My evening has been completely overtaken by an unlikely and shocking Linden discovery. It's something I literally tripped on while sorting cards and can't really believe I even found myself in a situation to notice it.
I have spent easily the past 2 hours trying to figure out what is going on...and all I can about what I uncovered.
But, as with most things from me...let's start the story from the beginning.
A couple months ago, I was invited to be a guest on the Sports Card Live podcast. I was asked to share my hobby story and show off some of the items in my collection. So of course, I went to the boxes of Trevor Linden cards in my closet and pulled some of my faves.
It wasn't just the expensive cards (the "flex cards" as they say) that I wanted to feature. I found a few cards that I thought would really help tell the story of my Linden collecting passion. One of the cards came from a very cool subset inserted into a Leaf product in the mid-90's.
This lovely shot of Trev swinging the golf club is one card in the 10-card Day In The Life set that featured my guy, Trevor Linden. The photo selection on the cards show everything from home life to practice, extra-ciricular activities to gameday prep. I was on cloud nine when I learned of this subset. Ten whole cards from one product!
There really wasn't anything else out there at the time quite like this. I was quite surprised that Donruss (the company that produced Leaf cards back in the 90's) chose Linden to be the guy they featured. It was early on in my Linden collecting and I felt I'd hit the jackpot. It's still a favourite talking point of my Linden collection to this day.
In addition to the regular base card, Leaf also produced some parallels. This was the Fractal Matrix version and had a cool foil-type surface. Limited to just 1400 sets, this was a fun, but fairly easy chase - even for the mid-90's.
You can see they added the words "Fractal" and "Matrix" on the card and I know it's very faint, but you might be able to catch a glimpse of the border built into the background and going around the photo (you can notice it most up by the crown of his head).
You'll see it better once you check out the other cards.
This is the Fractal Matrix X-Axis Die-Cut parallel and (obviously) it's got a die-cut punch to the card. The top and bottom are clipped to follow the background border I mentioned in the photo before.
You can also notice the words "X-Axis Die-Cut" curved around the logo at the bottom. Another foil offering and limited to just 400 sets, this card was the "tougher" chase, but I was able to land the full set with little trouble.
This is where things started revealing themselves to me today.
I keep all of my Linden cards in toploaders or one touches and store them in the two-lane card boxes (what is it...1500-count or something?). I've got about 9 or 10 of them now. I was going through the cards from the 90's, enjoying the trip down memory lane, as I was returning the Lindens I had pulled for the podcast.
I got to this subset and decided to take a closer look at the 10-card set and all the parallels. After a few minutes, I decided to put the cards back in the specific order I have listed on my master list. Makes sense...right?
Well, I found I was having issues figuring things out. I was getting confused by the Fractal Matrix and the X-Axis Die-Cut variations. It shouldn't be overly difficult. But this is when I discovered something that I have never noticed in the decades that I've owned these cards.
I immediately went online to get confirmation of what I was seeing.
I was shook. Dumbfounded by this alternate version of the X-Axis Die-Cut I discovered. As you can clearly see, the words "X-Axis Die-Cut" do not exist on this card, even though it clearly is the die-cut version.
Was it a one-off? Nope. I found this anomally throughout the 10-card set I owned. Half of them have the words....half don't - and I never, ever noticed. NOT ONCE. Until today.
Do all 10 cards have both die-cut versions? I still haven't been able to confirm that. But you can be sure I'm going to be eagle-eyed about it until I solve this mystery.
If it weren't for me pulling this one card out to share on the podcast, I likely would never have noticed this. Incredible.
But...there's more.
As I was doing my detective work online, searching for the variations, I found this...
What??!!! A fifth version of the card. You can clearly see that it is not a die-cut and yet, it has the "X-Axis Die-Cut" words plastered around the logo. This has completely exploded my brain. Are these printing mistakes? Did they pump these variations out for fun to see if people would notice? How many versions are actually out there?
I had to stop or I'm sure I'd be at it all night trying to figure things out.
So, I decided to blog about it. :)
The great thing about this is that I don't think anybody has a clue this exists...so the cards that are out there are cheap as cheap. I should be able to pick up a lot of the now missing gaps in my collection for only a few bucks (I like the sounds of that).
The challenge will be trying to find definitive confirmation (and physical copies) of all the Lindens I'm missing. Not going to lie...it's a fun problem to have. I look forward to it.
This summer has been just so unexpected with all of these cards from the 90's revealing themselves to me. I've never experienced anything like it. A good reminder to always be paying attention and to take the time to enjoy the cards you have.
Thirty years of Linden collecting...still learning.
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