Sports Immortals Boxed Trading Card Set

SPORTS IMMORTALS Boxed Trading Card Set by Mike Barson.

Why is this obscure card set so ULTRA-RARE and Kitchen Sink's scarcest ever?

In 1993, Kitchen Sink Press routinely announced and published Sports Immortals card set. Featuring "immortal" stars from baseball, football, basketball, golf and boxing, with incisive text by author Mike Barson, and was part of its ongoing series of boxed card sets that included R. Crumb's Heroes of the Blues; Charles Burns' Good Squad; Barson's Dinosaur Nation; Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics; Monte Beauchamp's War Cry; Will Eisner's The Spirit; Confidential, Saucer People, Republicans Attack! and many, many others.

Kitchen Sink Press (KSP) and Barson were careful to use only historic images that had lapsed into public domain. This included the cover of a biography of Babe Ruth, just one of 36 different sports figure images in the set (other sports figures in the set are listed below). But soon after publication of Sports Immortals, KSP and Barson were put on notice by the company that licensed Babe Ruth merchandise, that KSP must immediately "cease and desist" selling the cards, based on an obscure "right to privacy" law in place in only two or three states. Nor was the Ruth estate's representative willing to retroactively license the single Babe Ruth card image (it allegedly conflicted with a separate exclusive license). After quick discussions with Barson and its attorney, KSP determined grudgingly that it would be too expensive to challenge the large licensing firm and, thus, KSP immediately ceased selling Sports Immortals, notifying its distributors and wholesale customers that no further orders could be fulfilled.

KSP publisher Denis Kitchen set aside a small quantity for his personal archives and the balance was destroyed. Only about 1,200 of the 3,000 sets originally published were wholesaled prior to the cease and desist order, leaving Sports Immortals ---by far--- the scarcest card set ever produced by KSP. In 1999 KSP went out of business. This web store is now offering the sets from the small stash in Kitchen's archives. They are Mint in the original shrinkwrapped box. $35.00