Action Packed is more well-known for the 168-card set that was released in 1992 and 1993. However, they also had a test release in 1988. It was done with the hopes of receiving an MLB license. They six-card test must not have impressed the decision-makers, because they didn't get the license until another stab at it four years later.
Coming off of his MVP season in 1987, Andre Dawson was among the six players included in the test set.
Justin Steele got his first relic card in the 2023 Topps Update set. As a member of the NL All-Star team, Steele was included in the All-Star Stitches insert set. That means he follows my relic collection rule, having a relic card in a season he played for the Cubs, showing him as a Cub.
There are now, by my research, 105 different Cubs players that have met my rule and I have a relic card for each of them.
| Arismendy Alcantara | Kyuji Fujikawa | Christopher Morel |
| Albert Almora | Kosuke Fukudome | Bill Mueller |
| Moises Alou | Nomar Garciaparra | Jose Nieves |
| Adbert Alzolay | Matt Garza | Mike Olt |
| Jake Arrieta | Mark Grace | Corey Patterson |
| Javier Baez | Mark Grudzielanek | Joc Pederson |
| Darwin Barney | Jason Hammel | Felix Pie |
| Cody Bellinger | Ian Happ | Juan Pierre |
| Francis Beltran | Rich Harden | Mark Prior |
| David Bote | Brendan Harris | Aramis Ramirez |
| Kris Bryant | Kevin Hart | Anthony Rizzo |
| Damon Buford | Kyle Hendricks | Addison Russell |
| Marlon Byrd | Jason Heyward | Jeff Samardzija |
| Jeimer Candelario | Bobby Hill | Kyle Schwarber |
| Victor Caratini | Rich Hill | Jorge Soler |
| Andrew Cashner | Nico Hoerner | Alfonso Soriano |
| Welington Castillo | Eric Hosmer | Sammy Sosa |
| Starlin Castro | Todd Hundley | Geovany Soto |
| Aroldis Chapman | Brett Jackson | Justin Steele |
| Hee Seop Choi | Jacque Jones | Marcus Stroman |
| Tyler Colvin | Eric Karros | Seiya Suzuki |
| Willson Contreras | David Kelton | Dansby Swanson |
| Pete Crow-Armstrong | Craig Kimbrel | Matt Szczur |
| Juan Cruz | Bryan LaHair | Ryan Theriot |
| Yu Darvish | Junior Lake | Josh Vitters |
| Wade Davis | Derrek Lee | Darryle Ward |
| David DeJesus | Jon Lester | Todd Wellemeyer |
| Ryan Dempster | Ted Lilly | Randy Wells |
| Blake DeWitt | Kenny Lofton | Rondell White |
| Jason Dubois | Greg Maddux | Patrick Wisdom |
| Jim Edmonds | Trey Mancini | Jerome Williams |
| Carl Edwards | Carlos Marmol | Kerry Wood |
| Mike Fontenot | Gary Matthews, Jr. | Carlos Zambrano |
| Dexter Fowler | Fred McGriff | Ben Zobrist |
| Jackson Frazier | Matt Mervis | Julio Zuleta |
Please indulge me with one more Vine Line post...
I showed this postcard a week ago, the 1992 All Ivy Team. It features 28 of the all-time great Cubs players. This isn't the only all-time Cubs greats offering in 1992, though.
The Cubs also had a set of 28 cards, sponsored by Old Style and given away at Wrigley Field on August 28, that features franchise greats.
That led me to see if the 28 players on the All Ivy Team were the same 28 in the Old Style set.
Nope.
The picture above is a mash-up of the two. Four players on the All Ivy team did not have a card in the Old Style set. Three of the four exclusions were still active in 1992 (Andre Dawson, Lee Smith, and Ryne Sandberg) and that is my guess as to why they were not in the Old Style set. The other left out of the set of cards is Bill Nicholson.
That also means that four players in the card set are not on the team picture. Those four are Ken Hubbs, Randy Hundley, Bill Lee, and Rick Reuschel. All four were decent but definitely not deserving of inclusion on the All Ivy team.
Yesterday I showed the Vine Line postcard set from 2001 and mentioned never bought the set because I thought I already had it.
Below is the reason for my mistake.
The 2001 cards are on the left. On the right is the Vine Line set from 2006, which I did have. Side by side I think you can see the reason for my confusion. The two sets are nearly identical. When I saw listings for the 2001 set I just assumed I had it because the cards are so similar to the 2006 cards.
Both sets have cards that show...
twilight.... infield and grandstands.... ivy.... marquee.... scoreboard.... winter.... and silhouette.
There is a near-twin for seven of the eight cards. That's not much originality shown by the 2006 promotions team. They just took the old set and found pictures that matched the same theme.
I thought that I had all of the sets issued by the now-defunct Cubs newspaper, Vine Line. But I was wrong as the 2001 set was missing. This was discovered when I saw a listing for the cards. When I was putting the cards into my binder I figured out why I had overlooked this set and I go into that tomorrow.
For today, let's just take a look at the eight cards, which were given as a premium to those who bought a new one-year subscription to Vine Line.
Topps Chrome Update came out a couple of weeks ago. The set is 2/3 the size of the regular update set, 220 cards compared to 330. There were eleven Cubs in the Update set and Chrome Update has seven of the eleven.
I've got 21,316 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.
2010s: 2014 Topps #391 Blake Parker The Cubs were Parker's first of seven big-league teams over a career that spanned from 2012 - 2021. In 2014 he spent a majority of the season in AAA, leading the PCL in saves with 25. His time with the Cubs was much less successful, going 1-1 with an ERA of 5.14.
