When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hi! PLEASE READ THIS CAREFULLY (There might be a quiz!) I have been known to give snap quizzes, but this is your lucky day. No quiz! Maybe next time. First things first, I DO NOT DISCOUNT MY BUY IT NOW LISTINGS. EVER. My prices are fair or I wouldn\'t be in business for more than 35 years. Check my response. Or don\'t. But please do not ask for a discount on ANY of my Buy It Now listings. Thanks for paying attention. This is a fully licensed product--licensed by both Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Player\'s Association. It is the rarest licensed TONY GWYNN card out there. Exactly 4,700 of these were made. Less than 600 are known to exist today. For real. I own exactly 266 of them. Again, for real. (I am an investor in a select number of items. Starshots is one of them.) In 1995, at a baseball card show in Massachusetts, I had a customer who used to buy some football boxes from me. One day, after the third or fourth time we met, he said, \"Jerry, I made a baseball set once.\" I didn\'t believe him. So I said, \"Really. Can you show it to me the next time I see you?\" Actually, he did better than that. He went right to his car and brought back a Nolan Ryan and Carlton Fisk. I said, \"What is this? I had never seen the item and I knew my sports cards since I had been collecting since 1957 as a kid. Then I stopped collecting for 24 years before picking it up in the early 1980s. Anyway, he said that there were 54 cards in the set, told me how much he paid for the two licenses (a lot!) and how much it cost to make (a real lot!) and how many of each player were made (4,700). So, I said, do you have a list of what you have left? He did. I wound up over the next two months buying everything he had. It cost me a lot. More than anything I have ever bought except my house. He even showed me a letter from Major League Baseball saying that this was one of the most ingenious items they had ever licensed. Before I concluded the deal, I told my attorney about the proposed sale and he said, \"Jerry, how do you know he and his wife only made 4,700 of each player?\" So, then I contacted two of the existing three companies and got notarized statements saying that, yes, they only made 4,700 of each player. One company made the cardboard backing, another company made the buttons, and a third company made the clamshell covering that went over the hard plastic button/pin/badge, whatever you want to call it. Each of the 54 players--27 National Leaguers in blue and 27 American Leaguers in red--feature action shots from the 1990 baseball season. The best photo probably is that of Benito Santiago getting ready to catch a foul popup. Anyway, after the sale was completed, I wrote Sports Collector\'s Digest to tell them about my find. Without telling me, they printed in their issue a couple of weeks later a two-page article titled \"Rare Baseball Pin Set Catalogued\" and named me as the person who came across the find. My phone never stopped ringing for three weeks. My wife was getting ready to throw me and the phone out. I sold singles from $8 to $45 each and I sold sets ($299 to $349). Anyway, the set was originally distributed by the owner to southern California drug store chains as singles only, so hardly anyone would buy the complete set since each pin was the same price--about $4.99. Why pay $4.99 for the semi-stars when you could get the super stars for the same price? The drug store chains had specified cash returns for what they didn\'t sell, so, for example, of the 4,700 Kevin McReynolds made, I once owned 4,644! Kevin was not a big seller in 1991, huh? However, there were less than 800 Ken Griffey, Jr pins left since that was the best seller. EXCEPT FOR PEOPLE I HAVE SOLD SETS TO OVER THE PAST 25 YEARS, I HAVE NEVER MET ANYONE WHO HAD A SET AND ONLY TWO PEOPLE WHO EVER BOUGHT SINGLES FROM ME HAD EVER HEARD OF STARSHOTS. If you are still reading this, I have a complete mint set on right now. IT IS THE ONLY COMPLETE SET ON AND THE ONLY ONE I HAVE EVER SEEN ON IN 21 YEARS! One person in Minnesota bought 10 sets from me in 1995. He told me he had one displayed the way the set was designed. It\'s a display easel (!) that sits up--of course, that destroys the mintness of the pin but he wanted one set like that. This is the only year of the product--1991--since to repeat it the husband and wife would have to pony up tens of thousands more to renew the license for the following year and a couple hundred grand more to produce a set for 1992. They declined. STARSHOTS IS THE RAREST LICENSED BASEBALL SET MADE IN THE LAST 60 YEARS. Or more! One question that I had of the owner after I purchased his inventory was why he had numbered the set from 101 to 154 since there were no prior sets. He kind of whispered his answer. The reason he did it was to mimic how one usually starts his or her checks from a bank account--101. There are almost 20 Hall of Famers in this set, not counting Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, or Jose Canseco, as well as Hall of Famer TONY GWYNN, ONE OF THE FINEST HITTERS IN BASEBALL HISTORY. I am selling the TONY GWYNN from the set for $20.88, with $4.60 shipping in the continental U.S. Thank you for reading this far. If you would like to see more photos of Starshots, check out my listing for a complete set on . 1) Payment is due within four days of purchase. Paypal preferred but other forms of payment are fine, too. 2) If you have a question, please ask. 3) Please see my other Buy It Now and sale-style listings 4) I am proud of my perfect response on , encompassing more than 6,800 separate buy and sell transactions over the past 22 years. I also ship worldwide through \'s Global Shipping Program. Check or details. I have already shipped to more than 25 countries and 47 states. Stay safe. mask up. And thanks for reading this far. Jerry P.S. My five best selling singles from the phone calls and the subsequent two ads I took in Sports Collector\'s Digest in 1995 were Ozzie Smith, Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey, Jr., Roger Clemens and Don Mattingly. I once sold a pin dealer 100 Mattinglys and he sold them all at shows in New York in 1995 and 1996 for $38 each. AGAIN, THIS TONY GWYNN IS FROM THE RAREST LICENSED BASEBALL SET IN MORE THAN 60 YEARS.
