These may look like your average, every day run of the mill 1991-92 Topps hockey cards. But...They're not!
During the 1991-92 hockey season, Topps partnered with the Foodland grocery store chain in the Pittsburgh area to produce and distribute a sticker set. For four weeks, Topps created a 3-sticker sheet for a total of 12 stickers, that were distributed by the stores. The stickers were attached vertically in a strip and have dotted lines to cut them out. Finding them intact is a pretty difficult feat in my experience and even getting these was difficult because they don't come around too often.
The reason?? There are two. First, they were simply used as coupons by our moms (or dads, I'm not discriminating). Secondly, the stickers were stuck on our books, binders, lockers, folders, drawers, sticker albums, bikes, helmets, etc. What good is a sticker if you can't stick it, right? When you do find them, it's difficult to get them in a decent condition. Since they had to be cut, many of the tops are off center with only the bottom card of each sheet generally having at least three of the four edges in decent shape (Murphy, Samuelsson, Stevens, Pietrangelo). You'd think the tops would be ok too but each sheet had a tab at the top that also had to be cut.
If you look at the stickers, they look just like the regular Topps cards however the backs have a coupon for items that include such sundries as olives, dog food, coffee, and peanut butter. I have no information whether these were eligible for DOUBLING but, nonetheless, saving 50 cents on Kraft Mayonnaise in 1991 seems like a steal.
Since the backs are the coupons themselves, none of the stickers are numbered and there are no stats. Generally you will find checklists listing them in order of release by week. The checklist looks like this.
1 Bryan Trottier
2 Joe Mullen
3 Larry Murphy
4 Tom Barrasso
5 Ron Francis
6 Ulf Samuelsson
7 Jaromir Jagr
8 Mario Lemieux
9 Kevin Stevens
10 Mark Recchi
11 Paul Coffey
12 Frank Pietrangelo
This is one of the very few times I will get excited about stickers so relish it. Also, if anyone has Trottier, Mullen, Murphy, Jagr, Lemieux, or Pietrangelo, I'd gladly take them off your hands.
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