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.
Junk Wax Gems 
In back of my attic somewhere i have a Emmitt Smith Jersey Signed i won from one of these. Do you happen to know which one had that as a prize and what year? I was thinking about digging it out soon.
You should of never sent it in, the playbook is probably worth more then the auto’ed Jersey now ?
I did not send it in. It’s up for sale currently.
Hey Dylan. I have a 900 count box of a huge variety of variations. I’m probably going to put up one auction but there are so many that I’d rather just sell the whole box to someone who might be able to put more time into it (and probably make more money). Are you interested? And if so, let me know, I’ll try and name out as many as possible. They start at Series II and end on Series VI (didn’t buy any of the 1989 Series 1 boxes). Talk to you later.
Oh, and to specify, I meant these playbooks in case you couldn’t tell by the post. Just to be for certain.
Hi Trent,
Thanks for the offer but I am gradually moving away from this set. The 5000ct box of these playbooks I searched through a couple years ago for winners was a huge undertaking. Plus, the lone winner I found has been unable to fetch a modest $25 at auction. I’m sure there is a collector out there willing to sort through these. Good luck!
When I was I kid I won the 2nd prize. It was supposed to be a Barry Sanders Pro Bowl Jersey. I completed everything and sent it to pro set. They sent me a pro bowl ticket. My parents called them and informed them they had errored and I was supposed to receive the jersey. They informed me that they had and to send the ticket back but that they did not have the jersey but I could have other players if I wanted somebody else. At this point my parents should have gotten a lawyer but they didn’t and I decided to get a jersey from some guy named Jerry Rice. This was the 1989 pro bowl and Rice didn’t even have the first choice of number and ended up with 81 instead of 80. Boy am I happy about how his career turned out. One pack of cards when I was 7 turned into the luckiest thing I’ve ever done. Just wanted to share.
Hello,
I just picked up my boxes from my fathers place and was hoping to find something on the internet about these rare scratch offs. Well I have about 36 of them two in almost perfect description of what you have. I never scratched any of them because I hoped it was worth somethingnow a days!