Someone made a post on Blowout Forums asking for people to post their rarest non 1 of 1 cards.  This is right in my wheelhouse, so instead of just posting a card, I ended up posting several … along with some tl;dr descriptions 🙂  It was intriguing enough, I thought I’d share it here as well (with a little more verbiage as well!)

RAREST Non 1/1 Jose Canseco Super Collector Cards

FLEER VAULT UNRELEASED PROTOTYPES
These were mock ups that never materialized, and came out after the Fleer bankruptcy. They are on paper stock instead of card stock, and I have the backs as well.  AJ, the guy I got these from, said he ended up having to go to two or three different people to track down all the fronts and backs.  I sure am glad he did!  There is something about owning mock ups that were never meant to see the light of day.

1992 FLEER ULTRA BOARD ROOM PROTOTYPES
Also not on card stock (they are on a more glossy paper stock) are these board room prototypes of 1992 Fleer Ultra.  Instead of being destroyed, they were kept by Fleer, and were still mounted on the presentation board.  I carefully removed them to place them in holders, but also kept the mounting boards as well.

IN PLAIN SIGHT
Michael Paraskevas (the illustrator of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast) – He made several sets of his hand drawn cards. I wrote an article about the acquisition, and Mr. Maraskevas wrote me personally correcting some information I had on it. He said there were 500 made and were made only for other art directors. I have only seen 2: the one I have and the one on ebay right now. It truly makes me wonder how many out there are left. How many were just dumped, etc.

1989 TOPPS GOLD BORDER ALL STAR
This *might* be my favorite in this category: 1989 Topps Gold Border All Star. This was from the Topps Vault at some point and BGS certified, but the guy before me busted it out of the case.  I have seen other players such as Roger Clemens and MAYBE one other player, but NEVER two of the same.

1991 UPPER DECK SILVER SLUGGER CHROME
There are only 2 others to my knowledge of this in existence: 1991 Upper Deck Silver Slugger Chrome prototype. The company who came up with the chrome technology pitched this to Upper Deck, but they turned it down. Topps didn’t, and … well … the rest is history.

1992 ACE NOVELTY
1992 ACE Novelty Prototypes – Remember those ugly looking troll toys of the 90s? That company tried for an MLB license, and was not awarded it. This set has had cards randomly pop up from time to time, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than 2 of the same card before. As it goes, the story is this: There were a very limited few of these that were actually produced and they were to be pitched to MLB. Rather than be destroyed, the guy who had them ended up giving them out to kids in his little league team. Some of the cards have fetched hundreds of dollars, because they have haunted player collectors for decades. The Cansecos have only come to light to my knowledge in the past year and a half.

Speaking of sheets, they made PALLETS of the sheets, and were covered in a warehouse for quite some time. When MLB denied their license, a worker was ordered to take them to the landfill and supervise them being covered. Guess what? He swiped a sheet for himself  Shown below is my collection of them – some are full cards and some are oversized blank backs that were cut from the sheet mentioned above.

2000 CHEX MIX CYBERACTION CD ROM CARD
I’ve NEVER seen this before, and that is apparently because it is a prototype that wasn’t meant to be released. There could be 1 or there could be 100, but I’ve never seen another nor have I seen one on a checklist.

2000 PACIFIC CROWN ROYALE UNCIRCULATED PROOF
In 2000, Pacific came out with Crown Royale cards – beautiful die cut cards with a number of parallels. The “proofs” were transparent die cut slides that fell less than 1 to a box. There was also a parallel of this serial numbered to 50 and can be impossible to find.

During the Pacific sell off, 5 sheets of sets with NO die cut and NO serial numbered (just a gold stamp stating proof) came to light. There were only 5 sheets made and they were for the Pacific Archives.

None of the cards shown above are serial numbered or even recognized by any checklist / price guide, but they hold nearly (if not just) as much clout as the new 1/1 high end cards. They are rich in history and mystery – perhaps the main reason I enjoy these so much is because none of them are really supposed to exist!