77 BK Piniella needed, Got 1 thanks

[biggies]

I need a decent 77 Burger King Piniella.

Thanks, Bob

Card received, no longer needed

[JollyElm]

Hey, I have a couple of them. Although this thread is old, check it out:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=261137

[biggies]

Can you send me your want list and I'll see what I may have for you

[Cliff Bowman]

I can line you up with the owner of these.

[biggies]

LOL, only need one. Those are all BK?

[Cliff Bowman]

Originally Posted by biggies

LOL, only need one. Those are all BK?

Yep, 750 of them.

[biggies]

Wow, well can I wrestle one from you?

[Cliff Bowman]

They’re not mine, unfortunately .

[silvor]

Know the story on how he got so many?

[canjond]

Originally Posted by silvor

Know the story on how he got so many?

I heard this guy is the owner. Explains a lot...

[ALBB]

so much for the rare BK Pinella

[JustinD]

Could you pass on that those rubber bands are triggering my OCD please.

[Cliff Bowman]

I don't know how the guy wound up with 750 1977 Burger King Lou Piniella cards, I would guess that he bought them in one of those storage lot auctions. I do know that he initially had no idea what they were, he thought they were just regular 1977 Topps commons and put them on an eBay But-It-Now auction for 9.2 cents a card with free shipping. I of course bought them and paid immediately. Unfortunately, for me anyway, a couple of hours afterward he canceled the sale and refunded my money. His excuse was that he researched them and was afraid they might be counterfeit, saying that it is against eBay rules to sell counterfeit items. I didn't buy that for a second, I think someone contacted him and told him what they are or more likely offered him much more than what I paid. Easy come, easy go.

[JollyElm]

Does anyone know a single person who ever actually got a 1977 Lou Piniella in a Burger King Yankees 'pack' that year? You know, inside the restaurant? No one I know ever did, and as kids we got about a zillion BK cards that summer. We only found out Sweet Lou's card existed many years later.

Has an uncut Topps/BK sheet ever shown up? If someone truly does have 750 Piniellas (yowza!!), I have to believe maybe they were printed on their own (full sheets of Lou) much later in the run (with the intent of including them in BK packs) and piled up somewhere as the promotion died out. Perhaps the ones that are out there (I have a few), just found their way into collectors' hands via the back door? Of course, this is just idle speculation, but nothing regarding that card's scarcity seems to make any sense.

[Cliff Bowman]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

I have to believe maybe they were printed on their own (full sheets of Lou) much later in the run (with the intent of including them in BK packs) and piled up somewhere as the promotion died out. Perhaps the ones that are out there (I have a few), just found their way into collectors' hands via the back door?

I have the same exact theory. I don't know how many were on a sheet, but I know they were in multiples of 11, probably a sheet of 66. That's a lot of Piniella cards. You can see that there is the right edge of another Piniella card on the left side of this miscut Piniella card to the right. I would imagine that many of the Piniella cards never made it to the Burger Kings, and the people who were supposed to distribute them either threw them away or put them up in storage.

[JollyElm]

I really gotta bump this and ask again...

Does anyone know of a single person who ever actually got a 1977 BK Lou Piniella inside of Burger King during the 'Summer of Sam'?

[judsonhamlin]

I did. Part of my set and I never bought them elsewhere. For what it’s worth- it would’ve been the BK on Route 18 in East Brunswick, NJ. Also my source for Star Wars glasses that year.

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

I really gotta bump this and ask again...

Does anyone know of a single person who ever actually got a 1977 BK Lou Piniella inside of Burger King during the 'Summer of Sam'?

welllllll...I too had tons and tons of 77 bk yankees cards as a kid...all from burger king.

my buddy, Tommy...also collected bb cards at the time...and he DID in fact have a 77 BK pinella he must have procured from BK as thats how we all aquired them? I offered him tons of high buck cards(for back then) including a high number 67 brooks robinson in trade...he'd never trade Lou to me! I finally aquired mine in the last 15 years.

[JollyElm]

That's good to know. So some Sweet Lou's actually made it inside the restaurants (I love BK, but I use that term loosely ) in some areas that year. I'm pretty sure the promotion didn't have specific start and end dates (that the public was made aware of), as the cards just suddenly appeared and then quickly disappeared.

Here's a proposed timeline of events:
1. Burger King starts issuing Yankees cards (a 22 card set plus checklist - no Lou Piniella)
2. George 'The Boss' Steinbrenner complains to BK/Topps, outraged that his favorite player wasn't included in the set (paraphrasing from Sparky Lyle's brief account in "The Bronx Zoo")
3. Topps prints (sheets of only?) Piniella cards and...
4. BK releases #23 cards in packs in some specific areas of the tri-state area (wow, I just realized that all states except for Maine, Hawaii and Alaska could be part of a tri-state area, but I digress) in the waning days of the promotion
5. Promotion dies out, leaving tons of Piniellas undistributed and subsequently warehoused and/or destroyed

Corrections, theories and other input welcomed.

[xplainer]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

I can line you up with the owner of these.

Rubber bands??
I almost puked.

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

That's good to know. So some Sweet Lou's actually made it inside the restaurants (I love BK, but I use that term loosely ) in some areas that year. I'm pretty sure the promotion didn't have specific start and end dates (that the public was made aware of), as the cards just suddenly appeared and then quickly disappeared.

Here's a proposed timeline of events:
1. Burger King starts issuing Yankees cards (a 22 card set plus checklist - no Lou Piniella)
2. George 'The Boss' Steinbrenner complains to BK/Topps, outraged that his favorite player wasn't included in the set (paraphrasing from Sparky Lyle's brief account in "The Bronx Zoo")
3. Topps prints (sheets of only?) Piniella cards and...
4. BK releases #23 cards in packs in some specific areas of the tri-state area (wow, I just realized that all states except for Maine, Hawaii and Alaska could be part of a tri-state area, but I digress) in the waning days of the promotion
5. Promotion dies out, leaving tons of Piniellas undistributed and subsequently warehoused and/or destroyed

Corrections, theories and other input welcomed.

Great memory, theory and topic.....I almost missed it, you should (re)start this thread in the regular post war room as many more eyes will see this.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by savedfrommyspokes

Great memory, theory and topic.....I almost missed it, you should (re)start this thread in the regular post war room as many more eyes will see this.

Yeah, I'll do that. When this thread 'ended' with the OP finding the card, I figured it was safe to just continue the discussion here, because there are quite a few of us who find the topic fascinating!

[silvor]

I've always thought the 1977-1980 Burger Kings were interesting issues.

Here's some interesting items about Burger King in general I've found that may fill in the missing holes of this issue.

In 1977 there were 175k of each card produced. (I wonder if more were issued in later years and in different markets?)
So 175k x 22 (of each card) = 3,850,000
So if there's 3 cards in a cello pack, that's 1.285 million packs.

How many Piniella's were included? Were some others removed for the Piniella's? (22 is easier to pack in 3's than 23. I did the math. )

There's only 2 PSA 10's for the BK issue. There's 25 for the Topps issue. Now the 3 card cello packaging tended to damage the cards, but I have to think that's partly because of the short print.

I checked and the average BK serves 846 people daily today. Not sure how many stores there were or how many were in NY or the tri-state area?
In 1970 (the closest year I could find), there were 350 BK stores nationwide.
In 1977 BK had financial issues. My guess is this was just a part of promotions to get people in the stores.