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What: Cuban Select Series baseball cards.

What would you give to get your hands on Omar Linares, longtime star of Cuba’s national baseball team? An all-star outfielder? A top-notch closer?

Most general managers would welcome such a quandary. But unless Linares defects, he’s untouchable as far as big-league baseball is concerned. Card collectors, however, aren’t limited by any ban. Which means they can not only pick Linares up, they can also trade him for a reserve catcher and a stick of gum to be named later.

Cuban Select Series cards, the first featuring Cuban players since the country’s 1959 revolution, are now being distributed by Norm Garcia, editor of the Canadian lumber workers’ union newspaper and an avid follower of Cuban baseball.

The set, available in boxes of 12 11-card packets that sell for $15, is made up of players and coaches from the regional teams that participated in Cuba’s elite Serie Selectiva in 1994, the second-to-last season Cuba staged the four-team tournament. The front of each card features color action or posed-action photos. On the back, in English and Spanish, is biographical and statistical information. On Linares’ card, for example, it says: “ ‘The Kid’ is one of Cuba’s most complete players with a phenomenal .373 lifetime batting average.”

Seven of the players featured in the set--including major leaguers Livan Hernandez, Ariel Prieto and Osvaldo Fernandez--have defected since 1994.

Cuban Select Series cards are available at Glendora Sports Cards, Glendora, (626) 963-9616 and Ray’s Sports Cards, Hacienda Heights, (818) 330-1444.