WHAT IS A PROMO CARD?

If you like collecting  trading cards and love the challenge of looking for undiscovered treasure then read on!

Over the years, like most card collectors, I began to amass hundreds and then thousands of trading cards to complete various sets. Most manufacturers produce their series in 72, 90 or 100 card sets. However, as my collection grew, an inverse relationship developed between the space available in my house and the area I needed to keep these little pieces of cardboard in. Candidly, I also started to get a little tired of seeing 100 pictures of the same T.V show, movie, superhero, actor, athlete,  etc..

  Then, by chance, I discovered the promo card. Approximately 17 years ago, producers of trading cards began making a very small number of pre- production cards for their upcoming card series which they sent to card dealers and distributors throughout the United States and abroad. This way, the Non-Sports and Sports card shop owners could look at and feel a sample of the upcoming product and decide if they were going to order it by the case, the box or not at all. 

Most stores would receive a handful of these sample cards. The owners would give one or two to their best customers, maybe keep one for themselves and toss the rest in the can. After all, these cards had no intrinsic  monetary value since they were free and the series they were promoting was a few short months away from being released.

Thus came into being the first promo cards! These cards are known by many names: promo, prototype, sample etc.. A purist may take exception to using these terms interchangeably but for this article, suffice it to say that all of these words describe a trading card that has been made to promote an upcoming product or card set  and is distributed for free. 

  Collecting promo cards was the perfect solution to the overcrowding and the nascient boredom I was experiencing with traditional card collecting. Afer all, why not collect, for example,  just the 1 or 2 Star Trek promo cards issued for a specific set rather than the 100 regular cards ?

 This task,  however, was easier said than done. there was no guide book to indicate which card company had issued a promo card in advance of the serie's release but also, many announced card sets were cancelled and never produced so that the only card for that team, movie, comic or T.V show was the promo card previously distributed to the dealers and distributors.

Imagine the challenge of first finding a card dealer. How many dealers existed in any given  city in the early pre Ebay 1990's? Second, once you found a dealer, you had to find one

who hadn't thrown away the few promo cards he  had received from the manufacturer and you had to somehow learn which card companies had sent out promos for sets that were  never produced.

As if that weren't enough, it was soon discovered that the promo cards being sent to the dealers and distributors were different from the cards of the acual set with the same image. Some were clearly identifiable as promotional and would be stamped accordingly, but others had no identifiable markings and exhibited only small nuances betwen them and their common regular card relatives. Heated telephone conversations (no internet yet)  as to whether a card was or wasn't a promo took place in many parts of the world.

Then in the mid 1990's, Ebay came into existence and for the first time in 1997, a dedicated collector compiled a book devoted only to collecting promo cards. This treatise which has been updated thru 2008 has shed much light on the hobby. 

                                                                      WHY COLLECT PROMOS?

To this day,  previously unknown promo cards that were produced  by legitimate card companies under legal licenses are still being discovered by astute collectors. Also, as more and more collectors are finding out  that a promo card exists for a set of cards they collect, they are seeking to acquire that last elusive card to complete a "master" set making promo card collecting even more popular.  Unlike chase cards, sketch cards;  prop cards; costume cards or autographed cards, whose scarcity is dictated and manipulated by the manufacturer's print run,  a promo card's value is determined by how many have survived the garbage can plunge! Thus, prices for early 1990's promo cards are not artificially set because they were never found in packs and there is no concrete information available not only concerning how many were made but more importantly on how many still exist. ]

Despite the millions and millions of trading cards being sold on Ebay every month,,  There are still some promo cards that have NEVER appeared for sale while some others have only made a brief appearance every few years. Some individual promo cards are already fetching upwards of US $1,000.00  on Ebay. Remember, these little pieces of cardboard were given away for free just a few years ago....

 Promo card collecting is still in its infancy as compared to Stamp, coin, doll or baseball card collecting to name a few. There are treasures that can still be found at bargain prices if you know what to look for since there are countless dealers and collectors who still have not caught on to the scarcity of some of these cards, especially the ones from the early 1990's. As each year passes,  many of these "older" promo cards are proving harder and harder to find and their scarcity is being reflected by their increasing value.