Dime Boxes and True Value Cards

 I only found one Kellogg's card, the Eddie Murray card mentioned yesterday, in a search of dime boxes at a local show.  I am usually too impatient to go through a box for 10 minutes at a show.  The last time I did this a lot was when I bought a VIP pass at the National.  Since I was at that event all day, I eventually found time to look at these bargain bins.

I picked up a bunch of oddball cards from the 70s and 80s including a few Hostess cards and some True Value cards. 

I've gotten these cards before, but it was either just one card or an unopened pack.  The Reggie Jackson card above was part of any entire pack.  I hadn't even opened one of these so I didn't even know how many cards were in this pack.  The photo below shows the three cards that were included in the pack.  

There are 30 cards in the set, so I probably have a good number of them now.  No complaints about opening this pack and getting a Cub and one of my favorite former Cubs.  

I told my wife that I don't ever remember these cards being issued or how they were issued.  She wasn't surprised and she responded by quickly showed me a honey-do list that has gotten longer all of the time.  You can bet that if Home Depot, Ace Hardware or Lowe's ever produces a card set that I will never mention it at home.

One of These Is Not Like The Others - 54, 57, 60, 64, 66, 75

One of these things just doesn't belong.  I couldn't remember if this song came from Sesame Street (it did), The Electric Company, Zoom, Ray Raynor & Friends or some other show from my childhood.  The question for today is which of these doesn't belong?

If you are a serious Kellogg's card collector, you probably know that these are the number of cards in the different Kellogg's card sets from 1970 to 1983.  

Which one doesn't belong?  That would be the 1982 set with 64 cards.  All of the other numbers are divisible by three, which means nothing here, but it also means a lot.

I picked up a Kellogg's card today from a ten-cent box.  I do know lots of the card numbers by heart because the sets are small, but that's usually for the older sets.  When I picked up the card below I automatically knew the card number because this is the one Kellogg's card that is not like the other.  It's not that it doesn't belong, but it is definitely a card on its own.

As I work on damaged Kellogg's sets and newer (1979 - 1983) sets, I place them in nine-pocket pages.  How does the Murray card differ from every other Kellogg's card?  

Kellogg's did us a favor with the 54-card sets (1972, 1973, 1974) since that is exactly 6 sheets (or three if double-siding the cards).  None of the other sets were perfectly built along those multiples. 

The 75-card sets (1970, 1971), the 57-card sets (1975, 1976, 1977, 1978) and the 66-card set (1981) all have three cards in the last nine-pocket pages.  The 60-card sets (1979, 1980, 1983) have six cards on the last sheet.

Not 1982.  Eddie Murray is stuck on his own sheet, which I can't justify, so he ends up on the back of the last sheet (cards 55 -63).  That makes it easy to remember him as card #64.

Do You Have Any Good Starting Lineup Stories?

https://uk.hasbropulse.com/pages/starting-lineup 

Wow!  Starting Lineup figures are coming back after 21 years.  I collected them from 1988 to 1994.  The baseball strike slowed my collecting a bit in 1995, but then I kept going until about 1998.

I like them opened or unopened but they take up too much space.  For many of the ones that became the equivalent of junk wax, I opened them to save space.

My favorite story involves my brother.  He found two basketball figures that he wanted but he only had enough money to buy one.  What did the quick-thinking teen do?  Before buying one he placed the other one in an Easy Bake Oven so that no one else would find it.  Toys R Us was a great place.

In 2001 Albert Pujols made his debut.  Are there any other active players in pro sports who've been around that long?  That guy who just un-retired from the Bucs began his career in 2000.  I think there are some hockey players who've been around that long.  Probably a few NFL kickers or punters too.  

It took until 1990 or so, but I completed the 1988 set when I got a Mike Boddiker figure.

Did anyone collect those?  Do you still have them?  

Did Anyone Order Kellogg's Factory Sets or Anything Else from Cereal Boxes?

We pulled lots of toys, stickers and cards from cereal boxes throughout our childhood.  I've even gotten a few things recently, but not too often any longer.  Eating cereal as a kid involved reading everything on the cereal box including the mail-in offers.  

Someone from my neighborhood ordered a 1974 Kellogg's factory set, but that was never going to happen at my house.  After asking in the early 1970s, I think I gave up after a few years.

Why did I stop pestering my mother?  I worked really hard at that point on getting her to let me order a popular Hot Wheels pair of cars.  I really wanted the Snake and Mongoose cars that maybe were only available through a mail-in offer.  Maybe a Hot Wheels collector can tell us more about this since I didn't see anything online.  None of my efforts got me those cars even though the price was maybe a dollar.

Once I had some money thanks to a paper route and my job as a caddie, I was able to get Sportscaster cards from a mail-in offer.  (https://runforesportscastercards.blogspot.com/).  I am still working on that set since I stopped subscribing long before the Bird, Magic and Gretzky cards appeared.

From Wheaties boxes I pulled two instant wins for Michael Jordan basketballs around 1990.  I still have both of those, although one is a bit used.  

Did you get the Snake and Mongoose cars from a mail-in offer?  Did you get anything else that took some bargaining with your parents?

UPDATE from my mother - The younger kids did order Frosted Flakes cereal bowls and spoons from a mail-in offer.  She still has some of those.  Just more proof that my younger siblings got all the good stuff.  (No, I dared not say that to my mother so I can only vent here about it).