1990 Bowman sweepstakes inserts

I posted my 1989 Bowman sweepstakes inserts the other day.  I have a bunch from 1990 as well, which feature current players drawn in the style of some old Bowman cards. 

Will Clark.

Sweepstakes card back.

The card back is the sweepstakes entry, with which you could have won a set of the lithographs.  The card backs also come with two varieties -- there's one small asterisk at the bottom left here, and the other version has two asterisks.

Mark Davis.

Gregg Olson.

I don't really remember Mark Davis, but he won the 1989 NL Cy Young award, after leading the NL with 44 saves.  His career continued through 1997, but he didn't have another notable season after that.  Gregg Olson was the AL Rookie of the Year in 1989.  The main reason I remember him is that I got his autograph at one of the shows that Dad and I went to back then.  Olson is the Orioles' all-time saves leader and is in the Orioles' Hall of Fame

Dwight Gooden.

Bo Jackson.

Then we have Dwight Gooden and Bo Jackson.  Gooden was amazing when he debuted but of course he didn't stay at his peak, with his problems.  In 1989 he went 9-4, only pitching in 19 games.  (There's an error and a corrected version of the Gooden, since the text on the card back originally had a missing line.  But I didn't check which verion I have.)  And Bo Jackson was a big deal until all of a sudden it was over.  In 1989, Jackson was an All-Star and finished 10th in the MVP voting, while leading the AL in strikeouts with 172.  He had a decent 1990 before things ended, more or less, in 1991 (of course he did come back briefly a couple of years later).

Bret Saberhagen.

Don Mattingly.

I've posted a bunch of Don Mattingly because he was such a staple of small sets back then.  It was unthinkable that he wouldn't end up in the Hall of Fame back then, but it's hard to tell who will have the staying power.  And I didn't follow Saberhagen closely since he was in the AL, playing with a team that wasn't in the postseason, but he was then a two-time Cy Young winner.

Nolan Ryan.

Kevin Mitchell.

Robin Yount.

I have all but one of this set, it turns out.  Here we have Nolan Ryan, Kevin Mitchell, and Robin Yount.  But the one I am missing is Jerome Walton of the Cubs, the 1989 NL Rookie of the Year.

Thanks for reading!

Five from 1971 Topps

Some time ago, I posted four 1971 Topps that I picked up (Willie Mays, Curt Flood, Manny Sanguillen, and Steve Carlton).  That was just the first half of my effort to bolster my 1971 Topps cards in my binder.  Here we have the others, starting with Bobby Bonds.
I love the 1971 design including the card back (even if they had to give up all the lines of stats).  So I wanted a few more (I already had several from my original period of collecting in the 80s/90s), and the only question was who to get.  There are several spots in my collection now that when I wanted to pick up a few cards from a set, I picked Bobby Bonds: I posted the 1980 Burger King yesterday, and his 1977 Topps a while ago.  There's at least one more that I haven't posted yet.  I read an article about Barry Bonds once that described him as being born into baseball royalty -- I wouldn't describe Bobby Bonds as baseball royalty, but he's the kind of player I love, putting up solid numbers over a long time, even if he didn't end up at Hall of Fame levels.  
Then we have Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks.  I didn't manage to pick up any good cards of Ernie Banks in the 80s/90s; it looks like maybe I only had his Baseball Immortals and a Collect-a-Book.  It looks like I didn't post it but I did get a 1960 All-Star card of his, and now this 1971 Topps.  I did have a couple good Hank Aaron cards from back in the day, from towards the end of his career.  It's always good to have more of him, and this is slightly earlier than those others I had.
I posted a 1976 Topps Reggie Smith the other day that I said wasn't destined for my main binder.  The reason for that is that I have the 1971 Topps, showing him with the Red Sox, a team I associate him with more.  And I already had a bunch of Thurman Munson cards, but this 1971, with the great action shot and rookie trophy, is the best of his, I think.

Thanks for reading!

Games 1 and 5 of the 1960 World Series

The bedrock foundation of Pirates fandom is the years 1960-1979, in which Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and company delivered three World Series wins.  As far as I can tell, they weren't actually the better team in any of them.  That was especially true in 1960, when the Yankees outscored the Bucs by a total of 55-27.  Good thing that's not what matters, and while they were blown out three times, Pittsburgh pulled out four close wins to take the series.

Virdon Saves Game

So these two cards of the 1960 World Series from 1961 Topps emphasize that the Pirates barely won their games.  Bill Virdon saved the game in Game 1.  The back doesn't explain how exactly, but maybe I can piece it together from Baseball Reference and this article from the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.  Virdon was the center fielder, and in the 4th inning he made a great catch on Yogi Berra's fly ball with runners on first and second to save two runs.  The Pirates ended up winning the game by two runs.

Face Saves The Day

Then in Game 5, another close win, Roy Face saved the day.  In this game, Face pitched 2-2/3 innings, relieving Harvey Haddix.  He gave up no hits, which was something against this Yankees lineup.  He maintained the Buccos 5-2 lead.

I've been collecting this World Series subset, and now own them all.  One of them is in my COMC account and I don't have it quite yet.  I posted the Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle cards before.  In addition to the World Series subset, I also have the Dick Groat and Roger Maris MVP cards.  It looks like maybe I didn't post a couple of the others yet.  I'll get caught up.  But I've completed my commemoration of the 1960 Pirates championship team, all of which is taking place in my little PSA-graded collection.

Thanks for reading!

4 More 1980 Burger King Pitch-Hit-Run Cards

I've posted Burger King cards a number of times.  Having the 1980 Burger King Phillies cards around my house was a formative experience, especially given the excitement of their World Series win that year.  Lots of cards and lots of winning make a big impression on a four-year-old.

Vida Blue

Bobby Bonds

I originally had a few of the other 1980 Burger King cards, which I love for the Burger King logo on the front.  The ones I originally had were Davey Lopes, Jim Palmer, and George Foster.  Then I decided to get a few more at some point, and picked up two favorites, Omar Moreno of the 1979 champion Pirates, and one of my all-time favorites Don Baylor.  I know I also picked up a Dave Parker for my player collection, which it looks like I never posted.  I considered getting the whole set but there are a bunch of players that I don't especially have an interest in (no offense Bill North, Jerry Koosman, or Frank Taveras).  So I wanted to get just a couple more, and here we have Vida Blue and Bobby Bonds.

Willie Wilson

Enos Cabell.

The other two I picked up feature prominently in that 1980 Phillies World Series win, on the other side.  The Phillies defeated the Royals in the World Series and the Astros in the NLCS.  Both of those teams had a ton of talent, and Wilson and Cabell were a big part of that.

Thanks for reading!

Coming attractions: a bunch of Sportflics

After having experimented with buying a few blasters of current product this year, I figured out that buying yet more junk cards brings me more joy.  And something that makes me happy in particular are Sportflics.  So I bought a bunch, in a few different ways.

Don Mattingly disc offer.

One thing I bought was an unopened box of 1986 Sportflics.  I only had a handful of 1986 Sportflics before, and I posted them all (all 4 cards!).  It turns out they were issued in two series and I bought a Series 1 box.  Of the 36 packs in the unopened box, I opened 6 of them.  I'll probably stop there, and keep the other 30 packs in my unopened collection.  I'll be showing those cards soon.

Don Mattingly disc offer back.

All six of the packs I opened included a Don Mattingly Disc offer, in addition to two magic motion trivia cards and 3 baseball cards.  I posted before a Dwight Gooden disc offer that I found among my things from my mom's house; that must have been from Series 2, I suppose.  Piecing things together, given that I had 4 cards and one Dwight Gooden offer, I must have opened one pack of Series 2 Sportflics back in the day, and also picked up one more card somewhere.

AL Second Basemen Tri-Stars: Tony Bernazard.

AL Second Baseman Tri-Stars card back.

I also picked up one single 1987 Sportflics card, this Tri-Stars of the AL Second Basemen.  I bought this to go with the corresponding NL Second Basemen card that I originally had.  I originally had 7 of the 1987 Sportflics, so now I have 8.  I'm not especially interested in Marty Barrett or Tony Bernazard (nothing against them), but I'm happy to have another Lou Whitaker card.

The other bunch of Sportflics I bought is the 1986 Decades Greats set.  It's an amazing set, which I'll try to do justice to in a series of posts.

Thanks for reading!

Two 1965 Topps Embossed

I have a few memories of my first big baseball card show; it was at the Concordville Inn just over the Pennsylvania line from Delaware, and it would have been on my 13th birthday.  Brooks Robinson was signing autographs.  I saw a lot of things there, and I remember specifically seeing a dealer with a binder of these 1965 Topps embossed cards, which were all new to me.

Frank Robinson.

Ernie Banks.

I never picked any up back then, but now I wanted to get a few into my collection.  I got my first one, Harmon Killebrew, soon after I started collecting again, and blogged about it then.   I wanted a couple more in my binder, and so I picked up these of Frank Robinson and Ernie Banks.  Of course it's always good to get more cards of these guys, and I'm especially partial to Frank Robinson, who I think is one of the very few greatest ever.  The Robinson especially is a little beat up, but I don't mind.

Thanks for reading!

Some vintage odds and ends

As I said the other day, I've acquired a bunch of cards in the past year+ which I put away, including in my main binder, and didn't get around to blogging.  Now I'm mining those for blog content, and today we have an assortment of five vintage cards, starting with three from 1974.

Danny Murtaugh and company.

Bob Boone.

I'm not the greatest at scanning and a bunch of my scans of cards come out crooked.  But this Bob Boone at least is actually crooked on the card.  The Danny Murtaugh might be a little crooked too, but not as bad as the Boone.  It's great to have Danny Murtaugh in my binder; this is actually my second of him, as I posted earlier a 1959 card.  Since he led the Buccos to two World Series wins, it seems fair to have him in the binder twice.  And it's another Mazeroski card, to boot.

I already had a bunch of Bob Boone cards, with him having been on the classic 1980 Phillies team which forms a number of my earliest memories.  But I had few of him early in his career, and this 1974 is just his second card.  I'll add about that 1980 Phillies team, it's really amazing the talent they had among the position players: Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose were all-time greats, and the 18 All-Star appearances, 20 Gold Gloves, and other awards and titles collectively racked up by Bob Boone, Larry Bowa, Greg Luzinski, Garry Maddox, Bake McBride, and Manny Trillo is very impressive.

All-Time Home Run King Hank Aaron.

I feel a little bad classifying this Hank Aaron card among "odds and ends."  But it fits better here than among the other posts I'm planning, since it goes with the other two 1974 cards I'm showing above.  Of the six Aaron cards that start out the 1974 set, I already had two from my original period of collecting.  But this one is new to me, and it goes great in the binder with the others.

1966 Topps Bert Campaneris.

1976 Topps Reggie Smith.

Then we have a 1966 Bert Campaneris and a 1976 Reggie Smith.  Bert Campaneris is in my binder on my ''teams that no longer are'' page, representing the Kansas City Athletics.  He goes next to my Philadelphia Athletics and Houston Colt .45s cards that I showed recently.  There's also a Seattle Pilot, and a space which is waiting for a St. Louis Brown.  And this Reggie Smith card isn't for my binder, but will just go in my box of old Topps cards.  But he's the kind of just-sub-Hall-of-Fame player that I love, with his 2000+ hits, 300+ home runs, and 7 All-Star appearances, so I wanted to have at least one good card of him.

Thanks for reading!