1979 Metallic Creations Signature Miniatures

[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.