as some of you noted.

1980 Nostalgic Enterprises 1903 NY Highlanders

INTRODUCTION TO THE SET

First off, welcome back.

To start back into the 1980s Oddball world, let's start with an oddball that seems to be relatively known yet little is written about it.

According to the Standard Catalog, Nostalgic Enterprises was a pseudonym for a collector issuing the cards in 1980. It is unclear whether this collector had plans to expand his/her brand into additional sets, or if they just had a hankering to have cards of the first team to represent New York in the American League.

The team itself was nothing special -- finishing in fourth place with a 72-62 record. According to Wikipedia, the team started off being called the Invaders due to invading the Giants' territory in Manhattan. The Highlanders played their games a few blocks north and west of Coogan's Hollow [where the Giants played at the time] and at one of the highest points of Manhattan Island called The Hilltop. The name Highlanders referred both to the team's location and to its team President Joseph Gordon. Around the turn of the 20th Century, one of the world's most famous infantry units was a British unit known as the Gordon Highlanders.

The back of the card notes that Nostalgic Enterprises is located in Wayland, Massachusetts, which is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, of just over thirteen thousand people in 2010 located about thirty to forty minutes outside of downtown Boston. I searched the Massachusetts Secretary of State's Corporations Database just in case this was either an existing company or that some other record would show up, but nothing turned up.

EXEMPLARS

DETAILS

Each of the seventeen cards in this set are the standard size of 2.5" x 3.5". From the other exemplars that I have seen online, it appears that the photos were all drawn from this team photo of the members of the 1903 New York "Americans":



As a family website dedicated to the life and photos of Kid Elberfeld notes (as does the back of the card), this team photo was a part of the Boston Public Library's collection. Oddly enough, the collection it is drawn from is the McGreevey Collection -- a large collection of photos and memorabilia put together by the leader of the Boston "Royal Rooters," Michael T. "Nuf Ced" McGreevey. Perhaps McGreevey added this to his collection to commemorate the year that his Boston Americans won their first World Series in 1903?

In any event, I have no information about how many sets of these were printed, how many were distributed, or how they were distributed. The Standard Catalog notes that the cards are unnumbered and originally sold for "about $2.50."

HALL OF FAMERS

Out of the seventeen cards in the set, four of them represent Hall of Famers: Jack Chesbro, two cards of Clark Griffith (the team manager, which I would assume includes that all-words card above), and Willie Keeler.

ERRORS/VARIATIONS

I'm guessing it is an uncorrected error on Elberfeld's card that the word "tabasco" was misspelled. The Trading Card Database does not have anything listed.

MY TAKE

I know so little about this set that I really can't say too much. So, what do I know? Well, it's not the easiest set to find, for starters. Nothing on eBay as best I can tell, and the only auctions/sales of these cards that I've found are from years ago. A complete set of these sold in November of 2013 on "Kevin Savage Cards" for $10. Another complete set sold as part of a much larger Yankee lot back in 2006.

And somehow, somewhere, the Dimebox champion Nick was able to unearth two of these cards and send them to Zippy Zappy of Cervin' Up Cards/Torren' Up Cards about two-and-a-half years ago.

I have never seen any of these cards myself in the wild. In fact, I never knew this set existed before today.

If you have information on this set, please comment below about it.