BY TROY KIRK
On July 6, 1985, Mother’s Cookies sponsored a baseball card giveaway at the Oakland Coliseum as a promotion for the A’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Plaza seats for the game could be obtained for half-price ($3.50) with a coupon from a Mother’s Cookies package. The game took place on a warm Saturday afternoon and attracted over 23,000 fans. The baseball card giveaway was directed toward the first 25,000 people entering the park, so everyone should have gotten some.
The A’s ran the card giveaway a little differently from the Giants. Most fans entering the park received a coupon that could be exchanged at special booths at the stadium for the packs of baseball cards. Fans sitting in the bleachers received the cards instead of a coupon upon entering. Bleacher fans are not allowed to roam into more expensive sections of the park, where the card giveaway booths were set up. Security was a bit more lenient than at the Giants game, allowing collectors to purchase cards fairly easily from non-collectors at the park. Still, some buyers were warned by security not to buy cards from non-collectors. And I saw one guy with a sign advertising that he was buying cards getting hauled away by security.
The giveaway itself was exactly the same as the Giants. Each pack contained 20 A’s cards and a coupon to obtain eight more random cards. The cards came in a plain green envelope. A coupon offering a Mother’s A’s album for $3.95 was also included. Like the Giants giveaway, the first 10 cards were included in every stadium pack. These included most of the better players, and 10 more cards of the last 18 were also included. Two cards were missing from card packs given at the stadium and these were #16 Tim Conroy and #23 Dan Meyer. Unlike the Giants cards, all the A’s cards are posed shots. The backs contain basic personal information.
As a side-note, the A’s had some interesting commercials for upcoming games on their TV scoreboard between innings. They filmed an A’s bobbin’ head doll and a bobbin’ head doll from an opposing team with the series dates written underneath. After a few seconds, something bad would happen to the opposing bobbin’ head doll, a la Saturday Night Live’s “Mr. Bill.” For instance, a foot appeared on the screen and stepped on the California Angels doll as the A’s fans cheered. For the Twins, they put two Twins dolls on the screen with Oakland’s doll and then proceeded to destroy them with baseball bats!
Mother’s also did card giveaways in Seattle, Houston and San Diego in 1985. The cards are so nice that it would be great to see the promotion extended to other parks in the future.
1985 A’s MOTHER’S CHECKLIST
- Jackie Moore
- Dave Kingman
- Don Sutton
- Mike Heath
- Alfredo Griffin
- Dwayne Murphy
- Mike Davis
- Carney Lansford
- Chris Codiroli
- Bruce Bochte
- Mickey Tettleton
- Donnie Hill
- Rob Picciolo
- Dave Collins
- Dusty Baker
- Tim Conroy
- Keith Atherton
- Jay Howell
- Mike Warren
- Steve McCatty
- Bill Krueger
- Curt Young
- Dan Meyer
- Mike Gallego
- Jeff Kaiser
- Steve Henderson
- A’s Coaches
- Checklist – Stadium
• • • • • •
See related article on BaseballCardFun.com entitled:
“TWIN TIMES – Mother’s Cookies 1985 Giants Set”
Click Link Here
• Originally Published in Jan. 1986 “Twin Times” •
THIS ARTICLE FROM THE “TWIN TIMES” NEWSLETTER – OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE TWIN CITIES SPORTS COLLECTORS CLUB – IS REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. IT HAS BEEN RETYPED, BUT NO CONTENT HAS BEEN CHANGED (EXCEPT FOR VERY MINOR ADJUSTMENTS, CORRECTIONS TO ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND THE ADDITION OF GRAPHICS). COMMENTS OR INFORMATION IN THE ARTICLE MAY BE OUT-OF-DATE.
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