It's nice to know that small shows can be worth going to sometimes. It was great to walk into a show where every booth had someone selling who I didn't see at the local monthly show.
Most packs also have the card number written on the back, even though the player name is certainly easy to spot. Sure, the card number is difficult for me to see even without the wrapper, but did someone really need to write the number on almost every card?
When I bought the box I assumed that there would be about 1,000 individual packs. I was quite off on that one. There were 1,655 packs. I already had a lot of 1980s so even though I am quite excited to get these cards, I sure would love to get 1979s for my want list and the variations that I don't have yet.
I expected no stars and I was partially correct. There were no cards of Mike Schmidt, Bert Blyleven, George Brett, Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan and Rod Carew.
There were also no Ross Grimsley, Ron Guidry, Lee Mazzilli and Fred Lynn. I would certainly wonder how that happened other than the Grimsley which poses different issues since it is card #1.
Tom Seaver (5) and Dave Kingman (2) only appeared out of the pack. I guess the Kingman card was popular in Chicago at some point.
There was one card each of Willie Stargell, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski, Dave Winfield and Johnny Bench.
That means lots of cards of the other 43 players including Pete Rose, Jim Rice, Carlton Fisk, Fergie Jenkins and Phil Niekro. That's an average of over 40 cards per player, but it didn't work out quite like that.
In 1978 we didn't know about double-printed cards int Topps sets. That would have explained how I kept getting Pete Rose and Mike Lum. In this 1980 set there are a few cards that I could use to wallpaper my room. Unfortunately, Pete Rose shows up a lot less times than the average.
What will I ever do with 128 Claudell Washington cards, even in Chicago? As my wife said, what will I do with any of this stuff? I guess I will need to buy some holders for them since I like to store these in Card Saver IVs to keep the paper intact.
If anyone has some of the other cards in the wrapper and wants to swap a few let me know.
If anyone has some of the other cards in the wrapper and wants to swap a few let me know.
Insane. Even without Ryan, Schmidt, and Brett... I'd say you hit the jackpot. Nice find.
ReplyDeleteAwesome find! I wish we had shows around here. They used to be within driving distance on almost any weekend. Not any more. Did you open any? If so what did the condition look like?
ReplyDeleteI did open a few of the ones where the packaging had huge rips or tears. They look great. Sometimes the opened 1980s can lose their luster like lots of the 1971s and 1975s. These have nice, bright colors as they should directly from the package.
ReplyDeleteLet me know if you want to try a few with your project.