What lies below is an unveiling of some cards you have likely never seen before.  In addition to this is the absolute craziest deal I have ever been a part of!

If you ask seasoned hardcore collectors, they will tell you the 1990s inserts/parallels are where it’s at.  The best of the best?  Across the board, you will likely hear about 1996 Select Certified Mirror Gold, 1997 Pinnacle Totally Certified Platinum Gold, 1998 Donruss Red Crusade, among others.  These are *true* white whale cards for collectors.  With only 25-30 of each having been printed, some of these cards have been dreamed about on want lists for nearly 2 decades.  Coupled with their absolute beauty, these cards can potentially go for a lot of money.  Even the common guys can command big bucks from time to time.

But what about the cards that aren’t supposed to exist?

Cards that were on sell sheets and were never made, due to bankruptcies and such.  The beautiful inserts/parallels that could have been, but weren’t … unless for some strange reason they actually were made AND not destroyed.  (How many employees were actual collectors and had the foresight to NOT use the cards as coasters?)

So that, boys and girls, is where we start our story.

Back around 2013-14, a good friend and fellow collector showed me this beauty:

What you are looking at is a 1998 Pinnacle Certified Red Jose Canseco.  The odds are, you probably have not seen this before, or any other type of card like it.  Whenever I see it, I hear angels singing.

We have done many deals together, where 1/1s have come to me and been sent from me with him, but that card was basically not on the table.  Not for 1/1s, not for anything.  I have always dreamed of owning that card, but knew it would be impossible as it was seen as a unicorn, white whale (insert whatever term you want for untouchable card here).  Cards like this are not on my want list, because it is pointless.  They shouldn’t even exist, yet they do for some reason.

The mystery surrounding these types of cards add to the desire, and with it come many questions.  How did they come to market?  How many are there?  The market can be incredibly strange with these, as nobody really knows how to price them, since they aren’t even supposed to exist.  The checklisted rare inserts & parallels have enjoyed an established value which has been trending upward for the past few/several years.  Oftentimes times well beyond that of the ultra high end auto/patch 1/1 cards of today.  The mystery surrounding them has kept many a collector up at night trying to research them, only to walk away from their computer with nothing to show for their efforts.

The unchecklisted cards is a different story.  Because nobody knows they exist until they show up, people are hesitant to pull the trigger and cannot establish a value for them, since none have sold.  Plus, no story gives people pause.

For the 1998 Pinnacle Certified cards, I have the story 🙂

Not only do I have the story, but the turn of events for what I’m about to tell you is the absolute CRAZIEST thing I’ve been a part of.

Lets rewind back to last Friday.  I was about to check out of the office for the week from where I spend my days saving the world from bad web design, and checked eBay.  What popped up caused my heart to skip a beat.  Over, and over, and over….

It was NOT the 1998 Pinnacle Certified Red.

It was the 1998 Pinnacle Certified MIRROR Red.  The seller had listed nearly, if not all the cards from the set.

Folks, this card has never been seen before, and the seller was not responsive at all, which was very frustrating.  This card was on my mind more times than I care to admit over the next few days.  It truly occupied more brain space than any other card that I can remember in recent history!  To me, this was a BETTER card than the one I had held in such high regard, and it was right in front of me, on eBay.

And then Sunday came.

I checked eBay to see what the bidding was up to and it was nowhere to be found!  I looked all over the place, and saw the dreaded listing ended post.

Upset, (again, more than I care to admit over a piece of cardboard), my mind was racing with what had happened, and how I could get in touch with the seller to know more, when he was clearly too busy to contact me.  (Before I go any further, I would like to clarify I was able to talk to the seller on the phone later, and he seems like a nice guy.)

As you can from above, the seller is in Texas.  After driving to pick up my son from church in the evening, I was racking my brain over how I can figure out this guy’s phone number, email address, etc. just so I can somehow open up dialogue.  As I pulled into the church parking lot, I had an epiphany.  I will call a guy I know who is also in Texas (about 4 hours away from me) to see if he knows the seller & has his contact information.

Please keep in mind this person I texted for the contact information is someone I had not spoken to in about two years.  Over the years, he has driven down to come over and buy a few hundred thousand cards from me.

I knew the text was a long shot, but as it turns out, he knew the guy personally and deals with him from time to time.  (What are the odds?)  The spark of hope that I could obtain the card was fairly quickly snuffed out, but the very next day I received a text from the guy I know.

“Tanner, shoot me a picture of the card you were asking about.”

I thought this was an odd request, but went ahead and did it.

“I have that card.”

I stared at my phone for a while, with my mind racing.  He has that card?  Is he messing with me?  No, he wouldn’t do that.  He probably means he has a card like it.  Maybe the ’97s where they made a boat load of them.  No, he doesn’t have this card.  There. is. no. way.

To give you an idea of how outlandish this is, I have gone many times to the largest annual card show to search for Canseco cards I don’t have, and simply put:  none of the hundreds of dealers have ANYTHING I don’t have.  Heck, eBay seldom has anything I don’t have these days, aside from the latest and greatest release at any given time.

For this person to have THE card I was looking for (a card that shouldn’t exist, mind you) – a person that I just decided to reach out to on a whim … what are the odds?

Now, people.  Let me explain something to you.  I have folks coming up to me every now and then telling me they have something amazing, and I either don’t hear back from them again or they apologize and tell me it isn’t what they thought.  I figured this was going to be a prime example of the latter. I actually ended up creating a custom set of 1998 Select cards of Jose (The set was never released, and Jose was never in it anyway, but it was a fun project to work on!)

The guy told me to call him on Friday, because the cards were at Beckett about to be graded, so he would have to drive over there to take a few pictures for me.  I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make it until Friday, but I made it abundantly clear that I would be on pins & needles waiting for pictures.  As we spoke on the phone, I told him about a deal I had made over the weekend, and he mentioned he may just drive down to make a trade.  To entice him to come down with the mirror red Canseco card, I sent a few pictures, but I didn’t hear back.  This made me nervous, but I stayed patient.

The very next day, my phone vibrated and dinged.  As this was already on my mind, I had wondered what was going to show up on my screen.  Was it going to be the guy saying something?  What would he say?  Would it be an apology – that he didn’t actually have the card he was telling me about?

Nope, it was a picture.  A picture with the mirror red!

If you don’t think I’m lying or stretching the truth here, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  How on earth is it possible for me to have a thought in my head to text a guy that I haven’t talked to in a few years?  How is it possible that he had any Canseco available that I didn’t yet have?  Last but not least, how is it possible that he had *THE* card I was hoping for?  This is absolutely mind boggling.

Oh, and the contents of the pic?  Check it out.

These just came in earlier today, and I am still giddy about even looking at this picture!  Let me tell you what you are looking at:

1998 Pinnacle Certified Black Base
1998 Pinnacle Certified Red Base (the one I’ve been in love with!)
1998 Pinnacle Certified Mirror Red (the one that was on eBay!)
1998 Pinnacle Certified Mirror Blue (I have NEVER seen or heard of this before anywhere.)
1998 Pinnacle Certified Mirror Gold (I have NEVER seen or heard of this before anywhere.)

So here I am presented with a RAINBOW of unicorns that aren’t supposed to exist.  In fact, I have the PERFECT t-shirt to represent my new treasures.

Yes, folks – an astronaut riding a unicorn on a rainbow.  My son bought me this shirt when he was 10 or so, and I still wear it.  Heck, I’m actually wearing it now.  So this shirt is ABSOLUTELY the embodiment of not only these cards, but how the deal worked out.  I truly feel like I won the lottery!

So, now that I have my crazy unbelievable story out of the way, allow me to unlock part of the mystery for you if you ever wondered where some of these crazy set runs of unreleased cards have come from.

Here is the story, as the seller has told me:  (along with some pictures that he is allowing me to share with you.)

Several months ago, former Pinnacle employees came forward with several cards they had for years and years.  They basically had entire set runs of stuff that was not released, but typically only one set, and perhaps a few extra singles.  These cards were in boxes labeled “Pinnacle Library”.

As the story goes, each Pinnacle employee may have gotten a box of stuff, but only those employees who stayed until the very end.  This employee (a couple who worked there, actually) knew the owner, so it may not be out of the realm of possibility that they were given some of the “better” stuff.  They did mention that they threw away several cards because they were “sticky”.   These cards were not in sheet form; they were factory cut.

So, are there 1-2 of these cards out there of each player?  20?  We may never know, especially given the fact that many of these could have been thrown out and/or lost with time.  We are talking nearly 20 years ago, so who knows?

Now that I have purchased this run from the seller, (breaking up his sets), look for cards in the pictures above to surface on eBay soon.  He only has one copy of the vast majority of these, so good luck and may the force be with you!  I’ll be watching these auctions with popcorn in hand.

Some of these, such as the black base, red base, mirror blue and mirror gold are not even recognized by Beckett, but that is soon to change.  I’m very curious to see how well these perform when compared to the big boys like the 96 mirror golds, 97 totally certified platinum golds and 98 crusade reds.