1996 Leaf Preferred Steel

Men of steel.

Or rather Cards of Steel.

Baseball card manufacturers have been playing around with different materials sor many years. This trend starting picking up in the mid 1990s with cards made of plastic, wood, leather, metal, etc. coming on the scene.

In 1996, Leaf put out a set called Leaf Preferred. The set wasn't very special but in every pack you got one of these.

Leaf Preferred Steel. In addition to the Daulton, I also have Lenny Dykstra. Natch, both are Phillies. I don't remember how I acquired these. I only own one of the base cards. Most likely I got them at my local baseball card store who used to have a big box of reasonably priced singles. I say "used to" because he went out of business a few years ago and I no longer have a local card shop. Heavy sigh.

The steel cards are pretty nice. They are solid cards with crimped edges. The printing is crisp. They look nothing like the base cards. In fact, they are much nicer looking than the base cards.

They even had two parallels, Steel Gold and Steel Power. I've got a Gold card of Carlos Delgado. It looks just like the regular card except, of course, its Gold colored. I've never seen the Steel Power card.