Sportkings Revived After 73 Years
June 28th, 2007Longtime collector Brian Price has decided to resurrect the Sport Kings series. The original Sport Kings were produced by Goudey Gum Company in 1933 and 1934 and featured 48 athletes spanning all sorts of sports like swimming, football, basketball, and boxing. What would motivate someone to dust off and resurrect a popular vintage series? Apparently his love for collecting the series…and that’s never a bad thing:
“As a longtime collector of sports cards and memorabilia, I have always been a fan of the original Sport Kings Gum set and I wanted to be able to continue the tradition for modern sports card enthusiasts and historians,” said Price. “The time was right to undertake this project and I believe that the brand will appeal to a broad audience.”
Pretty cool. In the era of nasty corporate battles between the giants of the industry, it’s nice to see someone enter the industry that actually has some care or concern for the customers. I dug up some photos of the original series (courtesy of Vintage Card Traders and Scottsdale Cards).
It’s easy to see why vintage collectors would fall in love the eye-popping original paintings. The new Sportkings promises much of the same:
Sportkings Series A will pay tribute to big names from a wide range of athletic pursuits and will maintain the integrity of the original release. Each base card features original artwork and the roster includes such stars as baseball’s Roberto Clemente and Ted Williams, hockey’s Patrick Roy and Rocket Richard, football’s Troy Aikman and Bart Starr along with many others that truly rank among the Kings of their respective sports including; Mia Hamm-Soccer, Mark Spitz-Swimming, Greg Louganis-Diving, Hulk Hogan-Wrestling, Nigel Mansell-Motor Sports, to name a few.
The real question will be price. They claim that “Sportkings Series A will be released in October, 2007 and it will be one of the most limited trading card products ever made.” If that’s one of the criteria, let’s hope we’re not looking at $500 packs. It would be nice if an “average” collector could afford to get in on this cool series.
