The Weiner the World Awaited

Kahn's cards are legendary in the hobby- at least in my opinion. I first heard about them in the 1990s sometime, when Beckett mentioned them. I never thought I would ever see one, let alone have one, but it's happened!

Kahn's was a Cincinnati-based meat company that was founded in 1883, shortly after cards as we know them were invented. Beginning with the 1957-58 season, they made regional promos for the Cincinnati Royals, who moved to Cincinnati in 1957 and stayed until 1972. The cards would be produced every year from 57-58 through 1965-66, as during 1966 Kahn's was sold to Consolidated Foods, which is more well known as Sara Lee. The brand is actually still in production but I've never had any of it, I'm not sure if it's not stocked locally or just not the brand we always go with, either way that's not really relevant to the card.

I never thought I would get one for a couple of reasons- one, they are old regional promos, last issued 18 seasons before I was born, which makes them pretty hard to find. All regional promos are tough, but regionals from the 50s and 60s even more so. Secondly, they were packaged directly in the hot dog package, which means many of them were destroyed by grease. So, even though I've known they existed for about 20 years now, I'd never seen one in person.

When I joined COMC in 2016, I quickly found one for sale...but it was $20. More than I like to spend on a card. I would check periodically to see if it was still available, and if the price had come down. It never got lower in price but it was always still there.

In July, when I crossed the 400 card barrier and earned $20 free from COMC, I said to my mom that I planned to buy this card with my shipping bonus, and that I had wanted it for a while. Well, she went ahead and bought it for me, both to make sure it didn't sell to somebody else, and so that it could be included in this shipment. It ended up being the second card out of the box!

It's not in perfect shape, but I'm thrilled to have it! I never though I would ever see one of these in person, and yet here it is. There's only one small meat juice stain on the top left of the card back, and it's exaggerated by the scan- it's not as dark in hand. I don't know if I will ever get the other years in my collection- this was the only Kahn's basketball card on COMC the entire time I've been using the site- but it's also the first card from the 1964-65 season in my collection. Of course, it has to be- the Kahn's cards were the only NBA issues in 1958-59, 59-60, 60-61, 62-63, 64-65 and 65-66! (I think- there may be other regional promos waiting to be cataloged) The NBA didn't get a regularly issued annual set until 1969-70. It should be noted that Kahn's produced football cards from at least 1959-64, and baseball cards from 1955-69, and again from 1987-2017. I don't have any of them either, but they are not my main focus.

Although the card doesn't mention it, Happy Hairston got his nickname from his unhappy personality- according to Jerry West's autobiography he was not a happy person at all. He played long enough to be in some of the early Topps sets so this is not my first card of him. Several of the players in the Kahn's sets appear nowhere else, and they also included the first ever coach card in NBA history, I believe. Those people are some of the ones on my list of NBA players missing from my collection that I don't think I'll ever get. But I am not going to give up hope.

After all, I never thought I would ever get one of these, and yet here we are!