Recent Oversized Acquisitions: Part of My Black Friday Haul

Jeffrey Leonard and Eddie Murray General Mills sticker.

Having only recently rejoined the collecting world, I only recently discovered COMC for myself.  I heard they were having a Black Friday sale, so I set aside a little from my November and December monthly card budgets.  I'm glad I did!  I'll set aside even more for next year's Black Friday.  I got quite a haul of cards, which took a few weeks to arrive, but I have them now.

Included in my Black Friday purchases are a handful of oversized cards, so I'll feature them here, on my Saturday series on oversized cards.  Either COMC doesn't indicate the size of cards, or at least I don't know where to find such information, so when a card I buy from them is oversized, it's a surprise to me.

The first one here, the Leonard-Murray sticker pictured above, isn't really a card at all, but a pair of album stickers.  I don't usually buy such things, but I'm a sucker for food-issue cards, and I couldn't resist the General Mills logo on this.  I bought it for my Murray player collection, but it won't end up in the binder because of the dimensions -- this is 3-5/8" high, a full 1/8 of an inch taller then a standard card.  Unlike other album stickers, this won't fit neatly and safely into my binder pages, so it will be stored with my other oversized cards.

Eddie Murray "Health Message" card.

The message? Stay in school.

While I didn't know some of the cards would be oversized, I had my suspicions about a couple of them.  This Orioles Health Message card seemed like a team-issue public service card similar to the Smokey Bear cards of John Candelaria and Tony Pena I've previously bought (which are both oversized), so I had a guess here.  Sure enough, this is quite large, at 3-1/2"x5-1/4".  I'm not sure that "stay in school" is really a health message, but we'll give it a pass.

Mike Schmidt Cigna/Police card.

Back of card.

You know who else wants you to stay in school?  Mike Schmidt is here to tell you that graduating from school is a home run!  This card is 2-5/8"x4-1/8"; what a weird size.  One of the two police set Candelarias I bought previously was similar, so again, I suspected this card might be oversized.

Harold Baines Coca-Cola card.

Card back.

Finally, we have this Harold Baines Coca-Cola card.  Perhaps this is a team-issued set, given that the copyright at the bottom is for the White Sox.  Baines is noted on the back as the White Sox all-time home run champ, which is why I noticed Baines in the first place (not living anywhere near Chicago or following the AL).  I wanted to purchase this mainly because of the Coca-Cola logo (similarly to the General Mills logo on the Murray sticker above).  It turns out to be ever-so-slightly oversized at 2-5/8" wide (with the normal 3-1/2" height), and can't fit comfortably into my binder -- I might be able to force it in, but don't want to try that.

With these, plus the two Candelarias and one Pena mentioned above, I appear to have started forming a nice oversized sub-collection for my player collections.  Any future oversized acquisitions will be incidental, though, as I'm not developing this on purpose.