How George H.W. Bush ended up on an official Topps baseball card
1990
The lights hummed overhead in Lee Hull’s Illinois memorabilia shop as he worked through another set of cards. The crinkle of wax wrappers, the faint scent of cardboard and gum, the anticipation as he thumbed through each stack, these were the rituals he had repeated numerous times before, and he knew the rhythms of card collecting: the predictable mix of stars and scrubs, the occasional rookie that might be worth something someday, and the rare find that could change everything. But little had prepared him for what tumbled out of that 1990 Topps Baseball pack.
A president. In a baseball uniform.
Hull was in shock as he pulled the card from the pack. There, staring up at him was the sitting president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, photographed decades earlier in his Yale baseball gear. Card #USA1. A designation no one in the business had seen before.
According to everything Hull knew, this card shouldn’t exist. Topps had stated that they produced exactly 100 copies, all of which were hand-delivered to the White House for Bush’s distribution. Zero were supposed to reach retail channels. Yet here it was, this elusive card, and he pulled it from a wax pack!
But Hull’s discovery wasn’t unique. Lightning was striking all across America. In July 1990, John Casey, owner of Baseball Cards Etc. in Salt Lake City, made his own earth-shaking discovery—another Bush card pulled from a wax pack.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a teenage collector opened a pack and found himself staring at presidential cardboard. Three separate discoveries within months of each other. This seemed far from a coincidence.
From Yale Ironman to Presidential Cardboard
To understand why these cards existed at all, the story begins forty-four years earlier, when war veteran George Herbert Walker Bush walked onto the Yale University baseball diamond in spring 1946. Bush, a 21-year-old former Navy pilot, had earned his wings at 18 and flew fifty-eight combat missions in the Pacific Theater. His defining moment came on September 2, 1944, when his Grumman Avenger was shot down over Chichi Jima. For four hours, he floated in a life raft on the Pacific before being rescued.
Now he wanted to play first base for Yale.
The competition was brutal, but Bush had something the others didn’t: an obsession with showing up. By spring 1946, he had won the job. For the next three seasons, he became Yale’s iron man—76 consecutive games, every inning of every contest. His statistics told the story of a player whose heart was bigger than his talent: .224 lifetime average, one home run. But his glove? That was pure artistry. A .983 career fielding percentage that made opposing first basemen look like weekend warriors. Bush anchored Yale’s defense through two consecutive College World Series appearances, playing under the childhood nickname that would stick with him through the Oval Office: “Poppy.” That streak—never missing an inning—was Bush’s tribute to his childhood hero, Lou Gehrig, the legendary “Iron Horse.”
As Bush once said, “I remember Lou’s continuity. Gehrig was steadier and more dependable than Babe [Ruth], steadily achieving excellence”—a telling self-portrait of Bush’s values. Like Gehrig, Bush made reliability his religion, showing up even when his body ached, even when the team was losing, even when the scouts had long since stopped watching. It was a trait that would define both his baseball and political careers: the man who was always there. But when graduation came, Bush chose boardrooms over ballparks, heading to Texas to make his fortune in oil. His election to Congress in 1966 launched a political trajectory that would carry him through the corridors of power—from the United Nations to the CIA to the vice presidency, and ultimately to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The baseball fire never completely died. Even as vice president, Bush shocked a crowd at Denver’s Mile High Stadium during a 1984 old-timers exhibition. When slugger Tony Oliva ripped a line drive toward right field, Bush dove left, snagged the ball, then completed an underhand flip to the pitcher covering first base. Detroit Tigers executives were so impressed that they mailed Bush a playful $1 contract offer.
For Bush, baseball represented something sacred about the American character. “Baseball is the most democratic of sports,” he would say. He’d frequently weave baseball metaphors into speeches about democracy and fairness, and even during Operation Desert Storm, baseball remained an emotional anchor.
But for all his love of the game, Bush’s playing days seemed destined to remain a footnote to a life of public service—until a family gathering changed everything. The family was gathered when one of Bush’s grandchildren spoke up, wondering why grandpa didn’t have his own baseball card like other famous players. Here was the President of the United States, a man whose face appeared on newspapers and television, yet he didn’t have his own baseball card. The idea sparked something in the room. That simple question, echoing from a family gathering to the executive offices of Topps in Brooklyn, set in motion the creation of one of The Hobby’s most mysterious cards.
100 Cards for the President
When conversations began between Topps and the White House in early 1990, the concept was unprecedented: a baseball card honoring a sitting president. The proposal reached Chief of Staff John Sununu, and the idea moved forward.
But this card was not designed to be distributed to hobby shops across America. This would be exclusive, presidential—100 copies with the unique identifier #USA1, solely for White House distribution. When the cards were completed, Topps CEO Arthur Shorin personally delivered them to the Oval Office in a leather binder. The Oval Office, with its soft lamplight and the quiet shuffle of staffers, became the stage for a unique bit of baseball—and baseball card—history. Bush examined the card. The design was classic Topps: red and white motif tracing back to the company’s 1951 Red Backs, with Bush leaning against a railing in his Yale uniform, looking like the college player he’d once been rather than the political leader he’d become. The name appeared in the lower right corner: “George Bush.” Not “Poppy,” the nickname his teammates had hollered across the diamond four decades earlier. This was a card for Bush the statesman as much as Bush the baseball player. To emphasize this fact, the back of the card listed his home: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. After the presentation, Bush became the distributor in chief, personally handing out cards to family members, close friends, and select members of the White House staff. Each card came with the weight of presidential approval, a personal gift from one of the most powerful men in the world.
Two Cards, One Mystery Solved
The question that had haunted collectors ever since Hull’s discovery—how does a White House-only card end up in wax packs? —would remain unanswered for twenty-three years. Then John Sununu decided to play detective.
Sununu had been watching as Bush cards appeared with increasing frequency. As one of the original recipients, he understood their significance better than most. “Since I was sure that few, if any, of us would ever part with such a personal memento, I was surprised to see so many cards beginning to show up in auctions in recent years,” said Sununu.
To solve this Hobby enigma, Sununu made a decision that would unlock the truth. In 2013, he carefully gathered eleven of his own Bush cards and submitted them to PSA for professional grading. For Sununu, this wasn’t just about authentication; it was about understanding how cards he had personally received from the president’s hands could be appearing so frequently at auction.
When the package arrived at PSA headquarters, then-PSA President Joe Orlando began what seemed like routine authentication work. But as he placed Sununu’s cards under the magnification equipment, something caught his attention. “We immediately noticed a difference in their construction”, Orlando explained. “Each card provided by Mr. Sununu exhibited a thick, clear coating along the entire face of the card.” Under the bright laboratory lights, the coating gave Sununu’s cards an “almost laminated, reflective look”—a finish completely different from the standard 1990 Topps cards that collectors had been finding and trading for years.
Two distinct Bush cards. One bore the unmistakable presidential treatment—that special glossy coating that caught the light and announced its exclusive origins. The other appeared deceptively ordinary, with the same matte finish found on countless baseball cards sitting in hobby shops across America. “We’ve now confirmed there are two types of cards”, Orlando announced to the collecting world. “One type issued directly to the White House and a version that merely escaped the manufacturer.”
The investigation uncovered the smoking gun: a former Topps employee had smuggled approximately seventy non-glossy copies to the secondary market. These “escaped” cards weren’t stolen from the White House—they were legitimate Topps productions that had slipped out during manufacturing, finding their way into the retail stream like contraband.
Today, the rarity has driven values skyward. PSA has graded 129 Bush cards in total, with only 14 labeled as the coveted “White House Issue” variant. A PSA 8 example sold for $14,999.99 in [November 2024]. A BGS 9 White House Issue fetched nearly $25,700 in 2019. Even lower-grade examples approach $1,000 or more, proof that scarcity creates its mythology.
The Enduring Mystery
The 1990 Topps George Bush card has transcended its cardboard origins to become a part of The Hobby’s mythos. The card’s cultural reach extended far beyond hobby shops when John Sununu appeared on The Tonight Show and traded a Bush card to Johnny Carson for a 1957 Topps Ernie Banks.
The story that began with a grandchild’s innocent question has become one of the greatest legends in The Hobby. From White House binder to Hobby legend, the Bush card’s journey proves that sometimes the best stories begin with the simplest questions. The card stands as testament to the power of childhood dreams deferred but not denied, proof that even presidents can get their cardboard immortality, though sometimes the path to glory winds through courtrooms, mysteries, and the kind of chaos that only makes the story better.
