One of the Smartest Ideas in Football Trading Card History

Wild Card "Wild Stripes"



In addition to being one of the smartest ideas anyone ever had in trading cards, these were also probably the most underrated. By itself, the idea seems almost stupid, honestly. Get a card that looks like the guy's normal card, but it has a stripe with a number on it, in values of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, or 1,000. And if you wish, you can mail that card in, and recieve however many of that card is represented by the number on the stripe. So if you got a Joe Montana with a 1,000 stripe, you could mail it in and get 1,000 of the regular version of that card. Okay, that is kind of dumb, because who would want a thousand copies of one card? Ah, but you're missing the big picture here. Although their values decreased by the time Wild Card declared bankruptcy and cards could no longer be redeemed, that one Montana 1,000 was worth - in one card - as much a 1,000 of the normal version, and even today that Montana is still worth about about $200, which is amazing, considering that this was in an era where a card worth $2.50 was still something to get excited about. A card made greatly more valuable by a simple design change to the base card... Why, that sounds an awful lot like something done in -



EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TRADING CARD BRAND BEING PRODUCED TODAY.
Yup, Wild Stripe were the first ever parallel set of inserts ever made. (Overall, parallel sets could go back to some of those, "oops, we ran out of red ink, let's use blue" sets from the 20s or whatever, and Topps Tiffany was around in the 80s, but the old stuff was more of an error, and Tiffany was more of a separate set kind of deal, like Topps Chrome or Score Select now) Within just a couple years, parallels would be a standard thing (Topps Gold, Skybox Impact Colors, Upper Deck Electric, Topps Finest Refractors, Stadium Club First Day of Production, Score Artist's Proofs, Wild Card Superchrome, Pro Set Power Gold, etc.) and today, there seems to be at least six million different parallels in every set, ranging from a different color border to cards with jersey swatches and autographed cards made from the actual printing plates. Parallels are a total hobby juggernaut now, and it's all thanks to Wild Card.

I'll do more of these eventually, too, but as you can see, they're not as fun or as easy to do as the Stupid Idea ones, so they won't be as big.