Card Identification Forum

I came across these 4 Yzerman cards in our collection that are not on here, and I'm also not 100% if they should be here. Allow me to explain.

These were in the "99-00" binder, meaning that the 99-00 sets had started being released when these were added to our collection (my wife's way of sheeting the collection). There was no Donruss in 99-00 as they had gone out of business before this. These could very well be cards that were leftovers and were liquidated. I'm not sure. This is why I question whether they should be added. (I do not mind adding these to my collection as the regular cards with comments - I've already done that with several other items that I know cannot be listed here.)

I bring this to the attention of the membership to see if anyone else has any information about these "promos". (Oh, and another thing, there were already actual Promo cards for the Line 2 Line insert, which is why I think these are not actual promo cards but leftovers.)

Anyone have any additional information? Thank you!

I found the one on ebay with an actual serial number

Edit: Also, maybe I'm not too familer with it, but the Line 2 has a SN of 4000, and according to Beckett it has a PR of 3750. 

Oh, we have all the regular versions too. That's not the question. The question is what are THESE with the XXXX on the backs? (We were kind of Yzerman super-collectors up until late 2002.)

These are typically referred to as "executive proofs", basically a test run for QC and final approval internally.  Probably shouldn't be documented here, but highly desirable for player/team collectors.  There's typically only a handful or less of each of these that were made.

Thanks Kyle. That's helpful.

ETA: These are most commonly seen across the various Donruss product lines, but I've seen a few Skybox as well.  The Skybox ones are stamped 1/1 and hand signed by their EVP w/an "Executive Proof" notation.

Executive proofs/ dealer samples. Extremely rare, and yes I do believe they should be documented here.

These are not unfinished cards, they were intentionally produced with the XXXX. Every football card Donruss produced in 96 and 97 that had a serial number, has a XXXX version. In 98 they switched to printing 'Preview' on the back instead of XXXX, then they switched to 'Promo' around 99/00.

I think they should be here as well. I think these would qualify under the rarely-used Proof setting in Inserts & Related Sets. They were not an accident, and they sound just like normal promos to me- I'd say they go under promos other than the fact that you said there are promo versions as well.

I'm not sure about how Donruss used them, but I know Collector's Edge released them as "true promos."  And at least in the case of Collector's Edge while each card only had xx instead of individual numbers, the out of (/xx) number was the number actually released.  For instance, in the 2000 T3 HoloRed set, there were 50 of each preview released (incidentally, I have 48 of the 50 Julian Peterson cards).

For the Line 2 Line prmo version:

And regular card:

So the consensus is add these as "Executive Proofs" and list them as a Proofs set (in case others are found, we can add them to the set). So, in that regard - are there others?