1962 Topps Baseball Bucks

This wasn't an insert, like most people believe. These Baseball Bucks were a test issue. The front of each buck would feature a headshot of a player, a small text about said player and a drawing of their home park.

As far as I can tell, there were 96 different bucks. They featured minor stars of the day to future Hall of Famers. There are bucks of Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Yogi Berra, Don Drysdale, Nellie Fox, Al Kaline, Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Eddie Mathews, Willie Mays, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Warren Spahn, Early Wynn and Carl Yastrzemski, among others.

I'm not really sure why these didn't take off. They seem popular with collectors today. Maybe they weren't that popular with kids back in 1962. Whatever the reason, they are a bit of an oddity today. You can find these bucks if you are looking for them, but you're not going to just stumble across them easily. Most of these won't pop up in an eBay search unless you specifically put the word bucks along with your other descriptive words.

Could this idea be revived today? It could be interesting to see players like Ichiro and Jim Thome on Baseball Bucks. I'm not sure they would be much more successful now. They would probably end up in the same place as Baseball Tattoos and Baseball Rub-Offs. Baseball Bucks might be fun for a deviation, but I can't see them being as popular as regular cards. That just might be the appeal though.