1989-90: Dawn of the super short print/insert/promo card?

esquiresports

Seeing the Wild Card post made me think about when short prints, inserts and promo cards first took off.

It seems that there was a surge of these in 1989-90. Maybe short prints, inserts and promo cards are better discussed separately, but here are early examples I can come up with:

1988 Upper Deck promo cards. First promo cards I recall. Joyner and Buice. Multiple variations for hologram placement. Could bring several hundred dollars.
1989 Hoops Detroit Pistons NBA Champions team card. This was a hot card when it first came out.
1989 Hoops David Robinson short print. Not a super short print, but it still helped drive demand.
1989 Pro Set Santa Claus. Another card that commanded around $100 at its peak (I'm not joking). This was a promo card, I recall.
1990 Pro Set Lombardi Trophy hologram. I remember this card bringing as much as $200. Limited insert. The hologram wasn't even well done.
1990 Pro Set Payne Stewart short print/insert. I believe this was included in the football boxes, as the NFL sponsored him. (Tagliabue may have also been a short print, but this card flopped from what I recall)
1990 Star Pics autograph inserts. There were some big collectors trying to assemble this set, paying significant money for any auto card they could find. I recall there being one autograph per case of 20 sets.
1990 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson/Nolan Ryan signed cards. Despite there being 1,500 or so of each of these cards, you didn't see them often. I think it's because they got spread out over a HUGE print run.
1990 Comic Ball promo sets with Nolan Ryan, Reggie Jackson. These were given out at the Anaheim National and were selling for $50/set.

*Honorable mention: 1988 Donruss Jeffries "short print." Definitely harder to find, but it was one of several short printed cards that year, relative to the rest of 1988 Donruss.

Hopefully this brings back some good memories for those of you into collecting at the time.

Please add anything that I missed.

Edited to add "promo" to title.

Cokin75

I'd say the '89 Upper Deck high numbers were really the first huge SP series. They weren't even short prints, but they came two to a pack and were absolutely on fire for quite a while. I think the Billy Ripken FF card was another, along with the Dale Murphy UD card. There were other errors prior to that that were highly sought after within the hobby (Nettles, Bump Wills are two that come to mind), but people were looking for those in a frenzy. I don't think that it was a coincidence the next year when there were tons of errors in the sets.

miwlvrn

1990 Pro Set Stanley Cup Hologram

jfkheat

Not only short prints and inserts but error cards as well. I remember when the 1990 DonRuss came out I bought apir of the Nolan Ryan error cards at a show on Saturday for $30 and sold them to a dealer at another show Sunday for $100.
James

mygotta

I remember late 80's and early 90's promo cards being hot. Impel made scores of the Little Mermaid promo card that sold for at least $20 at one point. The Twin Peaks set were really hot and the auto cards in those sets were extremely hard to get. They still do fairly well on eBay. The UD promos of Wally Joyner was very hot. I cant think of others, but it became that promo cards were flooding the market and card shows had them floating around everywhere.

miwlvrn

If you include parallels along with the other inserts, promos, and SP's, then my mind also goes to the 1990 UD French hockey cards. There brief but ridiculously over-inflated popularity craze has been discussed on the board before in other threads, but those stand out as one heck of a hot item for a little while.

zurbs17

I pulled the Payne Stewart from Pro Set and had no clue what was going on. Took it to a show a few weeks later and got 85 bucks for it. That was a huge chunk of change for me back then and I really wondered if I was making a huge mistake by not getting more. Guess not.

zurbs17

Regarding the UD French hockey cards. I remember at one show in Vancouver, a dealer was selling the high numbered series pack for 20 dollars a pack. He had a large sign saying that he would pay $50 for a Fedorov RC if anyone pulled one. There was no way I could afford to play that game and I heard later that it was easy for the dealers to tell which cards were in which packs so it's doubtful many Fedorovs were pulled from his boxes.

On a slightly different topic but this happened at that same show. 1989-90 Ontario Hockey League cards were hot and selling for $8 per pack with everyone after 1 of 3 Eric Lindros cards that were in that set. I just bought six boxes for $7 each.

My times have changed.

ChiefsFan1st

I cant remember what year it was, but I pulled one of them Nolan Ryan autos
out of the Upper Deck packs. Huge score for a kid! I traded it to a dealer for
a pile of junk wax

lahmejoon

The 88 Donruss Jeffries was an SP?!?