I recently completed sorting through my 5000ct box of 1990 Pro Set series one inserts: those folded booklets that come with two scratch-off areas, one for “points” redeemable through the Gazette and one for the chance to instantly win one of several prizes ranging from a trip to the Pro Bowl to a Collector’s Game Program.
While hunting and successfully discovering several variations, I also stumbled upon an actual, unscratched “5th Prize” instant winner. Holding up each copy from the monster box to a desk lamp, I was able to see what was printed beneath the silver scratch-off ink. An amazing feat, considering the stated odds for this prize was 1:7200 packs! With a stated print run of 10,000 “5th Prize” instant winner cards, that places production equal to the pack-issued Lombardi holograms! And when you consider how many were mailed in (maybe few, maybe most) and how often these find their way into the trash, this becomes one of the rarest items among the 1990 Pro Set issue.
A few interesting things to note:
First, this instant winner card is the only playbook card printed perfectly. Every single other (non-winning) playbook from 1990-1992 has some type of printing flaw, be off-register, missing ink, bleeding ink, etc. But not this copy. Second, it uses a thicker, darker metallic ink for the scratch-off area which made it considerably tougher to read the words “5th Prize: Super Bowl XXIII Patch.” Very interesting that Pro Set would differentiate this way!
Also, in terms of the “points” side, I discovered that the “Touchdown 6 Points” were the scarcest, which makes sense since it’s the largest sum they offer on the inserts. Out of my few thousand copies, only 5 “touchdown” variations were pulled. Just 8 each of the “Safety 2 Points” and “Field Goal 3 Points” variations were pulled from this supply! The remaining count were all the very common “Extra Point 1 Point” variety.
A handful of other variations involving missing lines, text and so forth also revealed themselves and I will update the 1990 Pro Set Master Checklist with those entries shortly.
All of the variations mentioned here are for sale and I will gladly take reasonable offers on the Instant Winner card, contact me via email if interested.
Tags: 1990 Pro Set, 1990 Pro Set Instant Winner Redemption, 1990 Pro Set Playbook Points, 1990 Pro Set Variations, Pro Set Instant Winner Insert, Pro Set Playbook Variations, Pro Set Prize Card, Pro Set Redemption Card
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