A Wax Box man in a PC world : Being unsatisfied buying baseball cards...how American is that?

 

I’m in the card purchasing doldrums.

            This blog post will prove otherwise.

            But bear with me.

            I should say I’m in the wax box/hobby box card purchasing doldrums. I’ve said it a few times on this blog this year, but I’m really trying to cut down my hobby box/wax box purchasing. And so far, I have. I’ve really only bought Topps base this year. I gave up (again) on Heritage and nothing else (okay, maybe Chrome Platinum Anniversary, although I haven't bought any) has really moved me to buy a box of cards. And I haven’t bought anything older either. I keep looking at those unfinished Junk Wax Era sets (that aren’t even worth the cost of a box of cards), and I say to myself, why bring more of this into a Brooklyn apartment?

            Fun?

            The adult collector in me feels like fun isn’t a good enough excuse.

            But I want to buy a box of cards. There’s something about sitting down with a whole box of cards that reaches to the core of a collector. It invokes memories that are good. I want to sit down on some lazy Saturday or Sunday morning with a large ice coffee, some Dead on the stereo, and a whole big wax box in front of me. When I really think of this scene it’s usually a wax box of 1987 Topps. But I’ve already built that set. I already have all of the star/Pirates cards that I wanted from that set in my PC and team box. What would be the point of opening up a wax box of 1987 Topps.

            Fun?

            There’s that word again.

            To be honest, as I’ve been back collecting these three years, I realize there isn’t much new product that I actually want to open in Hobby Box form. I’m not a Gypsy Queen fan. I don’t like Chrome. I do like Stadium Club but it takes box after box to build a set...if building sets is even my thing anymore. I’m a huge Topps Archives fan, but that doesn’t even come out until October. I’d love to open up some football product. But that’s still too high-priced for me, even though we’re past the days of people waiting in line outside of Target to pummel each other for a blaster box.

            2022 Score Football is still pre-sale at $199 a box.

            WTFF?

            It’s not that there’s even much baseball product out there to open. Is it just me or is everything delayed? It’s almost September and where is Stadium Club? Where is Chrome?

            Ah…dilemmas.

            I’ve been working more on my PC this year. Working more on getting cards from the home team. Sets. Little cheap PCs of Pirates from the past that I was a fan of; players whose value is only to me personally. I’m actually in the process of converting one of those three-column card boxes into a Pittsburgh Pirates only card box. At least once this year, I even did one of those, buy individual cards instead of a box of cards and see how the value equates. I recently did it again using ComC, even though I’ve been jonesing to rip packs.

            Here’s the result:

            First up Luis Arraez.

            There’s a lot of great young players in Major League baseball, provided they can stay healthy or not get banned for 80-games. Arraez is a guy whose cards really don’t cost that much at all. You can get his base rookie for under $3 and everything else is maybe a touch above common-card price. That’s a shame. Luis Arraez is currently hitting .322 (who hits .322 in 2022? Okay, other than Goldschmidt) and is one of those pure hitter types. Think Rod Carew/Tony Gwynn type of potential. The kid is only twenty-five and he has four Major League seasons under his belt. I don’t watch the Twins much, but when I do I enjoy watching Arraez hit. You just don’t see hitting like that these days.

            Bill Mazeroski and Al Oliver.

            I never saw Maz play and I barely saw Al Oliver play the game of baseball. Mazeroski is a legend to us Pirates fans. He’s the hero of the 1960 World Series. Great Pirates are few and far between these days, so you got to go back if you want to collect the greats. Mazeroski cards are affordable and fun to have in my Pirates PC. The addition of Maz’s 1965 and 1970 bring my current Maz PC up to four cards. I’m building him slowly.

            As for Al “Scoop” Oliver. He’s the Pirate that got away. He’s a borderline Hall of Famer who seemed to spend the rest of his career playing for under-the-radar teams (mostly Texas and Montreal with stops in San Francisco, Philly, and Toronto…I’m sure I’m missing somewhere else).  I always bought Scoop’s cards when I was a kid, because he was an affordable, good player, and affordable good players were important to a kid who got most of his baseball card money by digging under couch cushions. Scoop is still pretty inexpensive. Adding his 1970 and 1971 cards almost completes my Topps run for him. I still need the 1972. It’s a high number. I can wait.

            J.R. Richard.

            This is going to sound morbid, but when I was a kid, I learned the word “stroke” and what a stroke meant from what happened to J.R. Richard. There was a sad aura around him just as I was getting into collecting. Not unfulfilled expectations but the idea that we, as fans and collectors, were cheated out of a great career because of what happened to J.R. I collected his cards as a kid. When I got back into collecting, I knew I wanted some J.R. Richard cards in my collection. Getting the 1978 and 1982 cards actually completes the Topps J.R. Richard run for me.

            Non-Sports Cards.

            I keep getting pulled in this direction. When I go snooping on BBC Exchange or elsewhere, I’m starting to find myself looking at the non-sports stuff. For the most part, my very small and modest non-sports card collection consists of artists and other who were important to me as a kid. I have pop star cards for the members of the R&B group New Edition, a couple of Beatles cards, a card for The Monkees, two Brady Bunch cards, and even a card for the Beat writer Jack Kerouac.

            But then there’s Mister Rogers.

            There is no way I can ever put into words or articulate what Mister Rogers has meant to me. Not just his show but his life itself. He grew up a picked-on fat kid, I grew-up a picked-on fat kid. He was a Pittsburgher. I was a Pittsburgher. He was a caring, loving, individual, and I fail at all of those things on a regular basis...but I aspire to them. I watched his show religiously. To too old of an age from what I’ve been told. Just this week I was going through some bad work stuff, and I looked up Mister Rogers on YouTube. I came across an episode about pets. I watched it in its entirely, tears in my eyes the whole time. If Mister Rogers has a card then I needed to own it.

            True story: my future wife and I once passed Mister Rogers on the street. He was crossing Forbes Avenue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. I was too nervous to say anything to him. What could I say other than thank you?

I wish I told Mister Rogers thank you.

As for this…

Not a sentimental purchase. I’ve told the story of Phineas lording his Shigeru Takada card over me. Amazing what kids become obsessed with, and what other kids lord over them. This Jedi card was another one of those instances. Phineas pulled this card from a pack…Christ, I still remember where we were: the back of his mom’s car, riding along Allegheny River Boulevard, on a rainy summer day. Olivia Newton-John’s (RIP) Magic playing on the radio. Phineas pulled the Time Out for Love card out of a pack, and you would’ve thought he struck gold. He acted like it was the greatest card ever. I think I bought more Jedi cards than I did of baseball cards that summer of 1983 trying to get that card.

I own it now out of spite.

It’s in my spite PC next to the Takada card I own.

Okay…so my plan was to keep going along like this. Buying some inexpensive cards for my baseball PC, add a few Steelers guys I collect for my football collection. I think I had a whole list or so that I’d been keeping when at work. But then that plan got blown out of the water when I decided to take a gander at this.

I won’t lie. Going to the 1965 Roberto Clemente was intentional. I don’t know if buying it was intentional…but that’s what happened. Clemente cards, even ones not in the best of shape, are the ones I look out for now. I had a few Clemente cards as a kid, and I can’t even remember how lucky I was to get them. I don’t even remember how I got them. But by the time I stopped collecting in 1992, I had a 1969, 1971, 1972 and a 1973 Roberto Clemente card in my collection. When I can I pick them up now. Early this year I added a 1966 Clemente to my collection. This 1965 card is another that I always loved as a kid.

It changed my purchasing plan.

But I’m not sorry.

So, you see what I mean about not having a real card purchasing doldrum.

But even with that purchase, even with the Clemente, there’s still that desire to sit down in front of a big box of cards and just let her rip. It’s okay to have some fun, right? And, I think there’s still some storage space around here. It’s going to happen. Obviously, Archives is coming out in October. Or, maybe it’s coming out. Full disclosure, what I really want to open is a wax box of 1988’s Topps Big Baseball. I know there’s storage issues and supply issues with bigger cards. But I really loved them when they came out.

Maybe some day soon.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

NEXT FRIDAY: To celebrate Football Season coming.....ranking 1980s Topps Football. 

 

Trading Cards : Erasing that old bad feeling in search of the new

 

I didn’t like trading cards as a kid.

            At least I don’t think I did.

            That first sentence might be hyperbole.

            Or revisionist history.

            But I was sitting here thinking about trading cards as I kid, because I’m writing a blog post on trading cards, and the memories just left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and an uncertainty that I ever enjoyed that famous pastime of kids sitting down to trade their baseball cards. I blame anxiety. I know I have an anxiety as an adult. As I kid it might manifest itself through anxiousness. I was anxious a lot.

            That anxiousness came through when trading cards.

            I’m not saying that I always got ripped off. I think I’m saying that I thought I always got ripped off when trading cards. There were people I know who ripped me off. And, in every instance, it was my fault. Phineas was one of those people. His sheer reluctance and the amount of hemming and hawing he did over the most insignificant of trades (I’m talking swapping out common cards here), caused me to get anxious to the point of losing my temper, throwing card after card at him just to complete a deal. And it was me always on the losing end.

            Dimitri Danielopoulus was the other one whom I let rip me off in trades. I’ve said it here before, but Dimitri (D) was always the kid who had the new cards first. Being the idiot that I was, and not realizing that I’d too soon have access to new baseball card product, would trade away key older cards from my collection for a few trifles, or even star cards, that D knew (and I too should’ve known) he’d be getting time and time again in packs over the course of the baseball season. I’d blame the fact that D was two years older than me, or my foolishness…but I knew what I was doing.

            Maybe it wasn’t anxiousness…or even idiocy.

            I was too impulsive when it came to trading cards.

            And trading cards happened everywhere back then. In bedrooms. Outside at picnic tables or on curbs. Kids with binder and travel boxes met up like mafiosos trading goods. We traded at school. Before class. At lunch. At recess. In classrooms while the teachers taught, and we should’ve been focused on learning. If we got discovered, we’d lose that stack of cards for a week. Those were rushed trades, impulsive on both sides.

            I can’t remember the substance of most of those trades.

            But I remember the feeling of loss.

            Even if I got something I wanted, I didn’t like having to give something up.

            Maybe it was Phineas and D playing at my psyche.

            Because of my impulsiveness with them in trading, well, then every trade I made was obviously impulsive with me on the losing end.

            At least that’s what I thought.

            But I’m no one to be pitied.

            I ripped a kid off once…bad…like really bad.

            You can read the sordid details HERE.

            I don’t make many trades as an adult collector. In truth, I’ve made two trades. The one I'm not going to go into detail about involves me trading this.

            For these

            What I like about trading as an adult collector is that the kid guilt doesn’t come along with it. And anytime this lapsed Catholic can avoid guilt is a-okay with me. There’s no feeling of being ripped off. I guess back then we all thought we were getting rich on cards, so any potential bonehead trade, and there went that future yacht I was going to buy when I cashed my cards in for cold hard cash. There went the mansion. There went the sport car.

            There went the plush life.

            It was dog eat dog back then.

            Well…its still dog eat dog.

            But not where me and trading cards are concerned.

            The trade I made recently involves this card.

            Pretty sweet huh?

            I ended up opening two hobby boxes of 2022 Topps Series 1 back in February and that’s where I scored the Nolan Ryan auto card. It was cool to open…but…ultimately underwhelming. I’m not really an auto collector (except if I get a Pittsburgh Pirate). I’m not a Nolan Ryan collector. I don’t sell cards. So the only thing that was going to happen with that Ryan was that it was going to languish in a box with other accumulated autograph cards that I don’t care about. And a Nolan Ryan autograph card should be with someone who wants that card, who will cherish that card.

            See…that’s where I’m at with trading now.

            I’m not making money off this stuff. I never will. So trading card is more in the spirit of helping someone enhance their collection, and maybe I get to enhance mine too. Maybe it should’ve been that way when I was a kid. Perhaps there was something inherently wrong with me that made trading cards more of an emotional burden than it had to be. Would seem to be my M.O. in making things hard than they are.

            Getting back to the Ryan. I’m twitter mutuals with another collector, and he casually inquired about the Ryan back in February when I showed it off on Twitter. Vague plans were made to work out some kind of deal, but then, I guess, life go in the way. This collector, an avid Astros collector, reconnected with me recently concerning the Ryan card, did I still have it, and could we maybe work out a trade because he’d be coming into some Pirates stuff. I was glad to hear from him. That Ryan had been in a box, unlooked at since I opened the pack in the winter, put the card in a top loader, and hid it away.

            So we made a trade.

            And this is what I got in return.

The bulk of which is Topps Pristine. I wasn’t a collector in the early 2000s, so I wasn’t even aware that Topps once had a Pristine line, or that it was even coming back this year. I think the cards are pretty cool. And, despite how badly the team is playing in 2022, there is certain joy in seeing this Pirates with the RC on their card. And the photo of that emerald Gypsy Queen Oneil Cruz doesn’t do it justice. Like I said earlier, I’m no big auto collector…but I make the exception when it comes to players like Ke’Bryan Hayes.

            Overall, I think we were both satisfied. And it was pretty cool to see a card that meant little to me go to a collector that it would mean much, much more to. I wish I had allowed myself to feel that way as a kid trading cards, instead of it being a mini business transaction funneled through the latest Beckett price guide quotes. And I think I’ll keep trading cards…if I have anything anyone wants.

            Like this Devers SSP

            For any of you Red Sox collectors out there with too many awesome Pirates cards just sitting in  a box.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Adventures in ComC purchases…and, yes, more non-sports cards.

Ranking the 1960's : No, not the years, man! The Cards....AKA, you're out of your element, Donny!

 

Ranking 1960s Topps baseball cards.

            Now, why in the hell would I do a foolish thing like that. Aren’t the 1960s hallowed territory for baseball cards? The first full decade where Topps was in command? Minus 1963, of course. Although Topps did win that one as well. What I mean to say is, I shouldn’t be ranking 1960s Topps cards. I should be bowing at their altar, as I did as a child, and craving each and every single one I saw, no matter the year, no matter the design.

            I should’ve stayed where I belong. Stuck in the 1980s with my flying cars and Bananarama albums. But foolish men do foolish things.

            So here’s my take on 1960s Topps baseball cards.

 

1965 Topps:

    Not only is 1965 Topps my favorite baseball card design on the decade, it’s probably one of my favorite baseball card designs of all-time by any sports card manufacturing brand. I fell instantly in love with this design as a collector when I was a kid. The white boarder. The bold color band around the player photo. The huge team flag that always caught my eye. Coupled with the icy blue and white card back. It’s a sports card, yes. But 1965 Topps is also a work of art to me. I don’t recall having many 1965 cards at all. Maybe a Mazeroski card because he was one of the more attainable Pirate legends back then, that a kid could afford.

            And maybe I shouldn’t say this because I wasn’t around then, but 1965 Topps Baseball Cards feel like the first true cards of the 1960s. Not that the other years feel stuck in the past. It’s just…like I could see some kid, all hung-up on some girl who was into The Beatles, ripping open these packs and just being wowed by what was inside.

            The Stargell card is probably one of my favorites of Willie as well. Love the posed swinging of the bat. I’m intrigued as to why Pops is wearing a white vestment underneath his jersey instead of the usual black that Pirates players wore. Stargell looks youthful, hungry; he’s on the cusp of the greatness that will make him a Pittsburgh legend. I never owned this card as a kid and it was one of the first Stargell’s that I bought when I began building a PC again.

            I’d frame it if I could.

 

1960 Topps:

            I had one 1960 Topps card when I was a kid. It was a Roberto Clemente card with the left side of the card ripped off. Not half a card, but just brown cardboard where that image of Clemente batting should be.  The one I have as an adult isn’t much better as you can see.

            But I cherish it all the same.

            And if I was doing this ranking as a kid, I probably wouldn’t even be considering 1960 for my second choice. Believe it or not, it wouldn’t been 1968 (we’ll get to why). But the adult collector in me loves this set. The adult collector thinks that Topps started the decade off with a bang. I guess tastes do change.

I love that Topps went horizontal again in 1960. And the color. The dueling colors on player’s name. The big, bold, colorful bar that houses it and the player’s position. The way the image on the left invokes 1958 Topps, but with a sharp close-up photo on the right. I do actually think 1960 Topps has some great photography. The colors really stand out.

            1960 Topps has noted rookie cards! Two sets of them. The Topps All-Star rookie card debuts in this set, and then there’s the Sport Magazine 1960 Rookie Star cards. Both made famous by these two guys.

            And, no, I don’t own them.

            ...but I aspire to own them.

 

1968 Topps:

            I don’t really know what the consensus on 1968 Topps baseball is with other collectors. I’ve heard the design referred to as looking like burlap sacks. I know that between 1968 and 1969, some photos repeat (in cropped form), and that always rubbed some collectors in the wrong way. For me, I generally love 1968 Topps. I think they’re sharp, bolder (whether you like them or not) than a lot of the designs in the decade.

            1968 Topps is indicative of the late 1960s in a way that 1969 Topps isn’t.

            But, to be honest, I feel like there’s something else that attracts me to 1968 Topps baseball cards. And it’s a hard attraction. One that takes a lot to try and quell. And that’s nostalgia. If most cards from the 1960s were unattainable to me as a collector when I was a kid, if there were attainable 60’s cards they usually came from the tail end of that decade. In 1986, 1968 cards weren’t even twenty years old. I had a better shot of getting 1968 or 1969 cards than I did any other year during that decade. So, I had some. And having actual cards from a year enhanced my feelings for them.

            As an adult collector, my feelings for 1968 Topps have pretty much stayed the same.

            1969?

            Not so much.

 

1962 Topps:

            I am a child of my collecting era, which means the Junk Wax Era can do no wrong. One of the sets the era got completely right, in my humble opinion, was 1987 Topps. Even though I built the set a few years ago, and have thousands of doubles, I still long to buy a wax box of 1987 Topps and rip it. The wood borders just really did it for me. Sitting in my bedroom in 1987, a box of cards on the bed, Stand By Me playing on HBO, a sweating can of Coke on my nightstand.

            Ah, there goes that nostalgia again.

            But…there was another wood bordered set in Topps history.

            And that would be 1962.

            As I’ve rekindled my love of 1987 Topps baseball, I’ve also gained a greater appreciation of the 1962 set. I’m repeating myself here, but as a kid, I didn’t see a lot of 1962 unless the cards were under glass at a card show. I have a couple from the year now, and boy do I love looking at them. Love the darker wood design on the card, the way the wood nooks feel grainier and deeper. The way the image does that curling off of the wood thing at the bottom of the card.

            If Topps was going for art in 1962, I’ll gladly keep stopping by that gallery for a look.

 

1964 Topps:

    For my its obvious when I think about cards, I inevitably think about childhood. And I don’t know where I would’ve placed 1964 Topps in terms of a card design, I liked. I knew they existed. I just don’t think I had an opinion on them the way I did the cards I’ve already written about. When I was a kid, with the exception of this Stargell card, his first solo card, I don’t think I paid much time at all on 1964 Topps, while in my futile pursuit of all cards old and vintage.

            But that’s not the case as an adult.

            I’ve fallen completely in love with the 1964 design.

            I know there’s a lot of white. A lot of white at the top that blends into a border that frames the image on the card. But that white is counterbalanced so splendidly by the bright, bold team names at the top of the card in such stark color. Not to mention the thick band of color at the bottom of the card, which houses the players’ names and positions. If 1964 Topps didn’t do it for me as a kid, it certainly catches my eye now.

I just have the Stargell in my growing collection…for now.

 

1963 Topps:

            1963 Topps was another design that I slept on as a child, but absolutely adore now as an adult collector, even though I have yet to add one to my collection. I’m beating a dead horse here by saying that virtually any Topps product from 1952-1964 seemed virtually unattainable to me when I was a kid. So, I simply didn’t bother. But I kind of wished I hung on collecting beyond the age of 18. Knowing me, and the way cards started changing by 1992, I probably would’ve started going back and spending my money on older cards.

            But…there were CDs and books to buy.

            Obviously, the two-for-the-price-of-one is nothing startling to me. Before I’d ever seen a card from 1963, I had my far share of 1983 and 1984 Topps. But it was nice to discover the lineage in the sets. To learn that Topps did harken back to designs from time to time. And 1963 is no slouch. Despite there being two pictures, you get a lot of bang for your buck photo-wise.

Topps keeps it simple with the border surrounding the photo. At least at the top of the card. The bottom of the card is where all of the excitement is. The band of color that houses the player name, position and team takes up almost a fourth of the card. And the bottom of the card is where you also get that second player photo. Usually, a posed action shot of some kind. It’s a sign of the times that in 1963 most of the “action” took place in the secondary picture, and by 1983 and 1984 Topps was giving you all of the action in the card proper and a nice little photo in the subset.

Also, 1963, houses a pretty famous rookie card.

Despite what you may or may not think about the guy.

 

1969 Topps:

            Certainly, a set that gives you Mickey Mantle’s last card and Reggie Jackson’s first card, is no slouch of a set. And 1969 Topps isn’t a slouch. But it’s slipped in value for me as I’ve aged and had more time to spend with other sets from the 1960s. But as a kid, this set, like 1968 Topps, would’ve been one of my favorites, simply because of the access I would’ve had to a set that wasn’t yet 20 years old. I probably had more cards from 1969 in my collection than any other year from that decade.

            To look at the card now though? Well, Topps certainly gives a lot of room for the card image. But it doesn’t give you much else. Just a little circle, floating at the top of the card, for the player’s name and position, and then the team’s name in yellow floating across the bottom of the card. And, in some cases, not even a different photo for a player from the previous year’s set.

            In the year of moon landings and Woodstock, Topps chose to play it as safe as a buzz-cut and a cleanly shaved face.

 

1966 Topps:

            Is it irony or purely coincidence that one of my favorite cards of all-time comes from one of my least-favorite designs from the 1960s? Notice I just said the 60s, because if 1966 Topps were produced now, I’d consider it a godsend among the bland, base product that the company tends to put out year to year. But, yes, the 1966 Roberto Clemente card is one of my favorite cards of all-time. It was a card I was fixated on as a child, and one I made sure to get as an adult. There’s just something haunting about the way Clemente is photographed staring off into the distance. Not 1972 Topps haunting, but I always found the image to be that as well as comforting in a very solitary way.

            The 1966 design itself? Hmmm You get your titled band for the team’s name and your little patch of color at the bottom for player and position. The uneducated-on-photography person in me wonders what advances in photography came about in the 1960s that Topps lent so much of its card space in 1966, 1967 and 1969 to the player photo and kind of did a hands up approach on the actual card design.

 

1967 Topps:

            I’m wondering if the powers that be at Topps, in 1969, said to each other: “Hey, how about we just do 1967’s design, only we put that player info business in a little bubble? Because, looking at 1967 Topps, it feels, at least to me, like that’s exactly what they did. Honestly, from 1966-1969 Topps, with the exception of 1968, it feels like the company was phoning it in. Not that I dislike 1967 Topps. But coming from their run from 1962-1965, it feels like the second year in a row where Topps was, like, meh, we gotta put something out, right? And it’s not like there’s another card company out there pushing us to improve.

            If you’re a photo (and little else) person, 1967 Topps is the card for you.

 

1961 Topps:

            Not a bad design for a card…just not much of a design at all. The 1961 Topps design wouldn’t have felt out of place somewhere between 1966-1969, but just seems rather dull when you have 1960, 1962-1965 surrounding it. Again, a ton of room, if not all of the room, is given over to the player photo. There’s a bar across the bottom that’s unevenly divided into two squares. One for the player’s name and position, and a smaller square for the team’s name. And that’s pretty much 1961 Topps in a nutshell

 

And that’s my take on 1960’s Topps cards. Not sure how I did, and it feels a little illicit ranking what, to me, as I stated previously, a hallowed and reverent decade for baseball cards. But rank we must, for we are human, and if we don’t put our own thumbprint on everything around us…well…then what’s the point? Hope you enjoyed. Hope a few of you called me an idiot out loud. Hope a few of you agreed.

Sorry about all of the Bucco cards!

And the Aaron, Rose, Brooks and Frank Robinson are also, sadly, not mine.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

 

NEXT FRIDAY: I made a trade. So, let’s talk about that. And let’s talk about trading baseball cards.

 

           

1985 Donruss : What is this Strange and Wonderful Beast?

 

1985.

            It doesn't seem like such an ominous year. It’s not 1984; the most Orwellian of Orwellian years…at least in name. Ol’ George might be spinning in a daze if he were around now. Or, he’d be walking around saying, been there, done that. He lived through the Nazis after all. 1984 was pretty boisterous from all accounts. We had those Los Angeles summer Olympics. 1984 was the year that Springsteen became The Boss to all of us. Say what you will about him, but Ronald Reagan won the 1984 election in a landslide. The Cosby Show ruled TV…I know, I know. And at the movies you could go and see Indiana Jones, The Terminator, The Karate Kid, Axel Foley, those pesky Gremlins, and the Ghostbusters…to name a few.

            1984 really felt like a new dawn in America.

            But this blog post is about 1985.

            I turned 11-year-old in 1985, and I remember that year as being the first one in which I was really into cards. I mean REALLY, don’t buy me anything else, into cards. Action figures weren't gone, but they were slowly fading from my field of interest. Cards were taking center stage. I can still vividly remember that sneak-of-a-sneak, Dimitri Danieloupulus at my front door with a stack of 1985 Topps. The first 1985 cards that I was going to see that year. Man, how I was envious of that guy. D always had the cards first.

I remember trying to trade D half of my collection away for this card.

Yeah…a 1985 Topps Mike Easler card. But in my defense Mike Easler was the Hit-Man in Pittsburgh. He was cool. His cards always looked so badass.

Case in Point:

And it was my first time seeing him not in a Pirates uniform (I had yet to really be taken aback by any 1985 Dave Parker cards…no beard!). And, to be honest, there was a certain level of intrigue in seeing Pirate players not in Pirates uniforms. To an 11-year-old they were an oddity.

That would soon wear off.

It was my life’s goal to get as many cards as I could in 1985. It seemed like that was becoming every kid’s life goal. If I remember the collecting year of 1986 as being the explosion, when every kid I knew had cards, then 1985 certainly planted the seeds. 1985 was the first year I ever saw anyone try and collect an entire set. Who collected sets? Not I. Cards were dirt cheap in 1985. We bought them with change we found in the couch. I put my star cards in one box and my Pirates in another. All else be damned.

Of course, it was Phineas who collected the sets.

He was nine and already had more patience and diligence than I ever would.

His sense of pride in completing the 1985 Topps set contrasted with my budding shame in realizing I’d probably never complete the simplest of life’s goals.

Although I did finally finish the 1985 Topps set

…35-years later.

But this blog post isn’t about 1985 Topps baseball cards.

Although I had a ton of Topps cards. And I had a good amount of Fleer too. They were the cards I saw the most in stores in 1985. Topps was everywhere but we mostly bought ours at the Thrift Drug. Fleer was harder to find…but soon the Revco Drug would have them in wax packs and rack packs to satisfy our ravenous need.

But there was one brand of card that was impossible for me to find.

I mean maybe they were at Statlander Drug. But cards at Statlander was never a given. And you risked your life crossing Frankstown and Beulah Roads trying to get there. Mom or, rarely, dad had to drive you to Statlander.  If you were a kid who couldn’t wait long enough for that pipe dream to happen, and if you had a dollar burning a hole in your pocket; Thrift and Revco were your usual dealers.

Be that as it may…my lack of access meant I never got to open up a pack of these guys.

Ah, 1985 Donruss.

I saw them fleetingly as a kid. Maybe in some kid’s collection. 1985 Donruss had black boarders! Who was doing black boarders in 1985? Maybe the American Coin had 1985 Donruss on their shelves. But the Coin was the only LCS I knew about and I was usually so gob smacked by the individual card boxes that we greedily sifted through, by the time I’d realize a product like Donruss was on the shelf, I would’ve already spent the money I had.

I’m sure Card Shows had 1985 Donruss, but back then Card shows seemed mythical to an 11-year-old kid. You found out about card shows via word-of-mouth. No kid I knew had the extra money to drop on an issue of Beckett to see what was going on around town. Even if I knew of a card show back then, I was eleven, I had to beg an adult for a lift. And it was hard to find a parent who had to work 40-hours a week to feed the Capitalist beast, who was willing to spend an entire morning and afternoon on their Saturday at a card show. Card shows were something we did at 12 or 13 and older, when we could just be dropped off at the door, and trusted to not act like idiots in public.

No, in 1985, a kid like me was mostly beholden to drug stores and supermarkets for our cards.

And that meant no 1985 Donruss.

Because of that, 1985 Donruss has always held a mystique to me. If I’m buying cards of an old-timer for my PC, I’ll usually grab their 1985 Donruss with one of my first purchases. Do I think they’re the best-looking cards of 1985? Nope. That distinction goes to 1985 Fleer. But when I was in a LCS recently in Pittsburgh and I had the choice between buying a 1985 Fleer or 1985 Donruss set, did I choose Fleer? Nope.

I chose this.

In fact, I think it was a moral imperative that I did.

I did it for the envious, denied 11-year-old who still resides somewhere in me.

And I like 1985 Donruss. I like it a lot, actually. The black boarders have a little bit of wear to them. But not much. The pictures on the cards are a little blurry. But not much. Donruss sequences its checklist in a strange way. What I mean by this is that they give you a lot of red meat right up front. Just looking through the first 100-cards of the 660-card set, there are 14 base cards of Hall-of-Famers.

Granted, it 1985 they were all star cards of future Hall-of-Famers, but they were star cards nonetheless. And considering the first 46 cards in Donruss are taken up by Diamond King and Rated Rookie cards, that’s 14-star base cards from card 47-100.

Of course, there are other star cards throughout the set.

Here's one

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been curiously excited when I come across a Pete Rose card where he’s wearing an Expos uniform.

Maybe it’s the Mike Easler effect.

He’s in the set too.

So is a still-strange-to-this-day beardless Dave Parker.

The two big rookie cards are in 1985 Donruss.

Of course, in 1985, these two would’ve made any collector happy as well.

I collect Doc and I still love that Davis card.

And I love how kind Dornuss always was in putting the year on the front of their cards.

I’ve talked a lot about set building on this blog, and my issues with doing so. I had an initial plan of trying to build my childhood sets by hand. In some instances, that’s simply not feasible. Looking at BBC Exchange, a wax box of 1985 Donruss goes for $395 and that’s too rich for my blood. So, I decided if I see a set from that era and its reasonably priced, I’m going to treat myself to it. It’s not as fun that way, but I’m building enough cheaper sets on my own that I’ll take an enjoyment hit on the building part of sets like 1985 Donruss, to focus on the enjoyment part of looking at them in binders.

Which is something that I need to do!

But it’s been so damned hot lately.

Still, I’m going to pick a morning. A morning soon, if this heat ever breaks. I’m going to sit down with the 1985 Donruss set, a binder, a fresh pack of 9-pocket sheets. Maybe I’ll throw on a little bit of music. Some Madonna or Huey Lewis and The News. I’ll fire up the flux capacitor. Give the DeLorean a spin. Open up an ice-cold can of New Coke.

And start sifting through a missing part of my childhood.

See what I was missing.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

Next Friday: Let’s rank 1960’s Topps baseball cards!