1979 Metallic Creations Signature Miniatures

[FireGardy]

Does anybody have any information on these or the manufacturer beyond what is in the Standard Catalog? I'm looking for the Carew statues if anybody has them. I have 2 versions of the card:





I also found these described as postcards, and they don't have the black border. There is a lot of them on ebay right now http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=350482299871



Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[sschauer]

Here's all the info I could come up with with slightly expanded checklist. They all are pretty scarce and some of the statues have never been seen and doubtful the exist. I can attest that the Rose statue has never been seen and no card has been seen but a proof artist card does exist which is also blank backed so that might be what the blank back version is for all.

Not too much is know about this issue but the company seems to have gone into bankruptcy and ceased production late into the run so some of the statues are extremely scarce and may not exist at all. Manufactored by Metallic Creations they issued pewter statue in an original box (name stamped on side) with an enclosed card. Statues are approx 3”-3 1/2" tall depending on the pose. Card is approx 3.5" x 4.75" each player also has a facsimile autograph on the front the back has career statistics on them. The cards are unnumbered and have sequenced them in alphabetical order. The statues and the cards were available for $7.95 upon release. The players listed as SP's were produced late in the run and are available in lesser quantities than the other players listed in our checklist.

Checklist believed to be complete at 24


Hank Aaron
George Brett SP
Rod Carew
Cesar Cedeno SP
Roberto Clemente SP
Ty Cobb
Steve Garvey
Lou Gehrig
Ron Guidy
Roger Hornsby
Walter Johnson
Ralph Kiner
Sandy Koufax SP
Davey Lopes
Christy Mathewson
Willie Mays
Willie McCovey
Thurman Munson SP
Mel Ott
Pete Rose SP
Babe Ruth
Nolan Ryan SP
Tris Speaker
Honus Wagner

[FireGardy]

I also have this large framed card. I don't know much about it except that I was told that it was from around the time period of the set. It is about 11" square. The same seller had a Mays and Ryan that he sold at the same time as this Carew; all three were different sizes. It was framed in California according to the sticker on the back of the frame.

[laughlinfan]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane, FireGardy! Just had a nice long phone conversation with my mom, who has been my collecting "buddy" for the past 40 years or so. We collected these when they came out since we really liked collecting sports figures, among other things. I will tell you the history as we collectively remembered it: The first eight were all old time Hall of Famers, and were issued with the "photo" cards - no borders slightly rounded corners, and nothing on the back but the photo watermark - printed on Kodak paper or something like that. They then put out another set of players, and did this for a few small series, I think. These had the black bordered cards that had stats on the back. They also started issuing the original 8 with the new style card as well, so you can see those 8 in either variation. I think they got to about 16 or so and started having financial issues. I thought the Carew and the McCovey were at the tail end of what we were able to get from the company directly. I remember we got the McCovey with a broken bat and weren't sure if we could get a replacement. I think that got us to 18 different, all with cards. From then it was picking up the remnants whenever we found them. The ones after the original 18 started looking pretty crude. The sizes were odd, and it seemed like they had gotten a different sculptor. (Maybe a more affordable art school drop out!) The George Brett looked more like Pete Rose. Clemente and Munson were almost laughable, I think. (Just going on memory here). When we did pick up the Brett, Clemente, Munson, and Cedeno over the next several years, they didn't have cards, and I've never seen cards for those. I first saw a Ryan card about ten years ago, and had no idea he was part of the set. I've never seen a Ryan statue. I also have never seen a Rose card or statue. There were a couple of Rose pewter statues put out at nearly the same time in honor of his 3000th hit and his hitting streak, but none was issued in this series that I ever saw. In the 2009 Standard Catalog, they list 21 in the set, with no mention of Rose, Brett, or Clemente. They only list a Cedeno card but we have only the statue. They allude to the scarcity of the later subjects, and say that a Munson statue has been confirmed, but then list the statue at $10. The prices seem pretty low across the board, based on the scarcity, especially beyond the first 8 in the set. I will try to get a picture of some of ours posted later.

[FireGardy]

I know my 2010 Standard Catalog has the 24 listed and my 2004 Beckett Catalog only had 20 cards in the set; the 2010 catalog also mentions pewter and silver plated statues. I'd like to see some of the statues especially the silver ones. There are several of the old time players listed on ebay with statues (either card variation) that never seem to sell. I'm sure a Ryan would pull decent coin and Rose would probably draw an insane price. I paid more for each of my Rod Carews than I did for the lot of the 8 old time guys which surprised me a bit. There are singles of a few more modern guys on ebay right now that have the the little logo thingy on them like the one just over Rod's right shoulder on this which would lead me to believe they are blank backed.

They must have changed artists on the prints at some point, too. My '04 Beckett says P. Herek was the artist (I've seen his name on a Gehrig image but can't make out artist on other cards pictured online) while the '10 Standard Catalog has J. Payette listed as the artist (he did the Carew).

[laughlinfan]

Got my mom to send me a picture. No laughing at the quality display case I built - I was only 15!

[FireGardy]

Originally Posted by laughlinfan

Got my mom to send me a picture. No laughing at the quality display case I built - I was only 15!

That's awesome. I see you have two Rodneys swinging in front of his card. Which cards/statues are you missing?

Do you remember where you ordered/got them from?

I took a closer look at the scan of my big Carew, and it appears that there is more image to the sides that was cropped out for the cards probably meaning it's not a blow-up of one of the issued cards.

[FireGardy]

I'm not so sure how short printed the Koufax is; there are 30 available between two sellers on ebay.

[jcmtiger]

Here is the Cobb, I still have the statue, but sold the card about a month ago.

Joe

[FireGardy]

I got this reply from a seller on ebay who has a several of the cards:

I purchased the complete inventory from Pacific
Trading Cards when they sold to Donruss and I had hundreds of these.
I have sold these for years on ebay. The SP symbol stands for Signature
Preventures.

He only has the blank-backed ones with the black border and sp logo. I'm venturing a guess that the original 8 without borders came first, then the normal cards, and then the blank backs (maybe after or around when Metallic Creations when under?)

I got my lot of the 8 originals without borders yesterday. I'll maybe try to get them scanned. They are on photo paper with blank backs and rounded corners. All the artwork is from Payette except for the Gehrig.

[laughlinfan]

I guess I need a Ryan and a Rose statue, if they exist, and a Rose, Cedeno, Brett, Clemente, and Munson card if they are out there. Anyone have any of these?

I never knew these as Metallic Creations - always as Signature Miniatures, which is on the (early) cards and engraved on the bottom of most of the figures. I think they were offered in the back of the Sporting News - if not we ordered them through the Sports Collectors Digest.

Seems like the scarcity might be different for the card or the figure, and the scarcity of the card may depend on which type of card it is. I wouldn't have thought Koufax to be one of the scarce figures or cards as I think it was one of the first 14 or 16 issued, but it's been a few years!

[con40]

No Ryan statue has ever been seen publicly and it's considered non-existent. I'm not sure about the Rose.

[sschauer]

Originally Posted by con40

No Ryan statue has ever been seen publicly and it's considered non-existent. I'm not sure about the Rose.

Ditto on Rose statue have only seen this artist proof never seen a card.

[FireGardy]

Here are the 8 I got last week. All printed on Kodak photo stock.

[laughlinfan]

Thanks for the info on the Rose and Ryan - based on everything I know and have seen, it would make sense that neither of these figures was produced.

How about a card for Cedeno, Brett, Clemente or Munson? If any of these exist, I would think it would most likely be the Cedeno, as that is the only figure of the 4 that actually looks like it was manufactured as part of the original Signature Miniature set. Does the 2010 Standarad Catalog list a card and a statue for all 24 players?

I made a quick stop back at my mom's over the weekend (spinning through to fetch my daughter from a summer camp) and I found it interesting that the McCovey figures we have appear to have been manufactured to remove the Signature Miniature engraving on the bottom - almost as if they either soldered a thin layer of pewter over it or scraped it out. Again, I remember the McCovey being touch and go as far as getting it and getting the broken one replaced - I think it was the last one that we were able to get with a card, so I am thinking the company was just about belly up when they started making McCovey. I also looked quickly at the others, and one of Brett, Clemente, or Munson had a different company name on the bottom. All three had the player name in a box just like the orginal series, so they definitely look to have been an attempt at continuing the series, but all three were larger than the others. The Clementes were very odd looking, as the depth dimensions were not proportional. Looking head on, they don't look as odd, but from the side they look to be about half the depth they should have been.

[FireGardy]

The 2010 Catalog only states that it is unclear whether a Munson card exists. Says a Munson statue and Ryan card are confirmed as existing.

[FireGardy]

Is it possible that the set is larger than we thought?

I was screwing around on google and found these from Baseball Digest:
Oct 1979

Apr 1980

Jul 1980

Mar 1982


The pictured statues match the ones in the Signature Miniatures set.

I also found this Sporting News clip (google won't allow you to see whole article)
Volume 187


Players on checklist but not these ads (6):
George Brett SP
Roberto Clemente SP
Steve Garvey
Thurman Munson SP
Pete Rose SP
Nolan Ryan SP

Players in ads but not checklisted (15):
Cy Young
Dizzy Dean
Joe Tinker
Johnny Evers
Frank Chance
Al Oliver
Bob Horner
Vida Blue
Willie Stargell
Bob Lemon
Maury Wills
Lee Mazzilli
Frank Tanana
Gaylord Perry
Sandy Hawley

edit found this:
Oct 1978 lists Garvey and Rose

[laughlinfan]

Sandy Hawley?

Any chance that you can see the actual ordering blank from those baseball digests in your search?

[FireGardy]

The magazine just had a generic order form for ordering pretty much any of the items in the ads. If you look above the order coupon you'll see the above offer has the same address (Baseball Digest).

You can poke around on google books and read the whole magazine http://books.google.com/



I pieced together several snippets from the Sporting News 187 to get this:



Metallic Creations in El Monte CA
It also gives us the initial 8 statues. I couldn't get google to give me the middle of the order form.

[laughlinfan]

Very nice research! Quite a mystery now - I can't imagine they would run this ad issue after issue with players that were never produced. But I I'm pretty certain we never were able to order any but the ones that we have now - Dizzy Dean would have been high on our list - we always liked old Diz - and Lee Mazilli would have made his way to our house since I was and am a Met fan. I'm pretty certain that there aren't a ton of figures out there beyond those on the checklist. The figures we were able to acquire and the checklist are a dead on match, if we really are quite sure no Rose or Ryan were issued. And why no listing in any of these for some that were issued? Very odd.

[FireGardy]

It's pretty weird that there would be others listed for sale if they never existed. Unfortunately, I can't find anything else really online about these beyond the ones we know exist. I guarantee if they were stamped with "Topps" there'd be sets all over we could reference no matter how few were made. Somebody must have a stash of these somewhere. I thought it would be a headache looking for variations when I read this was a 20 card set; at possibly 39 cards it would seem to be a real nightmare. I wonder how long the silver plated statues were available as they seem to have disappeared after the Sporting News offer.

[FireGardy]

got some more of the middle of the SN ad:



CALL COLLECT

[laughlinfan]

I honestly think (aside from maybe proofs) that this is a 20 card set, and a 22 figure set, but I'm a little less certain today than I was a couple of days ago. I would think that somewhere along the lines some card or figure of a player I never saw would be added to the Standard Catalog - at this point the only one that is listed that I never saw a card or staue for is Rose, and it sounds like that never got past the proof stage.

Hey maybe you can call that number collect and see if they have any left!

[FireGardy]

I don't think they'd answer. It looks like the number switched over to United Microwave Industries in the early 80's. I doubt they'd answer either as it seems that they made software for Commodores.

It does seem odd that they'd advertise for statues that never were produced especially when you look at one like the Dean which was mentioned in 3 ads over the course of nearly a year. I guess unless some other evidence turns up that we won't really know what was made. Even if we are back at a 20 card set, there are the variations that seem to affect most/all of those cards and the silver plated statues which may or may not have extended past the original 8 looking at the advertising. We could really use someone with a stack of Sporting News, Baseball Digest, and probably SCD magazines from 1979-1982 who also has a lot of free time to look them over.

I was looking at my 04 Beckett Catalog last night. It only lists 3 of the 7 SPs that the '10 catalog has (Ryan, Koufax, and maybe Cedeno?). It stated they were marked SP for the difficulty of the statue of those 3.

[FireGardy]

I made up a composite of the cards I have found images of so far. I marked the cards that do not fit the catalog description of what is supposed to be on the card.

[FireGardy]

[laughlinfan]

Thanks for all of your research - all the figures shown are the same 22 we have ever found. I can try to get you a better picture of the Cedeno in a couple weeks.

Looking back through the posts, "Signature Preventures" seems like a very odd name for a company, doesn't it? I almost wonder if the artist got to make up some of these cards and sold them with that funky trademark to distinguish from the Signature Miniatures company. Would it be reasonable to assume that the last batch with the SP trademark were sold without statues?

[FireGardy]

Originally Posted by laughlinfan

Thanks for all of your research - all the figures shown are the same 22 we have ever found. I can try to get you a better picture of the Cedeno in a couple weeks.

Looking back through the posts, "Signature Preventures" seems like a very odd name for a company, doesn't it? I almost wonder if the artist got to make up some of these cards and sold them with that funky trademark to distinguish from the Signature Miniatures company. Would it be reasonable to assume that the last batch with the SP trademark were sold without statues?

It seems like a terrible name for a baseball card set, but if Metallic Creations folded and the Signature Miniatures statues weren't included I suppose you had to call them something. You may be on to something as I haven't seen any card for sale with the SP mark accompanying a statue, but then again it looks like you might have a few in your display. Maybe they were used to clear out the remaining inventory and then issued just as cards?

[FireGardy]

Originally Posted by sschauer

Ditto on Rose statue have only seen this artist proof never seen a card.

Do you own this Rose?

[sschauer]

Originally Posted by FireGardy

Do you own this Rose?

No but I know who does.

[FireGardy]

How big is it? Was it by any chance framed in El Segundo, CA?

[sschauer]

it is 10 x 15 and no markings on back on where framed or any other info.

[mrmopar]

I have several of the Garvey statue and cards and a few other easier to come by cards of different players. I think I may have gotten at least one from the guy described earlier as buying out the stock, as I remember getting photo copies with my statue showing what I seem to remember as flyers promoting and selling the statues and possibly even a story on them (Maybe from SCD?). I am not 100% sure I kept the copies he sent, but I will have to see if I can find them if I did.

It was interesting that it was noted these were purchased from Pacific Trading Cards. I live in WA and remember visiting Mike Cramer's store before he was producing cards at the volume we later knew as Pacific Trading Cards. That shop was a favorite stop when we visited my sister and drove by. My parents would usually agree to stop for my brother and I. At the time, he was doing minor league sets and those Cramer Production sepia old timer cards. I remember getting several boxes of 1984 Topps FB from him, as they were $5 each!

A few years back, he was selling old stock out of what was once a retail store in front of the card factory in Lynnwood, WA. I didn't see anything like the statues, but he had bundles of stuff, just like you'd see in his catalogs (pennants, pins, books, cards, etc).

[laughlinfan]

Made it back a week ago to take a look at our set - thought I would share a few pictures. First, the intact Cedeno, which I think may have been the last one we picked up.

[laughlinfan]

Here are a couple of shots of some of the later figures in the set - check out the differences in composition, quality, and the markings on the bottom. Made us question if they were all really from the same set - certainly different issuers. They all had a similar style, and the name plate on the base of the statue at least seemed to suggest they were trying to continue the series.

This is Carew, Cedeno, Clemente, Munson, and Brett:

[laughlinfan]

I promised FireGardy I would post some of the old literature my mom pulled out for me - I think this was the first ad we saw for these. More scans to follow!

[FireGardy]

It's too bad that they didn't stamp all of the statues on the bottom. I typed the company name from the Clemente into google but didn't come up with anything. I suppose it's possible this set ended up in several different hands over the few years these were made. The cards on the order blank look like the borderless version that are printed on photo stock. Has anyone ever seen a silver plated statue?

[laughlinfan]

I do know that the original eight were shipped with the borderless blank backed "photo" cards, as shown in this ad. I have only seen that version used for the first eight, and of course they did change over to the black bordered stat back version for those eight fairly soon in the run.

I didn't include it in the photo, but I think the McCovey we have almost looks like it had a manufacturing mark on the bottom, but then was melted or soldered over to remove it. The bottom looked very strange.

[laughlinfan]

So a few months later we go from 8 to 12:

[laughlinfan]

New distributor, and sneaking Guidry into the mix...

[laughlinfan]

Ugh. Confusing. This must be from a bit before the last one, since it only lists 12(?)

[laughlinfan]

Less than a year later - you guessed it! Another name attached to these.

This lists 17 statues now - missing the following:

Brett
Cedeno
Clemente
Garvey
Munson

[FireGardy]

At least it looks like I don't have a silver Carew to hunt down; I hope they just used images of the proofs for that ad because I'd hate to think that there may be other cards out there without black borders. I guess that piece mentioning the Sports Legends explains the Sandy Hawley that appeared in one of the ads that I posted earlier. I was wondering why a jockey was on that list.

[laughlinfan]

I don't have the SCD article this ad refers to (maybe someone has some archives to share), but this is an ad from 16 years later. Interesting stuff - sounds like this guy ended up with what was left in stock, maybe? At least figure wise. He was looking for cards in quantity to go with them.

[Dennis K]

Does anyone know something about this Rose statue?? I purchased this statue in the early 80's at a show in Philadelphia. The base is stamped Gartlan Assoc. I do not think it is part of the Signature Miniature statue group, but it is of Pete Rose statue, it's pewter, and came out at the time of the other statues. thanks for any info.

[sschauer]

The Rose figure is from Gartlan they gave this figurine free to customers who ordered $75 or more worth of product. 1000 issued not signed or numbered. They are rarely seen think the size only about 1" and fact hard to tell who it is many were lost/destroyed/discarded.

[mrmopar]

Anyone familiar with this series seen any drawings or prints before? I am curious to know if this is original art or some sort of print. It is listed as being much larger than the cards themselves. The seller makes it sound like art, but I see people selling facsimile baseballs all the time as real due to ignorance.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/170798051034...#ht_500wt_1315

[FireGardy]

Did you win it? A Carew and Rose are pictured in the first three pages of this thread. I have also seen a Ryan and Mays on ebay a few years ago. I'm not sure anyone really know for certain what they are. Considering the popularity of these (or lack thereof), I would think original would be the likely answer. The mark on the back would probably be helpful as I would guess the artist would use the same board consistently. Unfortunately other than Garvey, they have all been framed so their backs remain a mystery. The size is in the ballpark of the others.

[mrmopar]

Yes, I won it. I was hoping for a bargain, but another bidder tried to win it as well.

I'll share more once it arrives, if there is anything to tell. Looks like a typical art board backing from the ebay scan.

Originally Posted by FireGardy

Did you win it? A Carew and Rose are pictured in the first three pages of this thread. I have also seen a Ryan and Mays on ebay a few years ago. I'm not sure anyone really know for certain what they are. Considering the popularity of these (or lack thereof), I would think original would be the likely answer. The mark on the back would probably be helpful as I would guess the artist would use the same board consistently. Unfortunately other than Garvey, they have all been framed so their backs remain a mystery. The size is in the ballpark of the others.

[mrmopar]

It arrived today and is definitely original art! Nice piece too. I'll try to see if I can get some decent photos of it.