ALASKA AIRLINES / HORIZON AIR TRADING CARDS

By Ron Suttell

Cards like these are commonly referred to in the collecting hobby as “pilot trading cards” due to their intended use for flight crews to hand them out to passengers, with a signature line on the back. These unique cards were produced over the years by Alaska’s former ad agency, Cohen-Dwyer Advertising, beginning with three sepia-tone cards in 1996. The first issued cards featured three different vintage Alaska Airlines aircraft (Bellanca Skyrocket, Douglas DC-3 and Boeing 727-90C) and were intended as promotional giveaways to celebrate Alaska’s upcoming 65^th anniversary.

In the ensuing years, full-color cards were produced in the late 1990s with stylized wings logo “Alaska’s World” (an ad campaign during that era) in the upper left corner of the card. Only two Alaska cards were issued with this logo, a Boeing 737-400 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80.

Around the same time, subsidiary carrier Horizon issued a card of its Dash 8Q-200 (de Havilland DHC-8-200 turbo-prop) with a similar card format.  This particular card is considered the rarest one.

Alaska and Horizon both continued with this format-gold frame with a polished gold inset for a few more cards but without the “Alaska’s World” wings logo. Among them are two different cards of the Boeing 737-900 with the gold seal “Official Launch Carrier” in the lower right corner. The first of these (below left) was issued in very limited quantities and only distributed to attendees at the May 16, 2001 Boeing delivery roll-out ceremony.  It is also very rare.

Beginning in 2002, Alaska began issuing these cards in a different format with full-color layout on the card front, initially with artist images of its many different special schemes, and later with actual inflight photographs or ground views of each different aircraft type in the fleet. At the time, this was especially important to promote the company’s strong partnership with Disneyland Resort since many of its planes sported Disney schemes.

Unfortunately for the meticulous trading card collector, this is where it starts to get a bit complicated for those desiring to have the complete set. Some of the Disney cards began to show up with variations, not readily caught at first, but seen by the astute eye of true hobbyists. For example, the card with the Boeing 737-400 Magic of Disneyland (better known as the Tinkerbell scheme) was issued with four different variations-even different backs on two of them, while the Alaska Statehood cards have blue/white title variations. This is attributed to the cards being reissued in different years, or in some cases just to produce a better image.

Similarly, the card with Spirit of Make-a-Wish scheme has two different backs of the same card.

Other variations appear on the Boeing 737-400 Salmon Thirty Salmon cards and the 75^th anniversary scheme 737-800 Starliner which includes two different cards. One of the most rarely seen variants of this card collection, issued in 2009, is below on the right.

The 737-400 alaskaair.com Dot Com scheme has an early gold frame card with the same image of the plane as appears later on an updated card in 2005.

Another interesting variant was a card honoring famous Olympic athlete Apolo Ohno, who became a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines for a brief time. One of its planes, a Boeing 737-800 (N596AS), was decorated with a “Follow Apolo” motif in 2010.

The last cards to be issued (see below) were in 2013, and are less common today.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Alaska Airlines cards are in a uniquely separate category from actual hobby collector cards due to their larger size (3-1/4” x 4-1/4” vs. standard baseball card size of 2-1/2” x 3-1/2”) and also of thinner card stock, but are nevertheless highly collectible. Unfortunately, the cards were never numbered, nor is their print run known, making it difficult to appraise their true value other than what may appear on eBay and other auction sites. By comparison, several other airlines have produced more traditional “baseball card size” issues (Delta, FedEx, Hawaiian, Northwest, United, and recently Frontier of wildlife on the tails of their planes), but only Delta has seen fit to number their cards consecutively so their cards are very popular with the hobbyists-especially for several early issue, low production cards that are difficult to find. Alaska did issue a set of more traditionally-sized collector cards in 1997 to celebrate its 65^th anniversary. This 25-card boxed set of colorful cards includes past and present planes in Alaska’s history and comes in both standard blue titles as well as special limited edition gold embossed versions.

From the number of cards in my personal collection, with known variants and re-issued, updated versions of the same aircraft type, I calculate that there are 46 total different cards in Alaska’s odd-size collection as listed below:

• Bellanca “Skyrocket”
• Boeing 727-90C “Golden Nugget Jet”
• Boeing 737-400 “Alaska’s World”
• Boeing 737-400 “Combi”
• Boeing 737-400 “Magic of Disneyland” Tinkerbell (4)
• Boeing 737-400 “Salmon Thirty Salmon” (3)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Alaska Statehood” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Disneyland” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Make-a-Wish” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 alaskaair.com “Dot Com” (3)
• Boeing 737-400 Freighter
• Boeing 737-400 standard livery
• Boeing 737-700 Portland “Timbers Jet”
• Boeing 737-700 standard livery (2)
• Boeing 737-800 “Follow Apolo” (2)
• Boeing 737-800 “Spirit of Seattle”
• Boeing 737-800 “Starliner 75” (2)
• Boeing 737-800 alaskaair.com “Dot Com”
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Adventure of Disneyland Resort” Cars movie characters (2)
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Salmon Thirty Salmon II” 
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Spirit of the Islands”
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS Hawaiian lei on tail
• Boeing 737-800 standard livery
• Boeing 737-900 “Spirit of Disneyland II”
• Boeing 737-900 standard livery (3)
• Boeing 737-900ER standard livery
• Bombardier Q400
• Douglas DC-3
• McDonnell Douglas MD-80
• McDonnell Douglas MD-80 “Alaska’s World”

There are also 8 total cards issued by Horizon Air:

• Bombardier CRJ-700 vertical card
• Bombardier Q200/Q400 vertical card
• Bombardier Q400 “Celebrating 25 Years”
• De Havilland DHC-8Q-200 Horizon Air wings logo
• De Havilland DHC-8Q-200 “Dash 8” (2)
• Fokker F28-4000 (2) 

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Ron Suttell, an airline historian specializing in Alaska Airlines, can be reached at [email protected].