It Had to Be Lou...1977 Burger King #23 Lou Piniella

[silvor]

I posted this to the other thread, but am reposting here...

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.

[Cliff Bowman]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lou-Piniell...53.m2748.l2649 Here is the link to the listing, I hope. He says in the title that they are all #23 and shows the back of one. I would have found it more odd for someone to have 750 1977 Topps #96 Lou Piniella cards rather than 750 1977 Burger King #23 Lou Piniella cards.

[Cliff Bowman]

There were a number of badly out of register cards in the lot which obviously would have never been distributed at the Burger Kings, which leads me to believe that the cards came directly from the printer source or were saved from the printers dumpster.

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

There were a number of badly out of register cards in the lot which obviously would have never been distributed at the Burger Kings, which leads me to believe that the cards came directly from the printer source or were saved from the printers dumpster.

That's funny, because in my errors & variations for trade thread, I put a 1977 BK Piniella there with what I called 'wild color shifts.' It looks like it would've been right at home in your picture.

[chris6net]

As a 13 year old growing up on Long Island I remember the Burger King cards very well. I seem to remember there being several articles in the main Newspapers (not Hobby Publications) about the Piniella card being rare and the backstory about George being upset that the card wasn't included in the initial issue which led a big jump in price for the card back then. I have the Piniella card in my set but don't know if I got it from Burger King or purchased it at a card show.

[TheNightmanCometh]

Interesting thread. I wonder, what other companies used Topps as a manufacturer for their cards?

[steve B]

K mart, Coke, brighams/coke, Zest soap, Mrs Butterworth, Drakes... among others.


I think the hostess cards were licensed from topps.


The other big producer of small sets, mostly for point of purchase promotion was MSA.