The fronts of the cards are actual (bat? - BB Cardpedia says no.) wood, laser etched with the player photo, team logo and set logo. The backs have the same photo in real color and a brief blurb about the players exploits. You can tell these came out mid-season, because a few of the write-ups on active players include details about their performances up to mid-May 2002. (CardPedia says July)
I just like the way they look and how much detail could be carved into the wood. The streaks in the scans are just the penny sleeves....
I pulled most of them from boxes of 40-Man as I was building the set, sometimes even from partial boxes (Pujols). Don't think I ended up with more than one duplicate.
I got the last few from eBay, notably Mantle (for which I probably paid the most), Griffey Jr., and Frank Thomas. One night last week I arbitrarily Googled the Chipper Jones - the last missing one - and found that Amazon had a listing for it for $12.50. Upon further investigation, I found it was actually sold by COMC. So since I had recently created an account, I went in and jumped on it. Then, to make the shipping worthwhile, I shopped for some other stuff I haven't been able to find - namely inserts from 2005 UD All-Star Classics. Then I searched for my two latest player collection guys - Brian Matusz and Dan LeFevour. I ended up with about $60 worth of stuff in that order.
I've seen the whole collection for sale by Kruk Cards on eBay. Can't remember how much he wanted for them, but I think it was approaching four digits. I tried not to spend more than just below high book value, keeping it closer to low book in many cases.
Here is a bigger scan of A-Rod's card, front and back. Click on them to see 'em bigger (same goes for any of the other scans). You can see they replicated the stripes from the back, which ties both sides together nicely. I like how the wood grain shows in some of them too.
Now all I have left for a "master set" of this 1182 card monster is to finish the Mark McGwire Flashbacks. I still need #1 4 7 19 27 30 31 33 34 38 and 39 out of the 40. When I say master set, I mean all base, and these two insert sets. I didn't try for the three jersey subsets, or the Electric and Electric Rainbow parallels. The McGwires can be had for a couple bucks apiece on either COMC or SportLots. I'll probably clean them up there after I check at this year's National in Baltimore. But the best part is now over. I've never seen Lumber Yard inserts at a show, ever. I always glance at dealer mojo hit cases, but not once did I spot an all wood beauty like those above. Now I don't have to search any more!