Recent Acquisitions: Tony Pena

One of the players I'm building a deeper collection of is Tony Pena, the Pirates All-Star catcher from the 80s.  In making acquisitions, I'm mostly not looking to get more of the main Donruss, Fleer, Score, Topps, or Upper Deck set cards, because while I may not have them all, I generally have a good representation of those already.  There are exceptions, though, and I had a few goals in mind with these Pena cards.

1985 Donruss Diamond King, 1986 Topps, and 1987 M&M's cards of Tony Pena.

This 1985 Donruss Diamond King and 1986 Topps are, obviously, from those main sets I just mentioned, but I hardly have any 1985 Donruss, and I like the action shot on the 1986 Topps.  This 1987 M&M's card is the first I have from the set.  I already had several Pena cards from his time with the Pirates, but these help round out that part of the player collection.

1987 Donruss Opening Day and 1989 Topps K-Mart Dream Team Tony Pena cards.

I don't recall knowing about the 1987 Donruss Opening Day set.  I remember Donruss Rookies, Donruss Highlights, and Donruss Traded from various years, but not Opening Day.  Anyway, I like the 1987 Donruss set, so I'm happy to have this variant of it.  I have a few K-Mart sets, too, like the 1982 and 1987 nostalgia varieties, and the 1988 Memorable Moments, but not the 1989 Dream Team.  These are good additions to my collection of Pena as a Cardinal.

1992 Donruss Triple Play Tony Pena.

1991 Topps Stadium Club Tony Pena.

I got these Stadium Club and Triple play cards from Pena's time with the Red Sox for a specific reason, as you might guess by looking at them.  They show Pena's unusual catching crouch (although the Stadium Club isn't really an action shot, I think).  I wanted to make sure that I had at least one card showing this, and the Triple Play captures it well.

1992 French's Tony Pena and Tom Pagnozzi card.

Finally, I love this French's card, mostly because French's mustard is a product that I didn't know ever had cards, and also because it's unusual for cards like this to feature more than one player.  So, here, Pena is paired with Tom Pagnozzi of the Cardinals.  I don't know if there's a theme to the pairings on these French's cards, but they are both catchers and in opposite leagues.

Tony Pena 1989 Fire Safety/Smokey the Bear card.

Finally, we have this 1989 Fire Safety card.  Like the similar one of John Candelaria I recently acquired, this is much too large to go in regular binder pages.  I'll keep it in a box with other oversize cards, like Topps Supers and Donruss All-Stars of certain vintages.

Pena played with other teams after the Red Sox, but my collection really only goes until 1994, and I'm not really planning to get cards after 1994.  So, his time with the Indians, White Sox, and Astros will remain absent from my collection.

I've said this many times in the two months I've been writing this blog, but until this summer, I hadn't bought any cards since 1994.  That means that I'm only still discovering what it's like to buy cards using the internet.  It's pretty great to have an idea, like, "I wonder what Tony Pena cards I could get," and a few minutes later, to see all the Tony Pena cards for sale and pick up a bunch.