Recent Acquisitions for My Player Collections: 5 Stargells and 1 Schmidt

Last month I acquired a bunch of Willie Stargell and Mike Schmidt cards for my player collections.  I thought I would show the Stargells today, but I'm also including one of the Schmidt cards for comparison.  I feel like I say this a lot, but I am loving buying cards, especially oddballs really, online -- when I was collecting in the 80s, you'd be lucky to come by just a fraction of this stuff at the local card shops or at shows, where the current product of the overproduction era was most dealers' emphasis.

1989 Starting Lineup Baseball Greats Willie Stargell.

I only own one Starting Lineup figure, which is of Von Hayes and was given away at one of the many Phillies games that Dad and I attended.  It's nice to have this card, but it does make me think that I might want to track down the figure, too.  I see on eBay that it was a set of Stargell and Clemente, and there are some available still in the package; that's a very difficult to resist combination.

1977 Topps Cloth Sticker Willie Stargell.

I've said before that I don't remember ever knowing about the 1977 Cloth Stickers set until this past summer, when I rejoined the collecting world.  My earlier approach, upon discovering their existence, might have been to want the whole set.  Now, instead, I just want a few of them in my collection to represent the whole.  This Willie Stargell will do that, in the player collections portion of my secondary binder.  In the oddball-heavy section of my main binder, I have a cloth sticker that I recently picked up of Dave Cash, and I plan to get a couple more.

1975 Hostess Willie Stargell.

The only Hostess cards I originally had in my collection were from 1993.  I think those are great cards and I plan to post about them sometime, but the 1970s versions are a whole nother thing, as they say.  I'm not planning to pick up every Hostess card of every player I'm developing player collections of, but these do add a nice dimension to the collection, with there being fewer oddballs available from the 70s than there were later.

1969 Milton Bradley Willie Stargell.

1969 Milton Bradley Willie Stargell card back.

I'm so happy to add this 1960s oddball to my Stargell collection.  From what I gather just looking at the card, this was a game similar to the 1968 Topps game or the 1951 Topps red backs/blue backs, except played with dice in addition to the cards.  I've never played any of these games, although I admire how many times Topps (and Milton Bradley) tried to make a go of them, especially with Topps including the game again on the backs of the 1978 cards.

1984 Milton Bradley Championship Baseball Mike Schmidt.

1984 Milton Bradley Championship Baseball Mike Schmidt card back.

I said I was including one Schmidt card for comparison, and this is it.  I guess Milton Bradley tried again with their cards-and-dice baseball game, and so I was able to pick up this 1984 Milton Bradley Championship Baseball card of Mike Schmidt.  For the cards, this time Milton Bradley teamed up with Topps, although we get the unusual circumstance of logo-less Topps cards; I guess it must have been cheaper for Milton Bradley that way.  Although the cards are from 1984, the card backs are in the same color scheme as 1983 Topps backs; maybe these were designed, if not released, around the same time as the 1983 set.  Comparing the two card backs, you see that the 1984 version of the game is a lot more detailed in terms of the dice rolls; the 1969 version only cared about what the total of the dice was, while the 1984 version gives different outcomes based on which numbers actually came up (so rolling a six and a three is a different outcome than rolling a four and a five in the 1984 version).  Speaking of rolling a four and a five, I had never heard of a "Texas League Single" before; it just means a blooper that lands between the infielders and the outfielders for a single.

1970 Kellogg's Willie Stargell.

Finally, we have this, a 1970 Kellogg's Willie Stargell.  I've posted several times about the fact that I found Kellogg's cards hard to come by at the local shops and shows in the 80s, and I'm having a great time picking up many more Kellogg's cards now than I ever originally had.  And this 1970 Stargell is the greatest one I've seen so far -- the clean design is great, it has the feel of its era, the old uniform with the vest/contrasting sleeves is awesome, and the young Stargell looks like he's about to go whack some monster home runs once the photo shoot is done.

That's it for my Stargell additions for now.  Maybe there will be more next month, and there are definitely more Schmidts I have to post soon.