The Mystery of Rickey in Prime Cuts 2008!

About a week ago an eBay auction popped up that caught my eye, as it was for a 2008 card of Rickey Henderson that I had no idea existed! The card was a 2008 Playoff Prime Cuts IV Materials Triple Prime #/5, featuring patches from Rickey, Pete Rose, and Willie Mays, and it sold for over $170 dollars .

I was anxiously awaiting all major releases in 2008, hoping that Rickey would be included, but it seemed that it was not meant to be. But, after seeing this card show up, I went and did a little research on the Donruss website, hoping to find out more about this elusive release.



Above is Donruss' sample card of the Triple jersey, as shown on their Prime Cuts checklist. As of right now, it seems that it's the only card of Rickey that was supposed to be in the set that was actually released.

I had just recently updated my Beckett checklist, and was curious as to why this card was not included. At first I figured it was because Donruss didn't have an MLB license, but then checked and saw that the Prime Cuts set was indeed listed on the site.

The above card is Rickey's base card in the set, noted as "Commons #76" on the checklist. While looking at this same base set on the Beckett website, I noticed that their checklists skip right by the Rickey cards (i.e. the base cards go from 75 to 77, skipping by the #76 Commons that was supposed to be Rickey). My guess is that they couldn't get the rights for some reason, and had to pull the cards from the set at the last minute.

Since the Triples jersey is the only card that isn't exclusively a Rickey card, they probably forgot to pull that one, and it got released accidentally. I sent an e-mail to Donruss, and hope to hear back with a more definite answer.

The card above is a pretty sweet looking Icons insert, that never seemed to find the light of day. This is probably one of the first times any collector has seen it, unless they really dug deep into the Donruss checklist website.

Another non-existent card, this is a Colossal game-used jersey card, the last of the three never produced Rickey cards of which I could find pictures. Below is a list of all of the Rickey cards that "should" have been included in the set. Most of them were way out of my price range anyway, but it would have been nice to at least add the base card (and one card from 2008) to my collection!

Century Gold 76 #/5
Century Platinum 76 #/1
Century Platinum Signatures 76 #/1
Century Signatures 76 #/3
Century Silver 76 #/25
Colossal 25 #/24
Colossal Jersey Number 25 #/24
Colossal Jersey Number Signatures 25 #/1
Colossal Location 25 #/24
Colossal Location Signatures 25 #/1
Colossal Position 25 #/24
Colossal Position Signatures 25 #/1
Colossal Signatures 25 #/1
Commons 76 #/249
Icons 27 #/25
Icons Bats 27 #/29
Icons Century Gold 27 #/5
Icons Century Platinum 27 #/1
Icons Century Platinum Signatures 27 #/1
Icons Century Silver 27 #/10
Icons Jersey Number 27 #/25
Icons Jersey Number Prime 27 #/25
Icons Jersey Number Prime Signatures 27 #/1
Icons Jersey Number Signatures 27 #/1
Icons Jersey Position 27 #/25
Icons Materials Combos 27 #/49
Icons Materials Combos Prime Signatures 27 #/1
Icons Materials ICON 27 #/25
Icons Materials MVP 27 #/49
Icons Materials Prime Signatures MVP 27 #/1
Icons Materials Signatures ICON 27 #/1
Icons Materials Signatures MVP 27 #/1
Material Triples 11 #/5
Material Triples Prime 11 #/5
Prime Cuts Bats 76 #/29
Prime Cuts Jersey Number 76 #/5
Prime Cuts Jersey Position 76 #/5
Prime Cuts Materials Combos 76 #/25
Signature Trios 4 #/10

Hopefully 2009 proves to be more Rickey friendly. With his Hall of Fame induction, he should at least warrant insert in a couple of releases. I don't want to sound greedy, but an Allen & Ginter Rickey would be awesome!