Johnny Kilroy Did It First!

A month ago Spankee from My Cardboard Mistress opened a pack of 2001 SP Top Prospect and pulled a Michael Jordan bat relic card from his ill-fated minor league baseball attempt with the Birmingham Barons, a Chicago White Sox minor league team. It got me in the mood to take a look at some of MJ’s cards from those minor league days to see if I could pick up something on the reasonable side. I did grab a 1991 Upper Deck Baseball SP1 Jordan, I have wanted one of those for years, it bothers me that some knuckleheads like to claim it is his baseball RC even though the card was just a fun card Upper Deck produced 2 years before he even retired (or suspended for gambling depending on who you believe) from basketball to play baseball.

Since I have been on the search for Jordan oddball cards, when Panini and Topps recently announced their Leon Sandcastle cards it got me thinking about when Upper Deck included two special Jordan cards in the 1993-94 Upper Deck SE Basketball release, the JK1 Johnny Kilroy card and the MJR1 Michael Jordan Retirement card. I pulled the retirement card out of packs in 1994 but I never got a Kilroy card. I decided to add some JK1 cards to my eBay watch list but rarely paid much attention when they sold for a couple of dollars but when one showed up with a 1 cent starting bid I decided to toss my hat in the ring, 6 cents worth of my hat to be exact. Needless to say, this morning when I opened my email I had a “Congratulations” email from eBay.

Winning bid: US $0.01 [ 1 bid ]


I won the card on a 1 penny bid. Not a bad when you consider I paid 99 cents for the Michael Jordan SP1 card 10 days ago, two early 1990s Michael Jordan oddball cards for a grand total of $1 and under $4 total when you add in shipping. Now if I can grab a cheap Jordan bat or baseball jersey relic I would be happy.

For reference, Johnny Kilroy was part of a new Nike shoe campaign following Michael Jordan’s first retirement from basketball. Steve Martin was in the commercials doing interviews with different players and trying to prove that Kilroy was actually Jordan who was faking his retirement. It was a pretty funny 2-part commercial ad campaign, something that is being reproduced now with Deion Sanders/Leon Sandcastle.