History's Calling

Are you reading this on your phone? In the past two decades, the cell phone has become a ubiquitous part of life. I know only one person who refuses to get one...everyone else has one, I even have two of them, one smart phone and one stupid phone. I can't imagine life without them, especially considering that since my TV died in 2016, I have been watching everything on my phone...it even allowed me to get into hockey.

But cell phones were not always the miniature computers they are now.

Like so:

This photo, taken in 1992 and appearing in the 1993 Action Packed set, may be the earliest card to show a cell phone. It's certainly the earliest card I've seen to show one. And, because it's Action Packed, it's also embossed, because that is what they did. The Action Packed cards generally don't scan well, though, because the scanner picks up on the embossedness (yes, I made up a word- if Shakespeare could do it so can I) and puts weird white lines on things....like his chin and nose. Almost like a reverse shadow.

The back of the card even captions the front photo:

1992 would turn out to be Kyle's best Cup season. Under the points system used from 2004-14, he would have won the Cup championship, in fact. He raced until 2008, and is currently a broadcaster for NBC. He still has the same haircut, although now it's kept in a ponytail.And is much grayer.  Felix Sabates still owns a portion of this team, now driven by Kyle Larson, although Chip Ganassi is now the primary owner of the team.