Barry Larkin
Year: 1996
Brand: Leaf
Insert set: Hats Off
Card number: 2 (#/5000)
The 1996 Leaf set featured a rather rare retail-only insert set called Hats Off. Each of the eight cards in the set was serially numbered out of "only" 5000 copies. That sounds like a ton of cards by modern standards, but for a retail offering in the mid-90s, they were quite rare pulls! Even better, the card has a fabric-like feel to it which further adds to the mystique and "specialness" of the insert set.
As already mentioned, this particular set only has eight subjects featured. The full checklist is:
- Cal Ripken, Jr.
- Barry Larkin
- Frank Thomas
- Mo Vaughn
- Ken Griffey, Jr.
- Hideo Nomo
- Albert Belle
- Greg Maddux
I'll be honest, as a kid I didn't see many Leaf cards out in the wild (i.e. my local drugstore where I bought the majority of my card packs). That's too bad because, in the process of collecting as many different Barry Larkin cards as I can, I've found that the Leaf brand had some of the coolest, most interesting designs of its time and I think the Hats Off is a perfect example of Leaf going a step beyond most other card offerings of the time. In fact, I could easily see Topps doing something similar today with their Allen & Ginter brand and touting it as the "next best thing in cards" when, in reality, Leaf did it nearly 30 years ago.
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