Tribute to 1993 Kraft - Mike Aviles

Today I've featured a tribute card to an oddball set, 1993 Kraft. This set was found in packages of cheese. For every package of cheese slices, you'd get one card.

Since the checklist had thirty cards, it made it rather difficult to complete by hand. If you were perfectly lucky and didn't pull any duplicates, it would take you 720 slices of cheese to collect the set (thirty cards times twenty-four slices of cheese per card). Thankfully, if I remember correctly, a complete set was available via mail if you didn't feel like eating all that cheese. I have a vague recollection of this, and it must be correct, as both my brother and I have all thirty cards. I don't think our family of four really went through 1400+ cheese slices in several months.

Much like Collect-A-Books, this card set was very interactive. At the top was a pull tab. Pulling on it would make the player stand up in 3D. Once this was done, there were statistics underneath where the player photo had been.

This set is similar to 1990 Post in that neither one had an MLB license, only an MLBPA license. So there were no team logos on the hats or jerseys. For whatever reason I have always enjoyed cards like this.

I choose Mike Aviles for this card because he's one of my favorite players.* My wife and I saw him play in Omaha a few times before he made his Major League debut. Both in person and on TV, it is fun to watch his trademark bat twirl prior to each pitch.

All that said, hope you enjoy the card!

* If you like Aviles, I've got one more tribute card you can check out. Many of you may not have seen it. It was the inaugural tribute card I did for the Goose Joak blog, in the style of 2007 Goudey. You can check it out here.

Comments

  1. I like looking at these images of sets from 15-20 years ago seamlessly recycled with images with players of today.

    I almost want to start looking for the cards on EBay if they actually existed.

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  2. Thanks! I'm really glad you enjoy them. They're fun to make. Let me know if you ever have a request in mind. I was on a roll with those for a while.

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  3. I wish that I was into cheese more that year. I have never seen these before.
    Was this a Spring Training photo or a minor league photo?
    I had never noticed this before, but look how huge his calves are.

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  4. Minor League photo. And yeah those calves are absurdly large!

    Mike Aviles winter league stats:
    .321 AVG
    .379 OBP
    .491 SLG
    0 HR / 112 AB (but three triples)
    5 SB
    4 CS
    15 SO / 10 BB

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