Card Identification Forum

Got this card 1991 Raghib Ismail #1, cant find any info except a suggestion that its a promo. There are several 1991 Smokey sets, but none of notre dame and the sets listed are all seemingly all team specific.

https://www.comc.com/Cards,=1991+Smokey+Bear+Notre+Dame+Fighting+Irish,ot

A one-card Smokey set?  It's hard to believe the college/US Forest Service (USFS) would team up to create a one-card set to get their message out.  And it doesn't have "USFS" on the card, who own the rights to the Smokey Bear name/images. I could be wrong, but IMHO this smells fishy.

In 1991 Ismail was the hottest prospect. Tons of unlicensed and counterfeit cards were produced.

You may be correct, but when trying to find an answer I have found no consistency between Smokey sets(some say USFS on them, some dont, some have official USFS seal and others do not. It was proposed as a promo as if it was printed as a "sample" of sorts since it has Smokey artwork on it, but a very old ND logo.(from 30s or 40s and not the logo they were using in 1991) Im thinking that there wasnt a 1994 Notre Dame team set, but there are samples of what it was supposed to look like if notre dame continued with team sets???  Just could of been the seller playing it up since he wanted 22 each for it, I paid 1.50 shipped for this one. Even reaching out to USFS to see if any info could be obtained through them the response was something like....I dont think we have records from 10 yrs ago let alone 30 yrs ago

It uses the same design as the Los Angeles Kings Smokey set from a year or two before. 

Don't know.  But cool card.  I'd forgotten about "The Rocket".

Fritts

Thought it looked familiar.  And with what David said about the old ND logo, I'm leaning more and more to homemade/unlicensed/counterfeit.

I suppose thats why its good to ask, but being honest in my thoughts why would a counterfeiter bother putting a non-copyrighted logo on a counterfeit/fake/homemade card? thats why my thinking was that it was a mockup or promo in anticipation of getting an order or approval? It doesnt help that there are rocket ismail cards that people have called counterfeit/unliscenced  but I was informed by a canadian collector that several off-brand companies made raghib ismail cards(unliscenced in US?) since he went to CFL right after college