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!