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(Sorry, out of stock...SOLD for $650) "SportsTalk" Player and ALL 164 Talking Baseball Cards, from Topps and LJN. WOW!!! What a find! An EXTREMELY RARE item in the field of Baseball memorabilia. In 1989 the innovative toymaker LJN teamed with the leading Major League Baseball collector card company Topps to produce a line of TALKING baseball cards. That's right, TALKING! The back of each oversized, autographed card was imprinted with a grooved clear-plastic record which, when placed in the SportsTalk battery-powered player, would entertain you with 3-4 minutes of pretty-decent quality sound clips with highlights of each player's career, as you looked at the picture of the person through the clear plastic player window. The recordings themselves are a real treat...they were narrated by some of the great announcers of the past, such as the legendary Mel Allen in some of his last recordings! Many of the actual baseball players participated in this "archive of sound" project of the Golden Years of Baseball, adding their recollections amidst the historic clips. This set spans the entire history of baseball...from early recordings of Ty Cobb through highlights of the 1988 World Series. What a TREASURE TROVE of Baseball. We have in stock: an original SportsTalk Player, MINT CONDITION in its factory packaging (also perfect), and, hold on to your seats: ALL 40 SETS OF CARDS, GEM MINT...UNOPENED!!! (And the 40 card sets come packaged together in their original cardboard shipping box from LJN on Broadway in New York City!) I mean, Poptoppers, you just *cannot* find this anywhere else in this condition, just as if it were still on the shelf at Toys R Us two decades ago. ALL 164 cards. A MINT player device in original packaging. A Grand Slam of Baseball collecting! The SportsTalk player was sold packaged with four cards (a checklist card that served as an introduction to the series, a Hank Aaron card, and the cards of 1988 stars Don Mattingly and Orel Hershiser). Additional cards were sold with four to a pack and were labeled in a manner that let the buyer know what cards were inside. Hall of Fame broadcaster Mel Allen narrated eight cards that featured highlights from historic games as well as 33 cards of former stars such as Babe Ruth and Duke Snider (an interesting footnote...Hall of Fame legends like Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller were omitted from the set as they did not agree to take part. $$$) Don Drysdale interviewed the players of the National League for their cards and Joe Torre did the same for the American League players. Many of the cards featured amusing or humorous anecdotes, such as Mike Flanagan recounting how his Japanese baseball glove manufacturer (Mizuno) spelled his name "Mike Franagan" and that the company's executives told him, "Mr. Franagan, we're velly grad you use our grub." As these players did not sell particularly well all those years ago (because, quite simply, nobody knew what they were at the time) many player units and thousands of the cards were "remaindered" or sent back to the manufacturer to be destroyed. That's right...DESTROYED. Incredible, short-sighted, hard to believe...this was a GREAT idea, a GROUNDBREAKING TOY CONCEPT years ahead of its time, limited only by the existing technology of the 1980's. Needless to say, COMPLETE sets of these SportsTalk Players with ALL 164 OF THE CARDS are as RARE as hen's teeth now. Do not let this unique set go to another collector. You will FOREVER regret it. Oops, too late. Someone beat you to it. You had fair warning. Out of stock.
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