Action Packed

Action Packed became an NHL licensee this year, something the company had sought for several years. But the license is not to produce cards.The company that first put gold foil on trading cards is branching out -- sort of.Hockey fans won't be able to get a pack of Action Packed cards or assemble a set. But they can buy some items that are a lot like cards.One is the Mammoth Card, a comic book-sized piece of embossed cardboard that looks like an oversized Action Packed card. It made its debut this summer in an NFL version.

Collectors watching the Super Bowl might want to look closely at the seats in the Georgia Dome.Each one has a special Super Bowl cushion in black and trimmed in turquoise and filled with souvenir goodies.About 400 Morris Brown College students spent the past week distributing 73,594 cushions throughout the dome. Each student volunteer received a Super Bowl XXVIII shirt and seat cushion, and GTE, which provided the cushions, gave the school $10,000.The cushions are decorated with the Super Bowl XXVIII and GTE logos.

Basketball fans with a nostalgic bent or who are interested in the history of the game might enjoy Action Packed's second series of Basketball Hall of Fame cards.Action Packed's embossing seems to be more effective on the black and white photos, reproduced in a tintype-style, in the 42-card set than on the full-color ones. Backs have enough stats to be interesting but are not overloaded.There's Paul Arizin dribbling -- in black and white -- the way he looked on TV in the '50s. For postwar fans, Harry Galltin and Ed Macauly are included.

For football fans burned out -- and bummed out -- by NFL expansion, there is still a place where the league isn't expanding.While other major NFL licensees issue monster-sized sets (Upper Deck, Fleer Ultra and Stadium Club each has at least 500 cards) that may have forgotten only the sideline gofers, Action Packed stays comparatively small. This year's set checks in with 162 in the basic set and 42 more in three insert sets."We keep our sets small . . . because we feel that when a person opens our cards that they're happy with what they get," says Action Packed's Laurie Goldberg.

It's the law of supply and demand in action -- with a grisly twist.When NASCAR driver Davey Allison died July 13 from injuries received in a helicopter crash, demand for his memorabilia went up. So did prices. And the supply, except for some memorial items, is unlikely to expand.It had happened in April, when Winston Cup points champion Alan Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash. The experience wasn't lost on Sharon Knecht of Pit Stop in Catonsville."Tuesday [the day of Allison's death], I didn't sell anything," said Knecht.

The NBA season rolls on into late spring with the playoffs. The basketball-card season hasn't ended yet, either.Action Packed has added basketball to its mix with the 42-card Basketball Hall of Fame set. It's Series I Notebookof a projected 84-card set.Upper Deck fleshes out its NBA set with a 200-card, high-number set plus 79 inserts.With the familiar embossing and thick-card stock, the Hall of Fame set is pure Action Packed. All players featured were in the NBA or its predecessor leagues, but most of the coaches are from the college level.

Action Packed has turned its attention to auto racing with all the attention to detail that characterizes its NFL and All-Star baseball sets.The bulk of the 84-card set is devoted to subsets, all logical choices in a NASCAR set. There are subsets devoted to race winners, pole winners, Winston Cup points top finishers, top rookies and Richard Petty. The remainder feature profiles of drivers and teams.The thought that went into these cards sets them apart.In the race winners subset, there are winning cliches (kissing the wife, holding the trophy)

Magic Johnson's Sept. 29 announcement that he was returning to the NBA was early enough that, of the major companies producing NBA sets, only Fleer won't have Johnson in its first series.After his retirement, Johnson signed an exclusive agreement with SkyBox International Inc., maker of NBA Hoops and SkyBox. Once he renounced his retirement and signed a contract, he was again covered by the NBA players association's licensing agreements.Hoops, with an eight-card subset, and SkyBox, with a five-card subset, ended up having a jump on their competitors rather than an exclusive.

Action Packed, which has produced innovative football card for the past three years, has turned its attention to baseball.The result is the first of three 84-card All-Star Gallery sets. It is aptly named.Like Action Packed's NFL cards, the baseball cards are thicker than standard and embossed. As Lou Brock practically slides off his card and Bob Gibson falls off the mound (and almost off the card), it's clear that Action Packed's techniques work with baseball, too."Baseball cards are not football cards with baseball players on them," says Action Packed's Laurie Pearlstein, who grew up in Pikesville.

The Winter Olympics ended last weekend, and the Summer Games are five months away. But there's still time for collectors to get in shape for the Olympics' most popular sport -- pin collecting.Reports from Albertville, France, indicate that more than 1 million pins were traded by 350,000 people at the official pin centers run by Coca-Cola.For those who couldn't make it to France, the International Pin Collectors Club could be the ticket to beginning or augmenting a collection. It was founded in 1980 and has 2,000 members worldwide.