Monday, May 11, 2009

Mail Day: 5/11/09 Part 1

Seems like it's been a while since I've posted a mail day. I haven't been trading much lately. Not sure why. Oh well. Two packages came in today from trades that went out last week.

The first is from reader Dave who I helped complete one set of '87 Topps and get close to a second set. He's also been nice enough to decide to build 1988 Score, so I'm sending him a good sized stack of doubles tomorrow. It's going to work out well for both of us, because now he's a little close to a complete set, and I finally have room for my growing stack of 1981 Topps.

Which is what he sent me in return for the '87s. So let's have a look, shall we?


I love this card! That's all I can say about it. It's wonderful! This is my first Rollie Fingers card, and his last in a Padres uniform. For now, until I see more of this set, this is officially my favorite card (although, Gorman Thomas is a pretty close second).


Here we see the 1980 Atlanta Braves with a much younger Bobby Cox, a 40 year old Bobby Cox in fact.

Aside from this, the oldest card of Bobby I have is his 1986 Topps card, his last as the Blue Jays manager. I wonder how hard it would be to put together a player/manager collection of Bobby Cox cards...

And finally, this card confuses me just a bit...


Is there a reason the Cubs team card isn't a full team photo? Is it just because they couldn't find the time to do one, or is there some historical context? Are there any other team cards in '81 Topps that are like this?

The vast majority of my collection is from the dreaded era of over production. There's not a lot I can do about it, I was seven years old in 1988 when I started buying cards. I'm certainly interested in older cards and have plans in the future to work my way back as far as I can, but I have very few cards from before the mid-80s, so these older cards are still very new to me (and I realize 1981 doesn't qualify as old, yet).

With these 15 cards from Dave, I'm now up to 22.8% of the set.

So I'd like to thank Dave for his help with this '81 Topps project (hopefully I can complete it before the set and I turn 30 years old... I've got two years to do it).

Thanks again, Dave!

2 comments:

night owl said...

Floating heads on Cubs team cards were a tradition throughout the '60s, '70s and into the '80s. Even the White Sox got into the act briefly in the 1970s.

That Cubs card is one of the few cards I need to complete the '81 set.

Ben said...

That's interesting.

"We didn't have time to take a picture, so we just did this..." sounds like a viable Topps excuse. But I was curious because it seems too well done for one of Topps' rush jobs.

Thanks for the info.

If I ever come across another one I'll let you know.