Recent Acquisitions for my Player Collections: Schmidt, Stargell, Foster

I keep saying this, but from 1994 until a couple of months ago, my collection was in storage and I didn't buy any cards.  Now, I've rejoined the modern collecting world, and I've made a number of collection goals for myself.  This includes building deeper player collections for 11 players I've identified; it's possible I'll add a few more players before I'm done, but for now I'm working on these 11: Mike Schmidt, Willie Stargell, George Foster, Tony Pena, Eddie Murray, George Brett, John Candelaria, Dave Parker, Manny Sanguillen, Rickey Henderson, and Harold Baines.  Joining the modern world means, unlike in 1994 and earlier, buying cards on the internet.  I've set myself a monthly budget for my acquisitions, and this past month, I spent most of the budget on my unopened Burger King Phillies acquisition, my 1973 Topps Reggie Jackson acquisition, and a few other small things.  That only left a little for the player collections this month, but I found some nice cards at COMC.  In this post, I'm showing the three Schmidt cards, the one Stargell card, and the two Foster cards I picked up.

1981 Squirt Mike Schmidt.

For my Mike Schmidt collection, I started off with these two Squirt cards.  I don't think we had Squirt in Newark, DE in the 1980s; I can't say for sure that we don't have it where I live in Pennsylvania now, but it's not a very popular drink, if we have it at all.  On another note, is it just me, or does Schmidt look like he has a perm in this 1981 card? 

1982 Squirt Mike Schmidt.

Part of the reason I wanted to pick up the Squirt cards of Schmidt is that I didn't have any cards from the Squirt sets in my collection.  In the 80s, I would have tried to get the entire sets, but at this point, I'm happy just to have them represented in my collection via some of my favorite players.

1989 Topps Cap'n Crunch Mike Schmidt.

I don't usually eat sugared cereals anymore, but man did I love Cap'n Crunch in the 80s.  I didn't care how much it tore up the roof of my mouth, it was awesome.  I must not have been consuming it at just the right time to get any Cap'n Crunch baseball cards, though, because this Schmidt is my first from the set.  This is a funny card, I think -- usually Topps cards have the team logos, even if they're food-issue cards.  Second funny thing, his pinstripes are blue.  I know the Phils sometimes have blue elements in the uniform, but any stripes should be red, I think.  Not sure what's going on with that.

1981 Kellogg's Willie Stargell.

I have a lot of Willie Stargell cards already, but they're almost all base set cards.  He retired before the real craze of the 80s got underway, when every company out there was putting out some kind of cards.  But there are at least Kellogg's and Hostess cards of him, and this 1981 Kellogg's is the first of several such cards that I'll work on picking up.

1981 Drake's George Foster.

I think of Drake's Cakes as a New York kind of thing, and we usually had the local favorite, Tastykake, instead, at our house.  I have a couple Drake's cards I got in the 80s, but not many.  Now I have one more, this George Foster from 1981. 

1986 Topps Super Star (Woolworth) George Foster.

By 1986, George is looking noticably older.  His career was just about done at this point, and he really wasn't very appreciated by the Mets. I think this Woolworth Super Star set has a terrible, cheap-looking design, and I won't plan on getting many more of them.

That's it for this installment of recent additions to my player collections.  I'm really enjoying going to COMC to pick up cards like these, and I'll plan to keep doing it every month for the forseeable future.