2021 Topps Series 2....whatever...etc.

 

I’m not sleeping.

            That’s not a good thing.

            I should probably say that I’m not staying asleep.

Which is new for me.

I’ve never been what one would call a good sleeper. It takes me a while to fall asleep when I go to bed. Even when I’m tired. I usually replay the day in my head. Run through those anxieties. Contemplate the anxieties to come the next day. I’ve had bouts of insomnia. If I’m honest, alcohol has helped over the years. It’s much easier to fall asleep (i.e., pass out) when you’re boozed up. If you don’t mind not remembering what you’ve watched or read from the previous evening.  But unless you plan on being a full-blown alcoholic, that only works for so long. So, I usually stop now after a couple of “relaxing” after work drinks. Pot helps too. But I’ve run out of pot. I have edibles here but I won’t use them.

I inhale.

I imbibe.

I don’t ingest.

I’m not staying asleep.

I find that I’m waking up around two or three in the morning and just staying awake, letting the anxieties wash over me. I have a lot of anxieties right now. I just had family visit. We walked around the city all weekend in 90-degree heat. If you don’t know, New York City is fucking miserable in the summer. Don’t come here between May and October. New York City smells like garbage, dog shit, sweat and vomit in the summer. If I could leave New York City in the summer I would.

I love my family. But being a tour guide is very hard on me. The anxiety before, during and after can be overwhelming. Am I showing people a good time? Are they seeing everything they want to see? Does it show on my face that a loathe Times Square with every fiber of my being? Being a Brooklynite with Manhattan-centric visitors…well, I only know so many restaurants over there. Sorry we keep going to the same places. Daylong conversation wears me down.

I’m also moving. My wife and I are leaving the apartment we’ve known for fourteen years. We’re moving just around the corner but it still feels strange. The move is bittersweet. When we moved in, we were the younger people. Now we’re middle-aged. There are a lot of younger people living here now. Though most of them don’t mean to be, younger people are assholes. They loiter. They make noise. They love loud music.

We currently live on the first floor of a busy street. That also wears on you when you age. I’m getting too old to argue with young, loitering, noisy music loving people on the street outside my living room and/or bedroom window (sometimes at the same time). Tired of the threats. Tired of the fights. In the past I could take those people. Physically and mentally. Now, I’m drained. Now, one of them is going to knock me out.

There’s also the job.

I’m a public servant. I’m a public servant who really hasn’t had to deal with the public since March of 2020. I’m lucky in that I got paid to stay at home during the worst of Covid. A lot of people didn’t. A lot of people were out of work. A lot of people died.  I stayed home and built baseball cards sets, listened to podcasts, and was glad I wasn’t one of the people in the ambulances streaming up and down my street all day.

I’m lucky that when I went back to work last July, it was only a few days a week. With no public. And then only the public in small doses. Now we are opening up. The public is coming back. The public doesn’t believe in social distancing. The public doesn’t believe in wearing masks to protect me. To protect themselves. The public wants. The public takes.

I’m also a supervisor.

To put it in Mike Judge terms: I used to relate to Office Space.

Now I relate to Extract.

If you don’t know the films I apologize.

I’m not sleeping.

I’m too tired to find more relatable metaphors for you.

I should have better metaphors.

I am a writer after all.

But I’m also getting tired of writing. I shouldn’t say tired but frustrated. I’m forty-seven. I’ve been in the writing game since I was seventeen. That’s thirty years and a lot of words. I get up at 4:45 in the morning five days a week to get the word down (at least I did before Covid). Been doing that for decades. That’s a lot of lost sleep. Lately, I’ve been feeling like it’s gotten me nowhere. Writers go through that from time to time. But this time it’s really lingering. I’ve avoiding writing when I can.

I should be happy with what I’ve accomplished. I have some poetry books. I have a few novels. In fact, I have a new one of each. 

But no one seems to be reading what I write. I tried to give my new novel away to Facebook “friends” and only two of them took me up on it. It’s frustrating wanting to be read, having the vehicle to be read, and to not be read. It adds to the malaise. Lately, I’ve been thinking I don’t need the writing shit anymore.

And, yeah, I know…art for arts sake.

That might be convincing at twenty-five.

But pushing fifty?

I need more than art for arts sake.

Fuck art for arts sake.

…or maybe I’m just bad at self-promotion.

My one go-to (other than boozing) when dealing with anxiety has been baseball cards. At least since the summer of 2019 it has been. I even wrote an essay about that. But baseball cards haven’t been working lately. They’ve actually become another source of anxiety for me. I don’t want them to be. I enjoy collecting baseball cards. I don’t want to become jaded by the hobby. I don’t want to become intimidated by the cost. I don’t want to find myself up at two in the morning worrying about baseball cards along with jobs, apartments, my fragile mental health, and why New York City has to be so goddamned hot in the summer.

I want baseball cards to be an anxiety elixir.

But last Friday I found myself in the Major League Baseball Flagship Store holding a hobby box of Topps Series 2.

Shaking with anxiety.

To explain I have to start from the beginning.

The beginning is this.

Late last year I told myself that I was going to spend less on cards. At least less on newer card product. Because I’d been home most of 2020, and because I was being paid by my job, I bought more cards. I had nowhere to go. I had nothing else to spend my money on. I bought Topps flagship. I dabbled in Panini products. I dabbled in Gypsy Queen. I bought a shit-ton of Heritage. I bought a shit-ton of Big League. I bought a shit-ton of Stadium Club. I bought a shit-ton of Archives. I dabbled in Bowman. I dabbled in Chrome I started and stopped so many modern sets that it was madness. I have card boxes that are filled with product from 2020. It’s just sitting there.

            2021 was going to be different.

            Just flagship. Just singles of players I wanted in other product. I was going to work on older sets. The sets that I collected as a kid. Or the sets that I wanted to collect. I was going to bypass the madness that was happening in 2020, that was dripping into the early part of the new year. It was easy to bypass that madness. I didn’t have access to Target or Wal-Mart. I couldn’t stand in line outside with packs of ravenous card collectors, waiting to attack shelves. Not that I would anyway. I couldn’t just show up and clear a shelf on my own. I had to rely on buying product online. Or over-pay in the few LCS that are located around me. One I could get to in a safe and socially distanced way.

            That logic worked for Topps Series 1.

            It’s been working for the other products.

            I’m not doing too well where Series 2 is coming along.

            The anxiety started with buying Series 2 pre-sale. When I went to buy Series 2 hobby boxes were retailing for $175 dollars. Yeah. Read that again. $175. If you’re currently in the card game, and lived through 2020, that price probably isn’t that sticker shocking to you, considering we’ve seen card boxes reach into the thousands. But it should be shocking. $175 dollars is way too much money for a flagship baseball product that I was paying maybe $60 for two seasons ago. $175 is highway robbery. It makes your palms sweat. It makes you want to find some young, loitering, noisy, music-loving person and yell at them.

            $175 dollars makes the hobby not fun.

            I wasn’t paying $175 for a box of Series 2 Topps flagship baseball cards. Two boxes, actually. So, I chose the retail box price. At the time they were selling for $125. Still overpriced but a collector has to do what a collector has to do. And I was glad to get retail. I’m not big into the autograph cards or relic cards, so I was fine not being guaranteed either. I liked the 1952 redux cards in Series 1 and actually wished that I bought retail instead of hobby for that release. Series 2 was going to have 1965 redux cards. I love 1965 Topps. It’s in my top-5 all-time favorite Topps releases. Seeing current players on 1965 Topps cards was exciting.

            I couldn’t wait for the retail boxes to come.

            Except.

            Hobby boxes were released on June 9^th.

            Retail wasn’t coming out until June 23^rd.

            Then retail boxes got delayed until July 9^th.

            I have no Target stores

            I have no Wal-Mart.

            I was developing a serious Fear of Missing Out.

            FOMO as young, loitering, noisy, music-loving people call it.

            I wasn’t waiting until July fucking 9^th.

            So, I bought a hobby box of Series 2. The prices had gone down since I’d purchased the now, oft-delayed retail boxes. I think it was $135. Talking about money is unrefined. So is writing about money. Unless you work for Forbes. But money moves a hobby. The Series 2 box was at my apartment within two days. I had it on June 10^th. Just a day after everyone else who bought Series 2. I was a part of the zeitgeist. A part of the in-crowd. I was in-the-know. There’d be no FOMO for me.

            And ripping it was…fun?

            Ripping it was okay. It should’ve been better for something I paid $135 for. I should’ve been more excited. I pulled this card.

            I’d been wanting that card since September of last year.

            And I wanted this card.

            And I wanted this card.

            I pulled all three. 

            This was a nice bonus

            (Am I becoming a fucking Marlins fan?)

           And even with keeping them for my PC, I was still able to put together a Series 2 set that is only twenty-two cards shy of completion. And that’ll probably happen when those retail boxes come rolling in on July 9^th, or whenever Topps decides to finally release them.

Minus the Tatis Silver Pack was meh.

As per usual, I pulled a relic.

For some reason my insert cards leaned heavily on the Red Sox.

The relic and the insert cards found a good home with other collectors. I pulled this for my Pirates.

            

I should’ve been happy (or the happy equivalent these days), right?

            But I wasn’t.

            I was left wanting.

            So, there I was last Friday, in the Major League Baseball Flagship store, holding a hobby box of Topps Series 2, as the anxiety washed over me. The hobby box was $120. It was cheaper than I paid for mine. It was cheaper than the retail boxes that seemed like they were never going to come. I was going to buy that hobby box, take it home, and rip those packs ASAP. That hobby box from the Major League Baseball flagship was going to take away the moving anxiety. The anxiety of the job. It was going to justify spending all day walking around in the stinking, humid NYC heat, playing tour guide for family. That hobby box was going to heal me like baptismal waters.

            But something was nagging at me.

            Maybe it was the money. Life is spending money. Spending money makes me anxious. My wife and I had just bought a new bed. Our first in twenty years (don’t ask) so we splurged. We bought plane tickets to Buffalo for her father’s memorial. I just bought a plane ticket to Pittsburgh so that I could have family play tour guide for me. We had moving expenses. We’re old. Our stuff is old. We needed newer stuff. Because my wife and I are no longer young, loitering, noisy, music-loving people, we were paying someone to come and move us instead of doing it ourselves. A blow to my male ego for sure. All of the money we were spending was making me anxious.

What in the hell was a doing buying another hobby box of Topps Series 2?

Especially since I just bought one and was underwhelmed.

Especially with two retail boxes coming on July 9^th.

Especially since I only needed twenty-two cards to complete the set.

The truth is…I didn’t know. I just knew that I had to have it. I wanted that feeling. You guys know that feeling, right? I wanted to be a part of the zeitgeist, even though the zeitgeist was moving on to the next product release. I wanted something to justify my anxiety. A creature comfort to say that everything was and would be all right. The move. The job returning. The fucking public and their fucking public wants and needs.

I wanted this $120 box of Series 2 Topps cards to be my everything, even though pulling another Ke’Bryan would never feel like it did the first time. Even though I knew I’d get another crummy relic for a player I was ho-hum about, and inserts that I didn’t care for. Even though I think the Series 2 checklist is underwhelming, and I’m growing weary of the fuss being made over any card that has a “RC” logo on it. All RC means is that there’s a young, loitering, noisy, music-loving person on that card. A player who has yet to prove anything.

Still, I wanted that feeling.

Hence the anxiety.

Hence the shaking.

But…

I put the hobby box back.

I walked out of the store spending nothing.

Common sense ruled.

I wanted baseball cards to not be a part of my other problems.

I want baseball cards to remain fun.

I didn’t want them keeping me awake along with everything else stressing me out.

Instead of blowing $120 on that second, gratuitous Series 2 hobby box, I went home and bought some cards online. Some Pirates card I wanted. I finally completed both my 1988 Donruss and 1984 Topps sets. I saved myself over $100 dollars and felt better for it.

It’s not just me.

This has become a common narrative for collectors tired of the frenzy.

I spent that leftover $100 on food and merchandise at my first Major League baseball game in seven years. I took my wife to see the Yankees on Father’s Day. 

Her first without her dad. The first without my kind, loving and gentle father-in-law. We bought Mickey Mantle t-shirts and rooted for his favorite team in his favorite place. We harnessed our sadness into something good.

I didn’t need a relic card.

I didn’t need an autograph card.

I didn’t need inserts.

I didn’t need a card with some dumb RC logo plastered on it.

With some young, loitering, noisy music-loving rookie on it.

I’d been there and done that.

Anxiety free in my hobby once again!

Of course

…there’s still the matter of those two retail boxes coming on July 9^th.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

So, having attended my first Major League game in 7 years, I noticed that live baseball watching etiquette is becoming a thing of the past. A relic, if you will.  For that reason, I’m going to subject you remaining one or two readers to my etiquette rules for attending live baseball games.

 

1.      Don’t rag on people who don’t stand for the National Anthem or this God Bless America nonsense that clogs up the seventh-inning stretch. It’s a baseball game, not an exercise in patriotism.

2.      Some people are actually there to watch a baseball game. I know that seems odd and/or antiquated…but it’s true. Sit back in your chair so you don’t block others view. In between innings is a PERFECT time to get up from your seat and go take a piss, get a beer, hot dog, Coke, or just stretch your legs. NOT DURING PLAY.

3.      On the same note, in between innings is the PERFECT time to COME BACK to your set after having pissed, got your beer, hot dog or Coke. In between Innings is the PERFECT time to make an entire row of people move so you can squeeze your fat ass on by.

4.      Believe it or not, the people NOT wearing the home team’s merchandise or colors are NOT your enemy combatants. They’re just people who happen to like the OTHER team playing that day’s game. People who paid money just like you did to come and watch nine innings of professional baseball. There’s no real reason to mess with them, other than the fact that you’re an asshole.

5.      Throw your trash away. Don’t be that jagg-off.

 

Play Ball!!

If you’d like to learn more about Topps Series 2 flagship baseball cards you can do so HERE and HERE.

1991, ProSet MusiCards....and the legendary New Edition

 

I think I first saw them at the Phantom of the Attic

            Despite macabre-esque name, the Phantom of the Attic was a comic book shop in the Oakland (i.e. college epicenter) section of Pittsburgh. But I was still in high school. I know that it was 1991, but I can’t tell if it was early or later in the year. And that’s important. It’s the difference between me being a Junior or Senior. The difference between me having more free periods during the day, or maybe taking the chance of getting caught by one Mr. Wheeler during lunch.

Mr. Wheeler was in charge of discipline at my school. He stalked around the place calling boys Jumbo or Hambo, or whatever stupid name he could come up with. He was in charge of making sure we had our hair short, wore no facial hair, and basically marched around like good automatons for Jesus. Wheeler wore short-sleeve shirts in the dead of winter with no jacket. He combed Oakland during lunches trying to catch truant students who’d rather spend the time pouring over CDs in Record Mart and super-sizing their lunches at Mickey D’s over the stifling environment in the cafeteria, choking down whatever was being served that day.

You did not want to get caught being a truant by Mr. Wheeler.

            Especially for comic books.

            Or for cards.

            Non-sports cards to be exact.

1991 ProSet Super Stars MusiCards.

Anyone remember these babies?

Whether I was skipping lunch (probably not…I was a mediocre student at best, but I wasn’t a truant) or it was one of my free periods, I know it was the Phantom of the Attic comic book shop that stocked these MusiCards. Phantom didn’t generally stock cards that I was interested in. They trafficked in non-sport cards and I wasn’t a real non-sports card guy. I dabbled. A pack of Batman movie cards here. A pack of Garbage Pail Kids there. The closest I came to all-out non-sports card fanaticism was in the summer of 1983, when my brother, Phineas and I bought Return of the Jedi cards. I probably had more Jedi cards than baseball cards in 1983.

But those cards were all for not.

Anyone reading this blog knows what HAPPENED to all of my 1980-1983 cards.  

But I always held out hope that Phantom would get into the sports card game. When I went there with my comic book loving friends. I’d peruse the counter area in hopes that the store would suddenly have packs of Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score or Upper Deck. But for as geeky as comic book collecting and sports collecting were, the two rarely crossed paths where commerce, that wasn’t a flea market or yard sale, was concerned. Music and sports cards most certainly never crossed paths, unless it was me at home going through my cards while I had a cassette or the radio playing.

But there they were sitting there right on the counter.

ProSets Super Stars MusiCards.

I was instantly intrigued by them.

I knew the name ProSet from their foray into NFL football cards in 1989. I’d bought my fair share because, as with everything else card-related in the late 1980s/early 1990s…they were everywhere. And I was buying anything and everything sports card related. But music cards? Well, that was new to me. Not new to the hobby. The non-sports card world had been rife with music cards for years. Off the top of my head, I know that Elvis had his own cards. So did The Beatles and The Monkees. The Partridge Family had cards. Michael Jackson had his own card set. I’m sure one can find a trading card of Frank Sinatra.

And in 1989 Topps put out their first sets for these strapping young men.

By 1991 I was getting heavy into buying music. Mostly R&B and Rap music. I had more disposable income by then. In April of 1991, I got a mall job slinging sports clothing like Starter hats and jackets. Bye-bye lowly newspaper route, rabid dogs, and people not answering their doors when I knocked. My new mall money went into sports cards, yes. But it also went into CDs and cassette tapes. If I’m being honest, more of the paycheck was going to music rather than cards. The cash certainly wasn’t going into a savings account. It wasn’t in my restless, profligate soul to save a dime, despite my parent’s encouragement to do so. I never had money so I spent it when I did.

That’s the thing when people who have no money suddenly get it.

You want to spend it.

I wanted to spend my money on ProSet Super Stars MusiCards.

The set itself (340-cards over two series) is a curiosity and I’m curious as to whom it really appealed to back then. MusiCards encompasses such a wide range of artists (and musical tastes) that finding someone equally jazzed about getting Huey Lewis, Sonic Youth and Al B. Sure! in the same pack had to be a feat. MusiCards certainly tapped into the zeitgeist of the times. Vanilla Ice and M.C. Hammer had five cards each in the set. 

Of course, so did Led Zeppelin.

See what I mean about the set being all over the place?

I’m not saying Zep fans and the accolades of one Robbie Van Winkle or Stanley Burrell wouldn’t occasionally break bread. But I don’t think they were getting stoned and putting on tunes together. They probably weren’t collecting cards either. Who in the hell DID this set appeal to? Sportos? Motorheads? Geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids or dweebies? Dickheads?  The only thing that truly unifies MusiCards is their gaudy design that SCREAMS 1991.

Those slanted neon bars on the top and bottom of the cards.

That paw print or Rorschach test pattern (or whatever the hell) on the backs.

MusiCards are sooooooo 1991, they make me want to get myself a chicken fajita from McDonald’s, crack open a can of Pepsi Wild Bunch, pop a Color Me Badd CD in the stereo or throw on MTV, and just chill out for a few hours until the Fresh Prince or 90210 comes on the TV.

I’d actually forgotten all about them until a few years ago when my brother sent me these in the mail.

The first card is of Ralph Tresvant (card no. 297), the de facto lead singer in 1980s R&B group New Edition. The second card is of R&B swing kings (and bandmates of Mr. Tresvant) Bell Biv DeVoe, of never trusting a big butt and a smile fame. The BBD card is actually from ProSet’s MusiCards Yo! MTV Raps set, although Messers Bell, Bivins and DeVoe do, in fact, have two cards in the MusiCards set proper.

The backs of the Yo! MTV Raps cards are just as flashy and of their era.

My brother sent me them because he’s a nice guy…and he knows how huge a New Edition fan I am. Still am to this day. There was a time in my young life where I daydreamed and hoped to become the first white member of New Edition. Why not? I can carry a tune. And I know all the lyrics.

It’s the dancing that would’ve counted me out.

I talk a lot about baseball cards on this blog, about baseball card firsts for me, etc. But New Edition’s 1984 MCA debut record has the distinction of being the first album (bought on cassette) that I ever purchased with money that was my own.

I used to say that it was birthday money. But the NE album came out in July of 1984, so I’m beginning to think that I must’ve been suckered into doing some kind of chores for that cash. Like I said above, money burned holes in my pockets back then.

Like a Barry Bonds or Bobby Bonilla card in 1991 sports card packs, cards featuring members of New Edition would’ve been the ones I was looking for in those 1991 packs of MusiCards. My boys from Boston were HUGE in 1991. But not as a collective. Not having had an album out since 1988’s Heart Break, the members of New Edition went the solo route in 1990. And they were pretty successful at it. Bell Biv Devoe’s debut album Poison went to No. 5 in the U.S. charts (number 1 on the R&B charts), Ralph Tresvant’s debut solo album hit No.17 on the U.S. charts (No. 1 in R&B), and Johnny Gill’s album went to No.8 and No. 1 respectively as well.

Only resident bad boy, Bobby Brown, didn’t release an album.

The members of New Edition were everywhere in the first few years of the 1990s.

On MTV.

On BET.

On awards shows.

In packs of cards.

I was so jazzed to get the Tresvant and BBD cards, that I went online and tracked down the other New Edition related cards from the ProSet Super Stars MusiCards set.

As for MusiCards themselves. They’re still out there. When I went home to Pittsburgh in April, an antique store that I visited had the cards selling for $1 per pack. I should’ve bought some. If they’re still there when I visit in July…I just might. Willie Stargell and Terry Bradshaw cards be damned. I want me an INXS rookie card.

Or maybe a double of the New Edition card.

 Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 If you’d like to see the checklist for 1991’s ProSet MusiCards you can do so HERE

 If you’d like to learn more about seminal 1980s-1990s R&B supergroup New Edition, you can do so HERE or watch Part 1 of their 3-part BET bio pic HERE

NEXT FRIDAY: 2021 Topps Series 2…and all of the baggage that comes with it.

While we're on the subject of music and MusiCards....I have a new novel out The book is entitled 

P-Town: Forever 

P-Town: Forever is about five members of a failed singing group who get back together in their 40s after a single they recorded 20 years ago becomes a sudden semi-hit. If you’re interested you can find it HERE  and you can find it HERE where you can also read the first chapter.

...Or you can reach out to me via this blog, as I have copies ON HAND:

 

1988 Donruss and the search for the word ubiquitous

 

Ubiquitous: existing or being everywhere at the same time: constantly encountered: widespread (Merriam-Webster)

I wouldn’t have known the word ubiquitous back in 1988.

In 1988, I was a fourteen-year-old fat kid trying to class-clown my way out of eighth grade and into another summer of wiffle ball and baseball card collecting. I was subliminally trying to suppress the idea that I’d be going to high school, an all-boys CATHOLIC high school, come the fall. I was averse to change. I was a B-student at best. My eighth-grade teacher was a miserable, humorless nun who was seemingly always on my ass. She once made me carry my possessions around in a garbage bag for a week because I’d failed to clean my desk to her specifications.

She made me sit next to her in church because I was apt to mock the priest.

That eighth-grade year in 1988, I did an art project on Roberto Clemente. Drew him from memory because there was no way on God’s green earth that I had a Clemente card at fourteen-years-old. I drew Clemente’s 1966 Topps card. The goddamned nun argued with me that no one ever called the great Roberto Clemente “Bob.” I had no card to show her. There was no internet to prove the old bag wrong. She gave me a B- on the art project and told me that I had no sense of history.

Maybe...but I knew my baseball cards

If anyone or anything was ubiquitous in the first-half of 1988, it was Sister Roberta.

This guy.

            And baseball cards.

            Also, there’s no discounting the ignorance of the Catholic church.

In 1988 the word ubiquitous seemed to define baseball cards. Formally relegated to drug stores, flea markets, the small crop of card shows that were taking over convention centers around the Pittsburgh area and, of course, the local card shop; 1988 was the year that I could find baseball cards seemingly everywhere. I found them in the grocery store nestled next to those Milky Way bars that kept me in husky pants. They were near the checkout in the toy stores that I was still wandering into at the mall, despite having officially declared myself too old for toy stores. You could find baseball cards in sporting good shops or at the newsstand where I went for my Batman comics. 1988s version of big box stores (anyone remember Hills Department Stores?) carried rack packs of baseball cards in a pre-courser to the current madness at Target and Wal-Mart stores.

Go for the baseball cards.

Stay for the blue-raspberry Slushee and hot pretzel.

I even found baseball cards in a rural gas station in Central Pennsylvania.

But we’ll get to that.

            The most ubiquitous of baseball cards in 1988 was Donruss. 

        1988 Donruss has been called the poster boy of the Junk Wax Era. It’s the collecting world’s red-headed step-child (am I still allowed to write/say things like that) that even the most desperate for something to open might shy away from on the open market. Everyone who collected cards during the Junk Wax Era had Donruss cards. Loads and loads of Donruss cards. They had enough Donruss cards to wallpaper their homes, or make a trail of cards from Peoria to the Taj Mahal. They made the Stan Musial puzzle ad nauseum. In short…Donruss cards were around.

            I’m not telling collectors something that they don’t already know.

            It seems obvious now all of these years later. But, you see, to a fourteen-year-old kid like me in 1988, the fact that I could all of the sudden even find Donruss cards anywhere I wanted was revelatory. Before 1988, Donruss cards were nearly impossible for me to find. They were at card show or hobby shops. To get to either of those I had to suffer the indignity of begging a ride from my folks. Or, if wanted to risk my life crossing highways noted for their dead, maybe I’d find a pack of Donruss at Statlander’s Pharmacy.

Pre-1988 Donruss cards were mythical in my neighborhood. They were the unicorn of baseball cards. The brand we all sought. When Sister Roberta told us stories about biblical miracles, I imagined Donruss cards showing up at the local Thrift Drug. On Sundays, when Father Bud droned on in his homily about Christ turning water into wine or rising from the dead, a few of us unimpressed kids were moved to think to ourselves… Yeah? Let’s see if the son of man can find any Donruss cards on the shelf?

                                   (Jesus...after NOT finding any Donruss cards)

            Ubiquitous: existing or being everywhere at the same time: constantly encountered: widespread.

            I didn’t know what ubiquitous meant in 1988. I just knew that I could find Donruss cards in the Giant Eagle. I could find them at Hills. I could find them in any of the Drug Stores I loitered outside of. I found them in Dunham Sporting Goods at the mall. G.C. Murphy’s had Donruss sitting right there next to the inaugural release of Topps Big Baseball cards (another indulgence of mine that year). I might not have known what ubiquitous meant, but I knew fate when I saw it. And fate was me finally coming face to face with Donruss baseball cards whenever I damned well pleased. Or it wasn’t fate but luck. My luck.

            I should’ve known they were mass-producing them.

            If Donruss cards were everywhere it wasn’t suddenly my good fortune.

Luck was another word I was unfamiliar with at my age.

            Fat fourteen-year-old kids didn’t have luck.

            Sister Roberta might’ve been right about me all along.

            So, I did what any card-brand starved kid my age would’ve done. I bought Donruss cards like they were going out of style. I bought a ton of them. I bought 1988 Donruss as if they were going to disappear off of the shelves tomorrow. Poof! Gone! Another dirty trick played on me. And then I’d be back to riding nothing but the Fleer and Topps train again (not that I wasn’t buying a ton of them and Score as well that year). I bought 1988 Donruss cards like they were investments. Wax packs of gold. They had to be because they’d been so rare before. Donruss cards were going to put me in a mansion, a limo; they were going to make me rich.

            Idiot.

            I bought so many Donruss cards in 1988, I was a Donruss kingpin. Because I’d been starved of them for so many years, I never even considered what it was that I was buying. That is to say, I wasn’t sure if I even liked 1988 Donruss cards. It was just buy, buy, buy, before they would suddenly go away forever. Back to that impossible place Donruss cards existed in before 1988. And I couldn’t let that happen. Looks and personal opinion be damned while in the moment. I had to have them. Personal reckoning would come later. It always did with purchases. There’d be plenty of time to ask myself if I liked 1988 Donruss.

            Did I like 1988 Donruss?

            Do I like 1988 Donruss now?

Well…kind of.

Along with being some of the most ubiquitous cards of the Junk Wax Era, 1988 Donruss tend to get slagged off for their aesthetic value as well...or lack thereof. I don’t think they’re as bad as some have made them out to be. Sure, the photos can get a bit fuzzier than some previous Donruss issues, but overall, I like them. I’m a fan of the crisp blue that Donruss used for both the front and back of the cards. I don’t particularly mind the touches of black and red surrounding the cards either.

And its ubiquitous presence some thirty-three years ago, allows 1988 Donruss to be a fun 660-cardset that you can still try and build on the cheap today; an increasingly hard thing to do with the current frenzy over baseball cards, one that has pushed into the Junk Wax Era. And the 1988 Donruss set actually has a few top rookies that stalwart Topps left out of that year’s issue or that Fleer decided to couple in their annoying dual rookie cards. Roberto Alomar, Mark Grace or Greg Jefferies anyone?

 

1988 is also chock-full of star cards and the cards of up and coming stars of that era.

For me it was all about getting the Pirates cards in 1988. The Pirates were finally playing good baseball in 1988. There were shades of great teams and great seasons to come. That year had second year cards for Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla. Andy Van Slyke, Mike LaValliere and Doug Drabek all made their regular series debut for the Pirates in 1988. Jose Lind’s Rated Rookie card was in 1988 Donruss. And just like those big rookies that Topps missed out on, 1988 Donruss had issued a card for a Pirates player, a rookie card, that I really wanted back then.

Ask me why I wanted it now and all I can say is we were crazy about the rookie cards back then.

Or it was cool to compare each brands team sets.

If I have a complaint about 1988 Donruss cards, it’s that the card stock seems thinner and of worse quality than in previous Donruss sets.

I.e., mass produced.

But I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’m going to say that 1988 Donruss, with the exception of the premier issue of Score, might be the best-looking set of a rather dull and rudimentary 1988 baseball card class.

Donruss:

Fleer:

Score:

Topps:

As for that rural gas station in Western Pennsylvania?

Parents sometimes get the idea that family trips are a good idea. I made the conscious and happy choice to not have children, so I don’t know if the folks think this is a good idea for the kids or if they need a concrete reason other than debt to prove the value or worth of a family foundation with things like vacations. Regardless, in the late summer of 1988 my family packed up the car and took my brother and I to Cook’s Forest, along with a couple of family friends and their kids. Cook’s forest is the kind of place where there are cabins and lakes and rivers, and lots and lots of trees full of animals that you didn’t see in the suburbs or city, or might not ever want to come face to face with in real life.

Think Deliverance with go-carts and horseback riding.

I was a fourteen-year-old kid who’d just graduated eighth grade and was getting ready to go into high school. I didn’t want to go on vacation with my family. I might’ve been a fat and lonely fourteen-year-old, but I was a fourteen-year-old nonetheless. My bedroom was becoming my fortress. The music that I was listening to, more a soundtrack to my life. I had my TV shows. There was the movies and the mall. There were baseball cards to sift through in the cool shade of my front porch. There were girls to pine for. The ubiquitous presence of girls was another thing to contend with in 1988. Like me or not…they were still there. In short shorts. In bikinis at pools.

What in the hell did I want to spend a weekend out in the woods for?

With my family no less.

The only thing that I really remember about that weekend, other than getting thrown off the go carts for driving recklessly, was my family stopping at that gas station in rural PA. My old man was a planner but he could also pinch a penny. Cook’s Forrest was only a couple of hours drive from Pittsburgh, not necessarily somewhere you’d have to gas up to get to. But my old man figured the gas would be cheaper the further away from the city.

Cheap gas was a unicorn to my old man.

Cheap gas was his Donruss.

So, we stopped at this run-down old gas station that looked like something out of a Stephen King novel. Same for the guy working it. It was the kind of place that time and modern convenience forgot. Flat Cokes sitting in a cooler waiting to die. Nudie magazines from two years before. Air fresheners that had lost their scent. Snacks whose expiration dates were of no consequence to anyone needing to eat from there. Stale cigarettes in yellowing packs. The nearly bare shelves housing dead batteries.

And 1988 Donruss.

Right there.

At the counter.

 Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

If you’d like to learn more about 1988 Donruss you can do so HERE

If you’d like to learn more about the career of Tom Prince you can do so HERE and HERE

NEXT FRIDAY: We’re going to hang around 1988…and 1989…and 1990…and maybe even 1991. Yes, I’m doing a whole non-sports card post related to those ProSet Super Star MusiCards and the Yo! MTV Raps! Cards. It’s going to be a shameless self-promotion for my new novel, P-Town : Forever.

But maybe it’ll be fun as well.

And Remember....

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