I was browsing the November 1998 Oregon Trail Sports Auctions catalog when I ran across a store display promotional poster I hadn’t seen before.
The set it was promoting goes by a ton of different names (1976 Icee Reds, Reds Cup Lids, Icee Drinks Reds, Icee Collect-A-Champ, etc.). I do think it’s funny that a lot of people call them lids when they were actually issued on the bottom of the cups. And, gosh, part of me wants to call them discs!
If you haven’t seen one before, here’s an example of a Pete Rose “lid” that Probstein sold for $64.56 in January 2026, showing a “1976 Icee Drinks Reds” flip.
Anywho, I eventually found a cleaner image of the poster from Mears, who sold it for $75 back in August 2015.
The poster explains that when you bought a 14-oz. ICEE, you’d receive a circular photograph of your favorite Reds player. It also instructs fans to ask for an official Collectors Card that holds all 12 “Champs.”
I’ve tracked down a few examples of those. The complete example below, with all 12 players, sold for $155 on eBay on February 15, 2026, while the second one sold for a best offer price of $40 on February 26, 2026.
For more about the set and these promos, check out the great article A Requiem for Blue Lights and Redlegs from SABR’s Baseball Cards Research Committee, along with this thread on the Net54 forums.
Happy collecting!
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