Ah, nice big scans! These are direct from the Sonic Gear collection. If you turn your head sideways, you can even read the backs. As you can see, this first set is comprised of stock arts and title screen captures. What does it say in the corner? "Peel". These are also stickers. The backs are conveniently numbered for your collecting ease. These are shown in a Trading Card plastic slip cover (with binder holes) probably by Fleer or Topps.

It should be noted that these follow the old (And bogus) story that Sonic turned blue by running too fast, and Robotnic was once good, and desired to bury the evil chaos emeralds, but he dropped one and merged with his raw egg while Sonic was on a treadmill. So he blamed Sonic and wants to beat him with animal robots. Yea. Makes sense...in BIZZARRO WORLD.

In the beginning, no one really had an official explanation for WHY anything was like it is in the games. So different companies just kind of made up anything they could think of at the time, yeilding like 4 origens for Sonic, none of which were cannon anyway.
Notice the edge of the cards. This is a "Flick-It" flip book style animation where the stock art goes through several stock poses before 'running off''.

Another curiosity with these cards is they show both versions of Eggman and Robotnik. You can see the "Anti-Japan-ed" one on the 'rotten egg' card, but the rest are regular eggmans.
See the "Super Sonic" card? Too bad he's not shown for real, although SS DID exist at the time these were made. They just didn't have a 'freebie' art to use of him.

No, the bottom row isn't cut off, that's just how the animation ends. The center bottom card is an unusual one.

Somewhere with these cards (and maybe the following set) are supposed to be special cards. They were billed as "Holograms", but they aren't. They are more of a silver foil type deal, with designs you can only see by tilting them in the light. There are presumeably 6 of these, all different. However, they are SO rare. The normal cards being as scarce as these are, means their foils are nearly impossible to get.
Of course...if you have some, sending in scans/photos is really recommended! These large scans are a courtesy for the zillions of fans who don't have the cards, and can't be expected to buy them, as there aren't any left. This set was aquired when a large Sonic collection was liquidated over a Newsgroup. *Do you remember what a newsgroup was? You can look it up.

• Card 1. Owned by Scott Simms Card 1. Owned by Scott Simms
• Card 2. Owned by Scott Simms Card 2. Owned by Scott Simms
• Card 3 Card 3
• Card 3 Card 3
• Card 4 Card 4
• Card 6 Card 6
• Card 5. Owned by TJ Kitsune Card 5. Owned by TJ Kitsune
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Finally appearing! A foil card. As you can see this is 3 of 6. To create the effect, this card is simply printed on the rainbow-foil bits type paper. They've chosen the "Sonic on a bridge" stock scene, common around the GameGear Sonic releases. What's the border? The card is actually inside a special plastic case for these photos, due to its rarity. Card photographed and owned by: Jeremy Hatfield

With the addition of these other 2 cards, it appears that they've used the same sparkle/foil type paper throughout the set. This stuff is notoriously hard to photo/scan, as the real effect is achieved by turning it in the light, but you can still grasp it here. Card #1 (left) has a quite similar (if not the same) running stock

Sonic that the #3 above has, only this time, there's no background. Still, the 'after image' looks neat when seen through the foil cardstock. The #2 has the familiar Sonic 2 logo with wierd Eggman/Robotnick hybrid grabbin' background. The foil effect here enhances the "2" as well as the ground. It appears that all the backs of these are the same, and numbered. 

The Sonic 2 card really stands out. The foil effect is really super going through the water and sky around the Sonic 2 logo, as well as in the word really helping it shine. The logo is also quite well done, using direct Japanese art so everyone's quite on model and not stale looking. This was a prime design to put on a foil The left card is #4 and the right card is #6.

Card 5 is pretty good too. It uses the foil to good effect inside the 2, and the "I'm new here" peeking Tails coming from behind it used some good art. Again, the card isn't yellow like this, it's rainbow like all the other ones, it's just how they scan. 

• Scan by WrongButtonGames. Scan by WrongButtonGames.
• Store packaging Store packaging
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Here is a scan of the package that you would have seen when buying a pack of these trading cards from the Sonic 2 set. You can see the Topps logo, suggested retail price of 50 cents, and it says "Includes Sonic 2 Tips" and "Cards & Stickers" with randomly inserted added, of course. The fine print mentions 2 foil cards are randomly inserted in 2 out of 36 packs. Cards like this (and most all trading cards) were blind-packed.
The package art leaves some to be desired, with random tiny Tails art placed on top of where Sonic's feet are 'running', and a random white cloud all in the background. You can see poor Tails was on his way to mutating here, being colored brown & with the less-cute art.

At the store packaging photos you can see what the Topps cards packs would have looked like when they were on display for sale in the store. The middle photo is the open cardboard box that's the case that holds the 36 packs. The top was opened & customers would pick packs out. The bottom is the 'wrapper' for the case which has the copyright details & 'prism' liklihood (which is mandated to be printed on stuff like this for legal reasons) The rate is 2 prisms (means holo, foil) cards per every 36 packs. So, the ratio to get one of these is really low. Each card pack there has 8 cards total...but they usually only sold for 0.75 cents or so. (So it wasn't a super ripoff) Notice the card package still sealed (above right side) is different from the one in the entry above. This one is an earlier edition.