COLUMN: Carillon Flashback February 24, 1993 – Bovine beauties featured on newest collector cards

Collecting celebrity sports cards has spanned generations and amassed more than a few fortunes for owners who had long-forgotten the cardboard ducats they hoarded as youngsters.

The fad of collecting cards has by no means been restricted to sports, but enjoys considerable popularity by comic book and automobile enthusiasts, movie buffs and country music fans as well. All in all, card collecting is serious business.

So why is it when talk turns to a new series of dairy cards, the temptation is to ask whether the set will include Moo-reese Richard, Tee-Moo Selanne, Randy Cow-lyle or Mario La-Moo?

Cattle-Lyne is the brainchild of Friedensfeld-area milk producer Wayne Fuchs, who expects the cards to be a hit with both the dairy farmers of the future and their classmates at school.

He sees the cards as a novel way to educate the general public about the dairy industry and provide dairymen another opportunity to show the best of the breed.

To date, breeders and milk producers alike are pretty much limited to people who tour their farm or catch a glimpse at dairy shows, Fuchs said.

The first set of Cattle-Lyne cards should be rolling off the presses at Derksen Printers in Steinbach in time for June release nationally. After that, a couple of series every few months will give collectors the opportunity to build a serious collection of the cream of the crop of the world’s finest dairy animals.

An enthusiastic Fuchs said he came up with the Cattle-Lyne idea while browsing through back issues of Canadian Holstein magazine. Looking at the photos, he was struck by the fact dairy producers were probably paying hundreds of dollars for eight-by-ten photos of their cows, which seldom got farther than the barn office wall.

Prominent breeders may tour a couple of hundred people through their facilities in a year, he said, but they had the pictures taken anyway.

A collector card could provide an inexpensive advertising tool to be distributed through feed companies, implement dealers and parts garages, Fuchs thought. Add the competitive nature of a 4-H club fund-raising project and the potential market keeps expanding.

Sold in sets of eight, the cards will compare in price to a lot of sports cards being collected now, Fuchs said. A quick browse through a few card shops showed that a five-card set selling between $1.69 and $5 was common. Cattle-Lyne cards should be available at under $2 for a set of eight.

Fuchs passed the idea on to Derksen Printers president Rick Derksen over coffee earlier this year, and the first samples of the dairy trading cards were presented to Eastern Manitoba Holstein Club members at a February seminar.

Fuchs said the idea has proved to be far from being a “hard sell.” While mass production is still more than three months away, over 100 of the top dairy cattle in Canada are lined up to be included.

Cattle-Lyne invites producers from across Canada and the United States to send in a color photo (preferably taken professionally by a livestock photographer) and official records of both show and production.

At present, card options include half a dozen categories. A show series, for instance, includes All-Canadian, All-American and 4-H animals; a Top Farms and Breeders series will include great names like Hanoverhill, Raybrook, Hansons, Benner and Continental; Past Greats, Candids and Red and Whites will add to the variety and to the excitement of collecting.

It will not be too long before someone offers to trade their Mona Lisa for another work of art. Experienced collectors will realize immediately the reference is to Hanson Prestar Monalisa Ex and it is a collector card of another bovine beauty this trader is after.