A few 1994 Oscar Mayer discs

At some point I saw another blogger post some of these 1994 Oscar Mayer pop-up discs.  I don't remember who or when; it was a while ago now.  But I wanted a few for myself.

Kirby Puckett.

Kirby Puckett disc back.

These are from 1994, when I was still just barely collecting.  I don't typically pick up post-1994 items, so these are just within my usual limits.  I only wanted a few, and Kirby Puckett is a good choice for me.  I have had two of his 1985 Topps rookie cards for a long, long time, and they have pride of place in my main binder.

Ruben Sierra.

Ruben Sierra disc back.

Ruben Sierra was one of the many important rookie cards in the 1987 Topps set; in the time I was watching, he played with the Rangers and A's.  Over the next years he also played with the Yankees, Tigers, Reds, Blue Jays, White Sox, Rangers again, Mariners, Rangers again, Yankees again, and Twins, topping 2000 career hits.

Andy Van Slyke.

Andy Van Slyke disc back.

Then there's Andy Van Slyke, who was very important to me in the late 80s/early 90s as a Pirates fan.  I didn't buy just one Van Slyke, though.  In the interest of having my cake and eating it too, I bought one to keep as it came and one to open up.

Popped up.

A few lines of stats.

I didn't want to open it wrong, so I practiced first.  I bought my friend the Mets fan a Lenny Dykstra disc, and we opened it together.  We did it a little wrong, tearing it in one place.  So then I knew how to open this Van Slyke.  Inside there are stats for the most recent five years.

Trivia question.

Trivia answer.

There's also a trivia question and answer that pops out.  Who won the most Gold Gloves?  Brooks Robinson, of course.  But also Jim Kaat, I think, who wasn't mentioned.  But not anymore, thanks to Greg Maddux.

Thanks for reading!

Coming attractions: I love the 70's

About a week and a half ago, I made a short post saying that I would be posting a bunch of Sportflics soon.  And having posted that helps me to remember to work through the Sportflics I wanted to post, which I have now started.  In that same spirit, here's a brief post about a bunch of 70's awesomeness that I'll be posting soon.

John Candelaria.

Willie Stargell.

Pete Rose t-shirt offer.

I've said that I'm winding down my collecting, and that remains true.  I'm down to fewer than 40 cards for my 1972 Topps set, and then I don't plan to get much more than the 1955 Bowman set that I'm working on.  But earlier this year I splurged on a box of 70's goodness from COMC, buying more than 100 various Hostess and Kellogg's cards and MSA discs.  Technically a few of the Kellogg's cards are from the 80's, but still.  Pictured above are the only unpunched Pepsi discs that I bought, featuring two important Buccos of the 70's, John Candelaria and Willie Stargell.  In a dozen or so posts coming up, I plan to show all of this great stuff.

I've actually already been posting some other 70's stuff I got as part of the effort, but which are not Kellogg's, Hostess, or MSA.  The items and posts which you could say were surreptitiously part of this series are: 13 1977 Topps cards,  11 1977 Topps cards, some 1977 Padres schedule cards, the 1978 Topps Phillies team set, cards of Danny Murtaugh, Bob Boone, Hank Aaron, and Reggie Smith, and a 1976 Topps Dick Allen card.  Of course there's other 70's stuff that I post, but I don't think it was all consciously in this vein.

Thanks for reading!

My 1989 Bowman sweepstakes inserts

Back in the day, I didn't even consider these to be baseball cards.  I don't think the terminology was so standardized, and we didn't have much in the way of what are called "inserts" today.  I personally called the advertising/offer cards, such as the red 1987 Topps one that Fuji featured the other day, inserts.  But maybe these from Bowman are actually inserts in both senses.

Jackie Robinson.

Card back.

At the time I was excited when I heard that Topps was reviving the Bowman brand.  I got a factory set of them in 1989, and opened a handful of packs as well.  But I was disappointed with the reality.  The size was problematic, the lack of printed names on the front was problematic, and the stats on the back weren't what I was looking for (although I suppose that it's nice they tried something different).  They fixed the first two of those items for the 1990 edition, moving to standard size and also printing names on the front.

Willie Mays.

These sweepstakes insert cards did a good job showing Bowman's history, I think.  When they released the set, I suspect most collectors (even us kids) knew the basics of Bowman: that they preceded Topps and stopped making cards in the mid-1950s.  But outside of a grainy photo at the top of a column in a price guide, most of us kids collecting back then probably hadn't seen too many Bowmans, and I don't think there were even typically reproductions around.  So these inserts were good in that way, I think.

Richie Ashburn.

Yogi Berra.

Looking at the checklist for these on Trading Card Database, it looks like there were 11 altogether, and they do make a good sampling of the different Bowman sets, including color and black-and-white, photos and drawings.  They don't include any from my favorite, though, the 1955 Bowman "Color TV" set. 

Gil Hodges.

Whitey Ford.

One thing that's striking, as you can see from the six of the eleven cards that I have, is how centered these are on New York.  Of my six cards, I got two Dodgers, a Giant, and two Yankees.  The ones I don't have are two Mickey Mantles, a Satchel Paige, a Duke Snider, and a Ted Williams, so three more New York cards.

As you can see, the sweepstakes is that you can win a set of original Bowman cards, supposedly valued at $10,000.  I'm sure that winning such a prize would have seemed so unlikely to me that it wasn't worth entering.  I'm sure someone must have won, and congratulations to them.

Thanks for reading!

1986, 1987, and 1988 Jiffy Pop Disc Sets

It's been a bit under two months since my last post.  In the baseball world, in that time, the pennant and wild card races were resolved, the NLDS, ALDS, and NLCS were completed.  As a Pirates fan, this season was totally demoralizing.  I would consider following the Orioles instead, but they're even worse.  For some reason I've never quite been able to manage being a real Phillies fan despite living in the area, but I think even if I was I'd be disappointed with them, too.  So baseball hasn't been too rewarding lately.  In the realm of real life, the school year started, and I'm teaching two classes as well as keeping up with my research and administrative responsibilities.  And I've been doing more than the usual amount of childcare since my wife has a tough semester.  Put all of this together and I haven't even had much time to think of the blog.  But through some confluence of events, tonight I can make this blog post.

1986 Jiffy Pop Don Mattingly and Reggie Jackson.

So a couple of months ago, around the time I last posted, I picked up the three 1980s Jiffy Pop disc sets from eBay.  I'll focus on a few cards, and for 1986 I'm highlighting Don Mattingly and Reggie Jackson.  I've said before that it's a rule that all such sets had to have a Mattingly.  That holds true in 1986 and 1987, but the 1988 Jiffy Pop set excludes him.  This is also a nice end-of-career Reggie.

1987 Jiffy Pop Mike Schmidt and Don Mattingly.

Here we have the local hero Mike Schmidt.  I have a bunch of cards of him that are extremely similar to this, since he was also a mainstay of special sets of the 1980s.  And it looks like they weren't too creative with the Mattingly, as it seems to be the same photo, just cropped a little differently.

1988 Jiffy Pop Andre Dawson and Ozzie Virgil.

Somehow Mattingly wasn't in the 1988 set, and I suppose that made room for Ozzie Virgil.  Andre Dawson was a natural selection, though, having just won the 1987 NL MVP award.  This light blue design is similar to the 1988 Chef Boyardee set I posted a while ago.

1986 and 1987 Jiffy Pop Lance Parrish.

Just to show a few more of the discs, here are a couple of Lance Parrish.  I've posted a bunch of Lance Parrish cards over the couple years I've been blogging.  This is rooted in the time the Phillies thought he would be their next great catcher, but that dream didn't last. 

The other 52 of the 1986, 1987, and 1988 Jiffy Pop sets.

Finally, here are all the rest of the discs.

Like I said when I bought a few 44-card Fleer boxed sets from the 80s a couple of months ago, I've come to realize that I still enjoy buying junk-era products like this, even if they feature all the same players as the other sets like this.  There aren't a ton more things like this that I don't already have, though, so I probably won't be getting many more.

Thanks for reading!

1986 Fleer sticker back Famous Feats

In yesterday's post, I showed the 5 old 44-card Fleer boxed sets that I recently picked up.  Of course, these being Fleer products, the boxed sets contain not just cards but also Fleer stickers.  I started seriously collecting in 1987, so I don't think I ever saw any of the 1986 Fleer stickers.  Here are the backs of the stickers that came in my 1986 Fleer Limited Edition set.

Hank Gowdy.

Ty Cobb.

Hank Gowdy hit .545 in the 1914 World Series, playing for the Boston Braves.  Ty Cobb won 12 batting titles in 13 years between 1907 and 1919.  These kinds of facts on baseball cards were an invaluable source of knowledge pre-internet.  I did have books on baseball history but I learned so much from things like this; these remind me a lot of the 1985 Topps Woolworth All-Time Record Holders set I blogged about a while ago.

Hack Wilson.

Ed Reulbach.

Here we have Hack Wilson, who drove in 190 runs with the Cubs in 1930 (although Baseball Reference says that it was actually 191 runs).  This is still the all-time record, and Wilson is in the Hall of Fame.  Ed Reulbach is a player I've never heard of before, and he pitched a double-header shutout for the Cubs in 1908.  I bet he threw more than 100 pitches that day!

Walter Johnson.

Bill Klem.

Then we have another pair of Hall-of-Famers, Walter Johnson and umpire Bill Klem.  And even if people know about Walter Johnson, they might not know this particular thing about him, that he won 38 games with a score of 1-0.

When I bought the boxed sets, I didn't give any thought to the stickers.  Two of the five boxed sets I got were from 1988 and two were from 1989; I have seen lots of those stickers over the years.  But these Famous Feats were a pleasant surprise and are definitely an added benefit of getting the 1986 Fleer Limited Edition boxed set.  It almost makes me want to order a 1986 Fleer wax box.  Almost.

Thanks for reading!

Some 1977 Padres Schedule Cards

I found these Padres schedule cards on COMC; I'm not sure how I came across them exactly, but I was looking generally for lots of 70s goodness.  And these sure qualify.

Dave Winfield schedule card.

Dave Winfield back.

I don't try to get complete sets of odd things I stumble across but instead am mainly happy to have the set represented in my collection.  So I chose three Padres to get schedule cards of, starting with Dave Winfield.  There are a number of variations, with three different kinds of backs, and several different photos of Dave Winfield available.  I chose this photo of Winfield, and all the backs (of the three I have) are the same.

Gene Richards schedule card.

George Hendrick schedule card.

For the other two I chose Gene Richards and George Hendrick.  I've said before that Hendrick only came to my attention recently when Night Owl published a long post on him.  For some reason I remember Gene Richards' 1981 Fleer card clearly, and he also shares a 4-player rookie card in 1977 Topps with Andre Dawson. 

I said at the top that I was looking for a bunch of 70s stuff when I got these, and I have a box full that I haven't posted yet.  I'll work on that.  Thanks for reading!

1986 Dr. K Disc Offer

In the pile of stuff I got out of my mom's house, there was this, an offer for a Sportsflics disc of Dwight Gooden.  This would have been just after his amazing 1985 season in which he went 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA, with 16 complete games and 268 strikeouts.

Offer for a Dwight Gooden disc.

It's like a Slurpee disc without the Slurpee.  I wouldn't have called this offer sheet a baseball card, since it's on a sheet of paper, not cardstock.  Buy COMC has copies of this disc offer for sale, and on eBay, they have a PSA-graded version for sale.  COMC doesn't have any of the actual discs, but eBay does.  I think I'll pass, though.  COMC also has a Mattingly disc offer.

Back of the offer.

I'm sure I would have passed back then, too; actually, I guess I did, since I have the offer form but not the disc.  It's $4.99 (in 1986) for a single disc.  I thought 1986 was before the market had overheated, but I guess it was on its way if people were paying $4.99 for one Sportflics disc.

Thanks for reading!

One more 1992 Slurpee disc

I made a couple posts before of what I thought were all my Slurpee discs; I split them into my discs from 1992 and those from 1985-1991.  I also showed a 1982 Slurpee cups checklist I bought recently.  I grew up down the street from a 7-Eleven, and that's where I bought a huge number of my 1987 Topps cards when I started seriously collecting cards, in 6th grade.

1992 Slurpee Ryne Sandberg disc.

We moved out of that house in 1988, and I no longer had convenient access to Slurpees.  But by 1992 I was driving, and could get myself to a 7-Eleven.  So I have a bunch of 1992 discs. 

I got all my cards back from my parents' house a couple of years ago, and left behind some related stuff like wrappers and Donruss puzzle pieces.  I was going through that other stuff just recently and found this Sandberg disc had slipped in.  It's now back with the cards where it belongs.

Disc back.

The 1992 Slurpee discs are branded Score, while earlier ones may have been made by the same company but were unbranded.  I also bought some of my first Score cards at that same 7-Eleven, when they came out in 1988.

Thanks for reading!

A St. Louis Wolves card

This is the only Action Packed card in my collection; I picked it up on COMC a few months ago.  I don't remember Action Packed although my original period of collecting did last long enough for them to have appeared.

Who's on first?

Like many baseball fans, the Who's on First routine has a special place in my heart.  So I thought I would see if there are any cards to commemorate it, and sure enough, there are one or two.  This one is great for showing Bud Abbott in a St. Louis Wolves baseball uniform.

Card back.

The back includes the known lineup, including infrequently mentioned players I Don't Care, Tomorrow, Today, Why, and Because.

Thanks for reading!

Phanatical

Now we have a brief tribute to that greatest of the mascots, the Phillie Phanatic.  I consider myself fortunate to have grown up with our local stadium being his home.  Over the years I've seen many mascots, and I always think how much better the Phanatic is.

Two 1987 Acme supermarket Phanatic figurines.

I remember getting some of these little Phanatic figures when I was a kid.  I seem to remember that they came from Acme.  If you're not from the Philly area, you might think of Acme as only the place that the coyote got all the gadgets he tries to use against the road runner.  But around Philly, Acme is one of the big supermarket chains.  (Back in the day it was the leading grocer in the area, but it's been surpassed by ShopRite at this point.)  This blog post confirms that these did come from Acme, and puts the date at 1987.  I would have been 11 years old in the summer of 1987, and I remember getting a couple of these at the time.  These that I have pictured here haven't been with me since childhood, though; I don't have my original ones, so I ordered a couple cheap off eBay a little while ago.  I remember that the one in the tux was called "Mr. Formal," and the advertisement pictured at the other blog's link shows that that's right.  

Dale Murphy and the Phanatic on a Star card.

So I thought I'd get a card of the Phanatic, too, and I picked this Dale Murphy Star card from 1986.  I vaguely knew about the existence of Star in the 80s, although I never got any of their cards.  I considered buying some of the old Star sets now (Fritsch has some sets in stock, for example), but decided that it doesn't feel like that fits with my collection since I didn't have them back then.  But if I don't want a whole set, I can still get a single card.  So this here puts the Phanatic into my main binder, and represents Star in my collection.  I also have fond memories of Dale Murphy's time with the Phillies, and you could say that this card foreshadows that.  So it's all good as a part of my collection now.

That's it for now; as always, thanks for reading!

1989 All-Star Ballot

Voting opened for the All-Star game a little while ago, and this made me nostalgic for the All-Star balloting of my youth.  Back then we voted on punchcards.  Really.  This isn't like how when my dad was in college they programmed computers on punchards, in the 60s and 70s.  This was circa 1990, albeit many years before punchcard ballots became famous again in Florida in 2000.  Fortunately for my nostalgic streak, you can buy old All-Star ballots on eBay for a few bucks.  So I ordered a 1989 All-Star ballot.

Front side of ballot and some promotional offers.

You would punch out the hole next to the players you were voting for.  If you wanted to write in a name not already there, you could punch out the write-in circle and then write them in.  They would have these ballots at the seats at games; Dad and I went to a lot of games back then, so we would vote a fair number of times.

Back of ballot with other promotional offers.

There are ballots from different years available on eBay, but I picked 1989 because that's a special year for the Phillies fans as concerns the All-Star game.  Mike Schmidt retired early in the season, before the All-Star break, and we all kept voting for him.  He was elected to be the starter, and suited up and was introduced with the rest of the NL lineup.  He didn't play, of course, because he was retired.  But it was a nice last chance for the fans to honor Schmitty.  He got an extended standing ovation from the fans in Anaheim.  I've heard some people say that this episode demonstrates why fans shouldn't pick the All-Stars.  But we were glad to have the chance to vote for him after all he did for Philadelphia baseball.

So, not a baseball card today exactly, but also not all that different from a card.  It even has Johnny Bench's picture on it.  Thanks for reading!

Missing card identified and found: Starting Lineup Talking Baseball Tony Gwynn

I haven't posted in a bit over two months.  This was an accidental hiatus; I've been caught up in work, but things have dissipated a bit and I hope to be able to keep up a bit better here.  At the same time I will need to keep my expectations reasonable as far as posting goes, I think -- I have a tendency to think I will make all sorts of posts with a great many cards, but when it comes to getting the cards together, scanning, cropping, and writing, it gets overwhelming.  So I will try to be realistic and post a few times a week with posts with not a huge number of cards in them.

Tony Gwynn.

As far as a subject for this post goes, I have this one card to offer, the 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball game card for NL All-Star Tony Gwynn.  I posted what I thought was the whole NL All-Star set previously, explaining that I received this game for my 13th birthday in 1988.  The game itself came with two teams built-in that you could play against each other, the NL All-Stars and the AL All-Stars.  You could then buy cartridges with additional teams, and I had one cartridge that had the Pirates, Phillies, and Mets teams on it.  That cartridge came with cards for those three teams.

My AL All-Stars set had 20 cards in it, and my NL All-Stars set had 19 cards.  I thought at the time that this is the way it was, and conjectured that perhaps computer memory being what it was at the time, maybe there was room for only 39 players total.  But that was wrong, fortunately, and I found this Tony Gwynn lost in the closet of my old bedroom when I went to get a few more things from my mom's house this past weekend.  It was in the wrong place but the right general neighborhood, mixed in with some non-card baseball memorabilia.  Tony Gwynn has now gained his rightful place, joining the other NL All-Stars in a team set bag.

Thanks for reading!

My Slurpee discs: 1992

I showed half my Slurpee discs the other day; all of the Slurpee discs I have, I pulled from the bottom of Slurpee cups in the 80s and 90s.  The ones I showed the other day were two from 1985, one from 1986, and two from 1991.  Then I have six from 1992.  Why do I have more from 1992?  I was able to drive.  I turned 16 at the end of 1991, and I didn't get my license for a few more months, so it wasn't until 1992 that I could drive on my own.  I appear to have availed myself of the opportunity to get a Slurpee at least 6 times that year.  Probably more, but they didn't always have the baseball discs on the bottom of the cups.

Roberto Alomar.

Roberto Alomar disc back.

The early ones, like the 1985 and 1986 that I showed in the last post on these, didn't have any kind of maker's mark on them.  The 1991 and 1992, though, were marked with the Score brand on back.  I don't think that I connected back then that Score and Sportflics were the same company, but it makes sense in hindsight, with the magic motion trivia inserts and all.

Cecil Fielder.

Cecil Fielder disc back.

I remember being taken by surprise by Cecil Fielder's stardom.  I was over my cousin's house one day, and he collected cards too.  He asked me if I had any Cecil Fielder cards, and I had never heard of Cecil Fielder, but I said that I was sure I did.  I mean, if you buy wax boxes of the current product, then you had cards of everyone.  So when I got home I went and looked, and sure enough I had some Cecil Fielder cards here and there.  That must have been in early 1990, since that was Fielder's breakout home run year, and I must have not been paying much attention to the AL stats at that point, and missed Fielder's rise.

Barry Larkin.

Ozzie Smith.

Then we have two National League Hall of Fame shortstops, Barry Larkin and Ozzie Smith.  I have a lot of great cards of Smith, and always enjoyed watching him play.  Barry Larkin is one of the many great rookie cards in the 1987 Topps set, and I have several of it.  Tomorrow's post will be of the 1990 Reds destroying the A's in the 1990 World Series, which Larkin played a big role in, hitting .353 in the series.

Robin Yount.

Roger Clemens.

Then we have two AL stars.  Robin Yount was near the end of his career, which finished up after the 1993 season, and had fairly recently won the AL MVP in 1989.  Yount's 3,000th hit came on September 9, 1992.  Then we have Roger Clemens, whose likeness must be in absolutely every set of the era (along with Don Mattingly).  I don't like Clemens, and won't say much about him.  I include him here for completeness, since I'm showing all of my Slurpee discs.

Thanks for reading!  Tomorrow's post, as I alluded to above, is of the 1991 Fleer World Series set (of the 1990 World Series).