OK, this one has me stumped. I picked up a lot of 5 cards from EBay on an impulse because I'd never seen them before (didn't spend much money). They were listed as "2010 Cleveland Collectible Cards That Kardiac Season". There is no copyright information on them, so I'm assuming they're unlicensed.
Looking at the 5 cards in the lot, it looks to me like the Jim Brown ("The Best Ever") was a promo card released by the "River Burns media company" in order to sell advertising and drum up sponsors for a larger set. The back mentions production of a *600* card set produced over 5 years, and the pictures in the left margin suggest it would not be dedicated to a specific sport (while difficult t o see, the top image is Jim Thorpe and the bottom appears to be Brian Sipe, but the 3 in the middle are clearly non-sport related).
The other 4 seem to be part of a set/subset labeled "That Kardiac Season". The four players featured are Lyle Alzado, Dave Logan, Clay Matthews, and Ozzie Newsome. All were part of the Kardiac Kids Browns teams of 1980 and feature backs with the same text but different ads at the bottom (presumably the company that sponsored that card). The Alzado card has different pictures on the back--the others are all the same.
I checked online and can't find anything on these cards in general. COMC does have a "Sold Out" listing for a single card (Doug Dieken--one I don't have) with the same description as the EBay listing. The website given on the cards now redirects to a band based in Vermont.("Vermont's Smoothest Yacht Rock"). I did send an email to the sales address on the back but have not yet received a reply.
Anyone have any ideas? The quality isn't phenomenal, but it's better than most of the Broder type unlicensed cards.
Glenn