1990 Collegiate Collection Notre Dame

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish... you either love 'em or hate 'em.  And let's just say... I don't love them.

But if you're a college football fan, it's hard not to admire their history:

11 National Titles

7 Heisman Trophy Winners

48 Players/Coaches in the College Football Hall of Fame

469 Players Drafted by NFL Teams

10 Players in the NFL Hall of Fame

And for the first time in a decade, they're off to a 6-0 start.  So to honor the resurgence of Notre Dame football, I figured why not bust a pack of their overproduced, junk wax era 1990 Collegiate Collection.

But before we take a look at what's inside of the pack, let's reflect on this product's history.  Back in the late 80's and early 90's, Collegiate Collection started producing cardboard for collectors interested in colleges, ranging from North Carolina to Oklahoma State University.  The unique thing about their products was that each box contained 36 packs of players & team cards from one specific college.  In other words, Notre Dame boxes only contained packs with Notre Dame players.

I've busted boxes from different schools and from my experience, each pack contained 8 cards and there were 200 cards per set.  One major flaw was their decision to use see-through cellophane wrappers in addition to collation that allowed collectors to search packs.

You'll see what I'm talking about in a second.  But before I do, I want to mention one more thing about this product.  Collegiate Collection was one of the first companies to insert autographs and serial numbered cards into their packs.  For example, you could pull Thurman Thomas autographs out of the OSU product and a special serial numbered card of George Gipp in the Notre Dame packs.

Alright... let's check out what I pulled:

#104 Wayne Millner, #103 1924 National Champions, #102 Peter Vaas, and #101 Gary Darnell

Can you see the pattern?  If you knew the number of the card you wanted and had access to the packs, you could easily find what you were looking for.

Which is exactly what I did to find the Joe Montana below:

#42 Terry Hanratty, #41 Robert "Rocky" Bleier, #40 Joe Montana, and #39 Blair Kiel

I knew Joe Montana had three cards in the set:  #1, #40, and #200.  So, I looked at the back of my packs, found a number close to one of those three numbers, and voila... I pulled a Montana out of my first pack.

Now before you condemn my actions... I assure you that I'm not a pack searcher.  I fully intend to bust the entire box... or at least until I complete the 200 card set.  I just felt it was important to show collectors what they're getting into if they decide to bust single packs of these products.

Last, but not least... let's check out the card backs:

So far, I've discovered three different back designs:  career summary, career stats, and one that shows their schedule from a championship season.

Okay... I'm off to bust the rest of my box.  Hopefully, I'll be able to build at least one set.  However, in the past I always seem to come up short.  I think they did this on purpose to encourage trading and to get people to buy multiple boxes.

I'll try to add an update in the next couple of hours.

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Box Break Update

I just busted the whole box and came up two cards short:  #100 and #110.  If anyone has these two singles, I'd love to work out a trade.  I pulled over 50 doubles from this set.