Sports Briefs: Micro Profits in MLB

One of the benefits of having a father who owned his own business was being able to talk him into buying anything that I wanted, convincing him that he could sell said product at his drugstore.

It meant that I had a 100 percent conversion rate as a salesman from age 5 until my father retired. 

My boondoggling started when I inadvertently saw my birthday presents in my parents' shopping cart in Target. Perplexed as to why Kenner's Super Powers action figures were in their basket, I inquired as to the likelihood of those figures ever finding their way into my hands.

"Those are for Dad to sell at the store," was all I was told.

And so, the very next morning (which was on a Saturday in August) before my mother was awake, I peddled my bicycle with training wheels roughly two miles to my dad's store, hoping to secure the figures before they were sold.

My mother's surprise at me not being in the house when she awoke was slightly less than my surprise that all the figures "had been snatched up by customers in less than an hour."

When I was in high school, however, I utilized a much more efficient method of acquiring toys. I just asked.

Prior to the Corinthian Headliners, there were The Original Micro Stars Collector's Series, a collection of 2-inch tall figures of baseball and football players produced in 1995 by Creative Images International.

I first saw the figures in a full-page ad in "Tuff Stuff" magazine, a magazine so thick, it will outlast even the longest bowel movement.

The Micro Stars were caricature-like, each with craniums that made up half their height. This would be disturbing and saddening if real people actually had heads that were 3 feet tall. This was in the day before Barry Bonds took Flintstone's vitamins, though.

There was a checklist of all the baseball players produced, and I carefully studied the ad, wishing for certain figures, while wondering if Jose Canseco's skin would be more white or Hispanic.

However, the ad was not encouraging individual purchases; they wanted bulk purchases from retailers. A minimum order was six figures of 12 different players.