Monday, March 17, 2008

It's in the cards

When I was younger, I was into baseball cards. I collected lots and lots of baseball cards and by the time was about 15 or so I had quite a collection. Eventually it was a hobby that I couldn't keep up with, as both the price and types of cards skyrocketed and I lost interest.

Then, when MLS came around I worked part-time at an elementary school and one of the things I used as rewards and incentives were soccer cards. I gave them all away of course but I remember some cool-looking cards. A favorite of the students was the Jorge Campos card but the Carlos Valderrama card was pretty popular too.

Lately, when I go to Target I've been checking their trading cards periodically to see if they have any soccer cards but usually end up leaving the section wondering why there are all these other types of cards but no soccer ones.

On Saturday, though, I learned that there are indeed soccer cards out there. Jaime Cardenas showed me a pack of cards he got from a friend, and among the cards he got in his pack as a David Beckham card.

These cards are put out by Upper Deck but beyond that I have no info, well, except for these pictures of course.

Some of the other cards in the deck that I didn't take pictures of were a Ronnie O'Brien, Nico Hernandez, Eddie Pope and some special Freddy Adu card.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In Europe these kind of cards are less known - we have the "Panini" stickers instead.(www.paninionline.com)

I stopped collecting them because they got more expensive and sometimes even lacked players because of licencing problems.

Non the less I sometimes miss the fun of trading them with my friends.

Anyway stuff like that helps to make the sport more trendy/cool/popular with kids and adults alike.

I'll have a look at home if I still find the World Cup 94 Album one with Cobi(He was the 1st sticker/player I had twice)

Ben

Travis said...

I remember the '94 cards. I even managed to get Cobi Jones to sign one after the US vs Russia game in Seattle.

I like the idea of giving kids in my soccer summer camp the cards for incentives, but, they're probably a bit out of my budget.