Wal-Mart Sells Cards of Heroes and Villains

Topps Co. shipped a new series of 90 “Enduring Freedom” cards to Wal-Mart Stores across the country in early November.

The baseball card company said the cards depict both heroes and villains, and one card in particular will likely be ripped, burned and stomped on. It’s the card with Osama bin Laden’s picture on it.

“We saw that these cards are a collector’s item,” said Susanne Decker, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart. “Some customers want to keep them as a record of what happened. Some customers won’t feel their collection is complete without that card [bid Laden]. If they don’t want that card, they can throw it away.”

Decker said a package of seven cards sells for $1.97 at Wal-Mart. The entire set of 90 cards costs $47.28.

The 50-plus year-old Topps Co. has chronicled historical events with its trademark cards since the Korean War. The war in Afghanistan with the Taliban was an automatic addition, said Arthur Shorin, who is chairman, CEO and president of New York-based Topps.

Sales of the patriotic cards, which have been on smaller retailers’ shelves since mid-October, are not expected to replace the now fizzled-out Pokemon card craze, which largely accounted for a 72 percent drop in the Topps second-quarter profits.

Shorin is donating a portion of the sales of the cards to the World Trade Center relief fund. He said he sees the cards as a chance to educate children about the events of Sept. 11 and thereafter.

They are picking up bits and pieces of the events from television and newspapers, “but kids need to get information on their own terms,” he said. “This is their medium.”

About half of the “Enduring Freedom” trading cards feature military hardware — F-16s, B-2 bombers and F-117 stealth fighters in action — and statistical data, which will give kids a sense of security and power, Shorin said.

There are also Old Glory cards, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cards and cards featuring National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat giving blood for the victims of the attacks. Depictions of the attacks themselves and the rubble were left out to avoid controversy, Shorin said.

Shorin declined to say how many cards the company expects to sell, nor did he comment on its outlook for the third quarter. He did hint, however, that the company would issue another batch of cards in the series he dubbed “Freedom’s Force,” involving high-tech special forces employed in combat.

Decker said the “Enduring Freedom” cards will be in about 800 Wal-Mart stores, all the Wal-Mart stores that already carry Topps cards.