Backtracking with 1982 Topps (because I'm a dummy)

I completed the 1982 Topps set back in 2018. But then I stored the set away in a longbox with the Cal placed on top in a rigid plastic case to keep it extra safe (been in there basically since pulling it from a pack as a kid). And then I also put my slabbed Traded '82 Cal in there too. This turned out to be a mistake; when the box was closed, Cal's cases dug into some of the cards beneath them. I assumed it was one of those boxes that had some breathing room above the cards, but no, it was one of those boxes without much space between the cards and the top of the box.

So now I've got a few cards from my '82 Topps set that find themselves in the condition of "upgrade would be nice" thanks to ground up edges on that one side facing the top of the box. I feel like a fool, but at least it was just '82 Topps, a set of cards that-- Ripken rookie notwithstanding-- are generally ubiquitous and inexpensive, and it could have been worse, as most of the damaged cards were commons.

I say "most" because HOFer Carlton Fisk looks like he had himself a bit of a home plate collision.

Not like the card is completely ruined, but for a flagship 80s set, that's gonna bug me.

If anyone has some sharp '82 Topps singles available and would like to help me out with a friendly trade, here are the cards I would like to upgrade:

61 Tommy Boggs
63 Mario Soto
110 Carlton Fisk
285 Sparky Lyle
336 Mariners CL
645 Frank White

There were a few more with very minor damage, but these 6 are the only ones bad enough for me to worry about. Lesson learned: don't store encased cards in a box of cards like that.

While we're on the topic of 1982 Topps, check out this shiny pair...

Topps did a little run of Cards That Never Were back in 2007, and a few of them got the refractor treatment through eTopps. I just fell in love with them a few months back and have been working on the set. Expect another post on that once I collect 'em all. But anyways, yeah, these are a couple cool cards that could have been. I'm a little sour at Topps for leaving out the other of the Big Three rookies from '83 Topps: my guy Tony Gwynn. But oh well.

They did a decent job making "real" backs too, which I greatly appreciate. To nitpick, the numbering implies the cards are from 1982 Topps Traded... but the Traded backs were red in '82, not green like the base set. And Sandberg wouldn't have been in the Traded set as a Phillie since he started the year in Chicago.. so this card would make more sense in the '82 base set since he got a cup of coffee in Philadelphia at the end of the '81 season. Also, why does the cartoon say his nickname was Ryno? When did it stop being Ryno?!

As for the Boggs, the mention of his 3000th hit is *looks up a big word* anachronistic. As a custom cardmaker, I try to avoid that kind of stuff when making a "card that never was" type of dealy. 

But otherwise, yeah, neat cards!

From the same seller I got the Boggs from, I also got this baby Bill Buckner rookie for my 1970 Topps setbuild. Pretty good snag at just 99¢ and no additional S&H. I've still got a long way to go with that set, but feels good to keep chipping away at it.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading.

Gone to the dogs

My spare time for card/blog activities has been cut down significantly over the past week due to us dog-sitting an energetic puppy for a work friend.

But one dog I always have time for is the Turrdog. He collects HOF autographs and his ears perked up when I posted the other day that I had a Dennis Eckersley auto available. Didn't take us long to hash out another successful trade.

Here are some big dogs! Awesome pair of Padres rookie cards.. probably San Diego's most desirable cards of the 70s (unless you wanna count that guy sneaking onto Mike Schmidt's rookie card). While I already had copies of Ozzie Smith and Dave Winfield's rookies, it's great to get an extra of each so I can dedicate one to the respective PC and another to the ongoing setbuilds of '74 and '79 Topps.

Jeffery also noticed I recently added all the vintage Kellogg's sets to my "maybe someday" list of collecting projects I'd like to work on.. and gave me a nice lot the beautiful initial offering from 1970. My favorite has got to be the Dick Allen, which I believe I needed for the PC.

Also a nice trio of HOFers from the '74 Kellogg's set.

Yeah, if anybody else has old Kellogg's cards available, I'd be down to take them. At this point, I don't mind cracking or curling.

And lastly, my 1982 Topps set can now be put to bed. I had already completed it, but this was the last card I felt I needed an upgrade to consider it 100% good. (Well, actually there are still a few variations I'd like to eventually add, but are less of a priority: George Foster All-Star card with a signature erroneously on it, Tom Seaver All-Star card with text differences on back, and Pascual Perez with no position listed on front.)

Thanks, Turrdog! Hope the Eck arrived safe and sound.


Circling back now to the canine situation (The card stuff is done, so you don't need to keep reading if you don't care about pups)... the dog we're watching is named Mia and she can be a handful.

While Mia is a sweetheart most of the time, having her for the past week her really helped us appreciate what a chill, good girl our Annie is. It's been a long week for Annie, as Mia's always trying to wrestle with her, and playing with her toys, and stealing her food. Annie doesn't mind a little playing now and then, but not nearly as frequently as Mia tries to rile her up into it.

I would describe Mia as a mix between Scooby Doo and a squirrel.

Her owners did warn us that she once chewed up a big fat Stephen King novel. Of course I was instantly concerned about my card collection, and have been careful to keep the door to that room shut while she was on the prowl. But thankfully she's been good and only chewing on toys and the blankets she brought with her.

But yeah, keeping the peace between dogs and other extra pet-care stuff has been exhausting. Plus she sometimes barks/whines/is-otherwise-noisy in the morning, so I haven't been getting great sleep lately. I don't know how folks with multiple dogs do it, much less parents with kids. Hats off to y'all.

So I've fallen a little behind in my blog reading and writing-- all these Reminiscence Bump posts being batted around are great, but they're generally long and require some quality reading time so I can't knock them out of my reading queue very quickly. And I haven't had a chance to start working on a draft of my own, but probably soon. I had some big plans for the blog that I haven't gotten to (such as my long-delayed Shipping Tips post plus kicking around a card-draft/contest idea).

Mia's owners are picking her up momentarily, as of press time, so things can return to normal shortly. I'm sure Annie will be happy to be the undisputed queen pup of the house again, though they seemed to get along a little better with each passing day. Annie happened to have a dentist appointment scheduled for today (she's had teeth issues in the past). When they were doing a health check when she first arrived, the vet thought they detected a heart murmur, and said they'd do some scans and see if there was a problem. They'd have more info at the end of the day.

This made for a very fucking stressful day for my wife and I! Our last dog was taken away from us much too soon from cancer, and we're really needing a long run with this one.

But I'm happy to report that I've been informed her teeth and heart both looked perfect upon further inspection. I'm typing this up at the end of the work day, but I'll be hugging her extra tight tonight when I get home. The poor girl was probably just a little stressed out from the chaos at home. We might need to reconsider dog-sitting again unless it's an old, mellow pooch.

Anyways.. thanks for reading!

The Turrdog takes a big bite out of my 74-85 wants

I've been lucky enough to have been approached with several substantial trades over the past few weeks, punching my wantlists square in their face. I've done a few mutually beneficial trades with Jeffrey, The Turrdog in the past, and this one might be the best. I had a couple HOF autos available for his collection, and he hit me back with lots of good cards for my mid-70s thru mid-80s setbuilds.

The Joy of a Completed Set: 1985 Donruss! This Lee Smith was the final card I needed to put '85 Donruss to bed. The A-Team and Knight Rider pic up top is to honor that time in the mid 80s when black & red was synonymous with badass.

Don't F with 1985 Donruss.

I feel like I'm not cool enough to have the complete set. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm intimidated by it. I have to comb my hair and brush my teeth before I can even look through the cards. I'm worried it may laugh at me or maybe even beat me up. I just hope it accepts me and will let me hang out with it sometimes.

Lee Smith is back again among these nice additions to my '84 Donruss setbuild too. It's a cool set, but not on the same badass level as the following year's offering. I already had the Mattingly, so Carter and Strawberry here pretty much take care of all the big rookies! But there are still several more cards I need, so please check out my wantlist if you can help me out.

I've finished 1982 Topps but there were 4 cards I wanted to upgrade because my copies are a tad creased or whatever.. and thanks to these 3, all I need is a good Jack Morris to have this set finished finished. Ironically I was the one who creased the Jack Morris.. I was blow-drying some wax off the front, but not being careful enough in my wiping and creased it. Lesson learned: small, circular wipes, or from the inside to the outside. Not big up and down wipes.. that's asking for trouble.

A lone '77 Topps for my young setbuild there. I've got another stack of '77s on the way, so that set should be off and running soon.

Nice stack of '79s! I'm not "officially" building this set yet (meaning I haven't worked up a have/wantlist yet) but great to get my foot in the door with it. Some good ones here in this starter lot, for sure.

Nice stack of 1976! Looking forward to updated my wants with these soon and see where I'm at.

Super happy with this lot of '75s!

Finally, the pièce de résistance, a big-ass lot of 1974 Topps! This is going to cut down the wantlist in a major way. There are likely bigger names in here than Willie Horton and Davey Lopes, but I was in a rush taking these photos this morning before work and haven't had a chance to go through them all yet.

Huge thanks, Turrdog! This was a hell of a trade and I very much appreciate you doing so much damage to my set needs!

And thanks to the rest of you for reading. Have a great World Series weekend!

1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken! (Joy of a Completed Set: 1982 Topps Traded)

Here's a nice add for my collection: Cal Ripken Jr.'s top rookie (year) card! As a kid, my all-time best pull from a pack (circa 1991) was an '82 Topps Ripken RC that he shared with Bob Bonner and Jeff Schneider, and now many years later I've complemented that with his Traded counterpart.

If I hypothetically had several copies of this card, I'd have one for the Iron Man PC, plus I'd throw copies into the Niekro and Stargell PCs for the heck of it (seeing as they're name-checked in the cartoon/trivia area). But since I've only got the one, it goes to the setbuild.

I completed 1982 Topps through trading last month. And not long after, picked up a 1982 Topps Traded "complete set; No Ripken" for less than a blaster at the last card show. So #98T here completes the mainstream '82 Topps run for me. Feels good!

Card Show Collusion

I was out of town during last month's card show, so I was extra excited for September's show today. I was a little thrown when I showed up and Bill-- the dealer whose bins I usually spend most of my time browsing-- wasn't there. So Plan B went into action and I set out to work on the 2 vintage sets I'm working on. I left after making purchases with 3 different dealers. For simplicity's sake, let's say all the singles in this post ran me about a buck each, though some were a little less and some a little more.

I was very happy to dig up a bunch of additions to my 1957 Topps setbuild. Prior to the show, I was sitting at 53.24% complete, and now I've passed 60%.

Umm... I felt quite the fool when I got home and sorted the cards, realizing I inadvertently brought home quintuplicates of Jim Brideweser here! I've bought dupes before, perhaps even triplicates once or twice, but accidentally buying 5 of the same card-- at least one from each of the three dealers I bought from today-- yeah, I think that'll stand as my all-time record. There were a couple other dupes and a couple "oops, I already had that one" from today, but nothing too bad besides this.

Founds some good '64 Topps, too, including HOFer Robin Roberts, which is an upgrade for me. Tim McCarver and Harvey Haddix were a couple familiar names I was happy to land. I had been one card away from ⅔ complete with this set, and this lot bumped me up to 68.76% (405/589).

Couldn't resist some off-condition '53s for a buck a pop. (well, turned out closer to 50¢ with the final bulk price). The ink marks in the upper right are on the sleeves, not the cards. This was from is the old vintage dealer Gene who (mistakenly?) overcharged me last time I bought from him, much to my chagrin upon realizing it driving home. But he took good care of me this time, so no hard feelings.

I haven't talked about it much yet, but I'm working on a "Flagship Binder" with one page for each set going back to '51. And I realized I didn't have any available 1953 Topps for the project. I only own like 2 or 3 '53s and all are in PCs. But now I'm just a couple cards away from a full 8-pocket page. Karl Drews is the odd man out here, with the other guys all wearing basically the same cap.

And these '56s too.

Old Bowman cards are fun when the price is right.

Picked up a couple 1963s that called out to me.

Nice trio of Billy Williams.

Three 1959 Topps cards caught my eye enough to throw on the stack.

More familiar names from the past.

It was just a few days ago I trumpeted finishing 1982 Topps and mentioned I wouldn't mind adding the corresponding Traded set to go with it someday. Well, picked this up for a bit under $20. Of course there's a catch.. it did not include the Ripken. The guy said he had that one graded and sold it on eBay. So I'll still need to track down a Cal one of these days, but nice to get everything else taken care of, at least.

And the seller was the old vintage guy who moved away a few years back, but he drives up to the show once in a blue moon. Way back at my first time attending the monthly show, he was the first dealer I ever bought from, so it's nice from a sentimental standpoint to pick up cards from him again.

So that'll do it for September's card show haul. Thanks for reading!
(Oh, and I bumped into Padrographs Rod and he gave me a great box o' cards.. I'll post about them another day.)

Joy of a Completed Set: 1982 Topps

I'm getting a kick out of completing these old sets I "started collecting" as a kid. The first was 1973 Topps (my first real vintage card as a kid was a '73 Pete Rose I traded a Super Mario Bros. 3 NES cartridge for), more recently was 1980 Topps (the earliest cards I owned as a tyke were a few random '80 Topps A's my friend scribbled his name on the backs of). And now 1982 Topps gets wrapped up. It's the earliest set I ever bought a bunch of packs from. (Sorry to my grammatically-sensitive readers for ending so many sentences with prepositions.) I amassed probably around 60-70% of the set in my younger days, but that project went out the window when I left the hobby, to be boxed up and stored in the garage for 15 years before eventually jettisoning the gist of them when I moved out of state.

I only held onto a few of my favorites from my original card collection. But now with my newfound love of set-collecting over the past 3 or 4 years, I figured I'd take care of some unfinished business and knock out 1982 Topps once and for all. In my last post, I mentioned a generous mailing from Fuji took me to within a George Brett base card of completing the set. Then I took a look in my Brett PC, and sure enough, near the bottom of the stack was card #200...

I don't think this card was from my childhood collection (though I recall having his All-Star and In Action cards from the set). Honestly, I can't remember the source, despite searching my blog's archives for an answer. Probably either a trade from a few years ago or perhaps a cheap card show pickup.

Regardless, great to finally have all 792 cards checked off. Some are very familiar to me, and others I had never seen before. This is the first set I've ever completed using the help of cards from my original collection (most notably the Ripken rookie; the greatest pull of my childhood), so it truly feels like a finished project over 25 years in the making. Otherwise, the set was entirely built by trades this year (and perhaps one or two card show PC pickups from before I decided to go for the set.)

My blog has probably featured enough 1982 Topps over the past few months, so I don't think I'll pick out my favorites to feature today, but maybe I'll revisit the set in a future post, pointing out all the interview photos, the classic Fisk In Action card, and other things I might find interesting.

But I'll at least show off the back of the Brett. I like the 1982 backs for sentimental reasons, but otherwise they're not great. The green overload is too dark and often hard to read. I like that there are cartoons, but they're pretty small, and I much prefer the "Did you know?" trivia to be regarding the guy on the card, not random baseball tidbits.

So here we go, just about ready to be put to bed. I've still got about a dozen cards with wax on the fronts that I need to take a blowdryer to and wipe off (I already cleaned off a few the other day, but you can only do so much until your fingers start to burn!). And I still have 4 cards I want to upgrade before I can truly feel like I'm 100% done with the set. I'm not worrying about the little sticker inserts, errors, or the "blackless" printing variations. I would like to add the 1982 Topps Traded set as a complement someday, but no rush on that.

Big thanks to everyone who's helped me piece together this set over the past few months, with special shoutouts to Turrdog, Larry P., Mark Hoyle, TSHenson, and of course Fuji for pushing me to the finish line.

Hoarding Fuji's Nachos (mailday melee)

Fuji erupted '82 Topps needs (and want-to-upgrade's) all over my mailbox. Funny enough, just a day or two before, I updated my Desperate Dozen list with the cards I needed to put this set to bed. I'm now down to a single card (#200 George Brett), plus a few more I wouldn't mind upgrading (415 Don Baylor, 450 Jack Morris, 607 Durham, 606 Blue Jays TL). Very appreciated! Thanks, Fuji!

He also included a couple nice Astros cards. I've got a copy of that Springer relic with an orange swatch, but cool to add a white version too.

Super Giles Bros.

Yonder Alonso is having a decent season with the Indians.
Michael Conforto hasn't really been able to get it going this year, like most of the Mets' hitters.

Nice selection of Pads in the Hall.

And closing out with little Randy Jones retrospective.

There was also another cool thing, but it's for a custom commision project, so I'll keep that under wraps for now.

Big thanks, Fuji! I'll get working on that project and hope to dig up a few more cards for you.

-   - - --o

I also recently grabbed a Trade Stack over at Nachos Grande.

Out of the 7 cards in the stack, these 4 fit into PCs I've got going. Cool McGwire Pacific diecut. The Rod Beck Topps Gold is really what put the stack over the top for me. I generally don't care much for modern painted cards, and these two Reds are no exception, but hey, throw 'em in the Votto and Bench PC, respectively.

Thanks, Chris! Hope you can use what I sent your way in exchange.

-  - ---o

Next up is a surprise package from Jason at Hoarding Cardboard.

Jason got the White Sox in Kerry's recent free group break, and landed a couple Matt Ginters and a Fisk I could use. Nice Gavin here, too.

Some young AL stars here. Jason's note kindly pointed out that the Mookie is the AL set version.

Finally, a bunch of Judges and a $1 off coupon. I'm guessing this is good on any Topps product fat pack? Maybe I'll use it to grab some 2018 Ginter and try to pull that cryptocurrency card that dumbasses are paying a lot of money for because they think they're buying cryptocurrency.

But anyways.. Thanks, Jason! I'll round up some cards to send you back soon.


I've also got some great incoming cards from Collector Chris and Dimestore Doug that I still need to cover, but didn't have a chance to get to them today, sorry to say. Soon, though.

Thanks for reading.