In 1991, Leaf Inc. entered the sports card market and produced their first ever set of baseball cards. Known primarily at the time for producing non-sports trading cards and stickers, Leaf saw an opening in the baseball card industry and wanted to compete with the major producers like Topps and Fleer. They acquired licenses from MLB and the players association and got to work on their inaugural baseball card release.
The 1991 Leaf Baseball card set would contain 234 total cards and feature write-ups, stats and photos of players from the 1990 MLB season. The design of the cards featured a clean white border around the image with stats printed along the bottom. On the back, they included career stats as well as highlights from the previous season. One of the interesting aspects of the 1991 Leaf set compared to others was they included rookie cards for players even if they had debuted prior to 1990 as long as they had less than 3 years of MLB service time. This resulted in the set containing rookie cards for players like Gregg Jefferies, Charles Nagy and Erik Hanson who had already made their MLB debut but were still considered rookies by Leaf’s standards.
Distribution and Production
With no previous sports card experience, Leaf faced an uphill battle trying to get their 1991 baseball card set into stores and compete with the long-standing giants in the industry. They produced the set in much lower print runs compared to Topps and Fleer who were printing cards in the billions. Most estimates place the print run around 10-15 million total packs produced. With fewer packs to go around, finding 1991 Leaf in stores was more challenging than other years. They relied heavily on rack packs distributed to retailers rather than large wax box purchases like their competitors. This limited distribution led to the cards being harder to find which only increased interest in the brand over time.
On the production side, early Leaf card issues were prone to off-centers, poor color registration and overall lesser quality control than Topps and Fleer who had been refining the printing process for decades. Centering especially was a frequent problem in the 1991 Leaf set which only added to the challenge collectors faced in finding pristine near-mint copies. The higher availability of lesser-quality cards may have also turned off some collectors initially. Over the years, Leaf would improve their printing and quality controls to come more in line with the major brands but 1991 remained their experimental pioneering season.
Key Rookies and Short Prints
While finding a complete 1991 Leaf baseball card set in high grade was difficult due to distribution and production problems, the rookie cards it featured became highly coveted by collectors. Stars like Chipper Jones, Barry Larkin, Terry Mulholland and David Cone all had their rookie cards in the set which increased demand when they went on to have strong MLB careers. Other notable rookies included Scott Rolen, Juan Gonzalez, Jeff Kent, Kevin Young and Ricky Bottalico. Short print issue cards like Frank Thomas’ base card also held significant value due to rarity.
In the decades since, as Leaf found more distribution success with subsequent releases and the players from the ’91 set had hall of fame careers, demand and prices for the rookie cards skyrocketed. Pristine Chipper Jones and Barry Larkin rookies can now sell for thousands of dollars. Even lesser stars from the set like Kevin Young and Darrin Jackson rookies retain value as key parts of completing a set from Leaf’s debut season. The rarity created by the low initial print run combined with the breakout success of players also led to the 1991 Leaf set maintaining its place as one of the most iconic of the early ’90s and coveted by collectors to this day.
Legacy and Later Leaf Releases
While their first season distributing baseball cards had its challenges, Leaf proved there was appetite for competition in the market and that collectors were willing to track down their releases once seeded interest in stars from the sets. Their subsequent 1992, 1993 and 1994 baseball offerings built on improving production quality and increased distribution that brought Leaf into better competition with Topps and Fleer. By the mid-1990s they had more firmly established their brand as a prominent third player in the annual baseball card race.
Leaf continued producing baseball cards into the 2000s before eventually merging with Upper Deck in 2006. Their acquisitions of licenses for NFL and NBA trading cards expanded their portfolio in the 1990s as well. To this day, collectors still seek out complete Leaf baseball card sets from the early ’90s golden era as desirable parts of their collections. The low initial print run of the pioneering 1991 Leaf baseball cards in particular makes complete examples increasingly rare but also retains their place as a highly valuable release nearly 30 years later. It marked Leaf’s entry to great success as a sports card brand and remains a seminal set for collectors.
