1997 Pinnacle Totally Certified Racing Forum

While I admit these "sets" exist their seems to be an inconsistent calling the 3 sets as promo sets. Their is 1 card marked "promo" for this product (Ricky Rudd/card 10/xxxx/2999).  Calling the other sets as promos seems to be a misnomer.  As a Terry Labonte collector I do not count the xxxx/2999 (cards 5/39/80/90) as promos but count them as proofs.  Same for the TL cards xxxx/1999 and xxxx/0049.  While the production run for this cards is unknown let me suggest the following: These cards were not distributed (xxxx/) until after Pinnacle closed its doors in 1998 - not as product release promos (rudd only promo released) before the release of the actual product. Proof sets would be a more proper title for these sets.  The actual production run (PR) is more probably in the 100 cards or less for each of the xxxx/ cards (not readily available).  Only making a suggestion and submitting it for comments. 

I disagree.

Everyone I've talked to from back in the day remembers that these sets were given out by Pinnacle to their highest volume dealers.  They were promotional items.

I agree that the print run for all three sets was most likely less than 100 of each card but I've never found any info that indicated a specific print run.

I was wrong.  Pinnacle Totally Certified issued red/blue/gold promos in 4 sports.  When you only focus on 1 sport (i.e. racing) for the past 30 years you can get a bit of tunnel - vision for a product.

That being said I would love to see a "sell sheet" for 1997-98 (baseball/racing/football/hockey) advertising these bonus (my term) sets. The TCDB must apply a standard across multiple sports (I know at times its a struggle) to apply that standard.    Looking at the 4 sports Pinnacle had no consistency among the 4 product lines.  Baseball had only 6 cards - all marked SAMPLE on the front.  Racing / Football had xxxx/# on the back.  Hockey had PROMO/# on the back its cards.  I.E. maybe a logical progression across the 4 sports across the timeline.

I would like to know what had to be purchased to obtain this bonus (i.e. not totally certified as no production run was ever stated).  You probably had to purchase x cases for the red set, y cases for the blue set, z cases for the gold set or a combination purchase could get all 3 bonus sets. The sell sheets are not imaged on the TCDB.  Some mention would had to be made on the sell sheets about these sets. Getting data from 1997-1998 pinnacle is not easy as Pinnacle closed its doors in 1998.

I believe that these were distributed as one set.  The couple times I've seen them on the secondary market, it was all three types offered for sale together.  I've never seen someone breaking up a red set without also having the blue and gold cards available.

I doubt these would have been mentioned on any sell sheets.  If anything, I would hope there was a 'congratulatory' letter that accompanied the sets when they were distributed.  That would be an interesting item to see.