1989 Alaska Goldpanners All-Stars Team Set

   

I recently picked up a couple of these team sets on ebay.  The Wallach card from this set spent over twenty years atop my most wanted list before I finally acquired some back in 2013.  I was beginning to doubt they even existed.  So when these team sets popped up, I went ahead and pulled the trigger.  To be blunt, I question their authenticity.  Granted, I couldn't tell a difference with the one's I already had (from a very trustworthy source), but it wouldn't be the hardest set in the world to counterfeit.  My questioning comes more from the fact that the dealer immediately listed more sets to sell after I bought out the two that he had listed.  At the same time, I don't doubt the possibility of someone stumbling across a box filled with hundreds of these things in the back of the Goldpanner concession stand either.  I guess my final judgment call is that their legit, but I'm glad I already have a couple coupies I trust too.

Below are all the cards from the set:

Floyd Bannister: 15 MLB seasons, 134 career wins, was an All-Star in 1982 when he led the AL with 209 strike outs.
 

Mike Boddicker: 14 MLB seasons, 134 career wins (same as Bannister above), was an All-Star in 1984 when he led the AL with 20 wins and a 2.79 ERA.

Steve Kemp: 11 MLB seasons, 1,124 career hits, All-Star in 1979 (.318, 26 HR, 105 RBI) 
 

Greg Harris: 15 MLB seasons, 74 career wins, 54 career saves.

Tim Leary: 13 MLB Seasons, 78 career wins, led AL in losses (19) and wild pitches (23) as a Yankee in 1990.

Pete Redfern: 7 MLB seasons, 42 wins, 4.54 ERA

Scott Sanderson: 19 MLB seasons, 1990 All-Star,  163 wins, 3.84 ERA
 

Don Slaught: 16 MLB Seasons, 1,151 hits, 476 RBI, .283 avg. 

Dave Smith: 13 MLB Seasons, 2x All-Star, 216 saves, 2.67 ERA 
 

  
Ed Vande Berg: 7 MLB seasons, 25 wins, 22 saves, 3.92 ERA, led AL pitchers with 78 games in 1982 as a Mariner.

 

Tim Wallach: 17 MLB Seasons, 5x All-Star, 3x Gold Glover, 2,085 hits, 260 Home Runs, Led NL in doubles in '87 and '89 

 

Dave Winfield: 22 MLB Seasons, Hall of Famer, 12x All-Star, 6x Gold Glover, 3,110 hits, 465 home runs.
 

2012 A Sign of History

Card Review: N/A I'm not counting this as a card.  Instead I'm going with the "collectibles" label that I use for all the odd-ball stuff I don't know how to catagorize.  I'm half tempted to count this as a 1989 Alaska Goldpanners card, as that's what has been cut and slabbed here.

This "card" was sent by a reader (and fellow Wallach fan), Nick in Allen, Texas.  However, it's not the first time I had ever seen this card.  

I vividly remember when this card showed up on ebay.  It caught my attention because at the time the 1989 Alaska Goldpanners was my "most wanted" Wallach card, and one I had been chasing for over 20 years.  So allusive was this Wallach, that I had never even seen a decent picture of it.  This was the first legitimate confirmation I had that the card even existed, and it had been cut into peices.  The listing price was a little higher than I wanted to pay for a card that had been cut into thirds, and drawn on with sharpie (I don't care who did the drawing), so I figured I'd let it go unsold and then lowball the seller with an offer.  Only it sold.  It wasn't that big of a blow, and I more or less forgot about it until it showed up in my mailbox a few years later.  Thanks again Nick.

I'm certain it's the same "card" because this is a 1 of 1 creation.  It says so on the "A Sign of History," website.  I reached out to "A Sign of History" for more information, and here is their response:

Hi Corey,

I would be happy to provide information about our company and cards.   For years I collected in-person autographs, mostly baseball.  As any collector knows sometimes in the process cards get damaged or I had rosters, index cards, programs, etc that I had signed but did not really care to have in my collection.  In 2012 I decided to make these extra/damaged autographs into cut signature cards.  I contracted a printer and purchased holders (like they use for graded cards) and started A Sign of History.  The initial release was a huge success and I had customers e-mailing me about rarity and if they could send their own autographs in to be made into cuts.  So in response the 2013 and 2014 releases are all 1/1 cards (only 1 was made for each player) and we created the Custom Cut Program in which customers can send authenticated autographs in for us to make into cut signature cards.  So far we have produced over 10,000 cards and continue to grow as our customer base expands.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Thanks,
Matt Moser
A Sign of History 


Autographs aren't really my thing to begin with, and I am unapologetic fan of well worn, beat to hell, vintage cards, but I can certainly see how a good number of collector's would be into this.  In any event, I have no trouble adding this item to my collection.  If hadn't managed to track down actual copies of the 1989 Alaska card, I'd probably feel differently about the lone copy in my collection being cut to pieces.  But thats no longer the case.

1989 Alaska Goldpanners All-Stars #17

Card Review: 9.7  I've known of this cards existence for about 20 years now.  I saw a partial picture of it in a magazine somewhere once.  It was part of a collage photo or something like that.  In the pre-internet days, I believed it was a legitimate minor-league card.  It's not, it was issued in 1989 (or '88 depending on what database you believe), and it's not a minor league team.  It's a team of college players in an elite summer league based in Alaska.  That fact didn't lessen my desire to own this card.  It spent over two decades as my number one most wanted Wallach.  Then just like that, I picked up three in one swing.

Upon opening it from the envelope they arrived in, was the first time I had ever seen the back of this card.  The back is everything you could ask for from an obscure limited issue set like this.  The front is extremely glossy, to point of being a bit disappointing, but I'm not complaining.  This card is far from a let down.

The set itself was 12 cards in size.  Other notable players in it included Don Slaught and Dave Winfield.  The numbering starts at #13 and runs to #24, as they did a series of these by decade.  I'm assuming #1-12 were stars from the 1960's.  The Goldpanners are a summer league team in Alaska that still exists today.  They have a very detailed write up on Tim Wallach on their web page.  That's where the photos below are lifted from.

Fun Facts:

*Wallach played for the Goldpanners in 1978.  The team roster included Ed VandeBerg, Tim Leary and Terry Francona.

*Wallach was named the League MVP after hitting 20 HR, and a .328 avg. over 70 games.

*Wallach would lead Cal-State Fullerton to their 1st National Championship and win the Golden Spike Award as the Nation's Top Amateur the following season in 1979.

Number of this card in my collection: 3

2016 update: 5

Photos from Goldpanners Website (until they tell me to take them down):