7 out of 10, but the order is all shot now

I had every good intention to finish the 10 sets that I started the year wanting to complete in order.  I did well for the first handful, then a great deal came along for a Mike Schmidt RC that I couldn't pass up and '73 Topps was done, and the order got messed up.  Now, the set I was going to finish 9th, is done.

Behold, the insane finish of the 1978 Topps set over the past 2-3 weeks.

Just 7 of these 43 cards were purchases from my COMC order.  The others came from some very generous trade partners on TCDB, the last being from Jeff (TCDB ID: jmiller4) who sent a very generous package my way after I had sent him a partial proposal for 10 of the cards I needed.  Jeff told me to wait a few days and then sent back a proposal for a great package, including the last of the '78 set, plus a lot of cards from my player collections.

3 sets on the first 10 remaining.  Yes, there is a plan in place for another 10 sets to get finished, that will be posted when I finish these three...

• 1976 Topps.  Thurman Munson left.  Trying to work out a trade on TCDB for it as I write this.
• 2013-14 OPC hockey.  10 SPs to go.  May try and finish these today.
• 1974 Topps.  40 to go.  

I'm getting close to finishing these off and it's a great feeling right now.  This is what I've wanted to do for a long time, now that it's being accomplished I do sit and wonder a bit why I didn't do this years ago.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Post #1961 means a card from 1961.  In this case, I found a 1961-62 Parkhurst hockey card in my closet, and thought it would be worth showing off.

Interesting to look at the card back and see that Wayne played just 3 games with the Canadiens in the previous season.  Those would be the only games he would play for Habs, as he was traded to the Bruins where he would be a regular for 2 of the 4 seasons he was with the B's. 

Wayne was claimed by the Minnesota North Stars in the expansion draft, and would break out with them in 67-68, scoring 35 goals.  The next season is when he would start bouncing around, being traded to Detroit.  Played there for 2 years, then traded to St. Louis.  In November 1971, he would be traded twice in 2 days, first to the Rangers as part of a 6 player deal, then the next day he was off to the west coast as part of a deal with the Canucks.  

That would be his last season in the NHL, as he would be part of the migration to the new WHA, where he would end up back in Minnesota with the Fighting Saints for 4 years before they folded.  Wayne finished up the 75-76 in Cleveland with the Crusaders, before playing his final season of pro hockey in Alberta.   His 76-77 season was split between Calgary and Edmonton.  

I remember buying this card for a couple of bucks a few years ago at a card show, and never thought much of it other than it was a card from the 61-62 Parkhurst set, in really nice shape for cheap.

Little did I know that Wayne had a pretty good hockey pedigree, scoring 300 goals in 2 pro leagues over a 900 game career.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

It's all downhill for '78 Topps now

I've been on such a good run lately buying singles off of ebay, and to a lesser extent Sportlots, that buying packs in the store has become a bit of a memory.   Good thing, because the money I'm spending on some of the singles is taking up a week's worth (or multiple weeks) of the budget.

Case in point,

This Molitor/Trammell rookie from the '78 set is now in hand, and drops the want list once my COMC order comes in this month (hopefully) to just 34 cards.  There might be a half dozen or so that could be bought at common prices, but the rest are all star/semistar cards, so one good purchase should knock off most, if not all of them rather quickly.

Not the greatest looking of RC's, but the corners are sharp and the back is in real nice shape, so I can live with it.

Besides, the best part of this purchase is going to be another one card post tomorrow.  It's a biggie...

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Out of the blue--stateside

In the middle of a heavy rainfall late yesterday afternoon I popped out to the mailbox to ensure that any potential card packages inside didn't get wet.   I have just under a handful of trades on the go, and was hoping that I might get one or 2 of those in yesterday.

I actually got 3 PWE's from 2 fellow bloggers, neither of which I had any idea that they were coming.  Gotta love the surprises!!

The first one was from everyone's favorite Night Owl, Greg.  He had sent me an envelope not too long ago, so getting this was a very nice surprise.

A couple of mid 90's Leafs to add to the collection.  I do have the collection and a want list posted on the TCDB, but probably don't do a good enough job of advertising it to the masses.  The collection I have is just over 800 cards total, with a good mix of older cards along with the 90's and newer stuff.  Always looking for Leafs, so these are a welcome sight.

Moving on to the vintage portion, 1 each from the 70 and 71 sets came my way.  The Bobby Wine card taught me that I need to check my want lists that I have on the blog soon, as I have him marked as in hand on the TCDB, but had his card on the want list on the blog.  Need to fix that.

Joe Moeller's '71 Topps card is no doubt a duplicate in the vast sea of Dodgers cards there in Upstate New York, but is most certainly welcome here in the deep south.  I'm thinking that '71 may be the last of the 68-72 Topps run that I will complete, as I only have just over a third of the set in hand, and am in no hurry to work on it.  That desire may grow a bit next year, we'll see.

Now these '72s are beauties, not just because they are in nice shape, there's also

•  Joe Ferguson's card is his rookie card, and a great catchers shot even if it is posed
•  They are both in the high numbered card range (Ferguson is 616, Team Card is 522)

I have very little in the way of cards above the 400's in hand, so seeing these was extra special.  I'm a little farther along with the '72 set, but at just under 54% done, there's a long hill to climb.  No worries though...

Within a week's time, I went from needing 2 Nolan Ryan cards for the '78 set to needing none.  Immediately upon looking at the K leaders card I was struck that Niekro was the NL league leader.  I looked at the back and had to see the names he left in the dust:

1.  Niekro 262
2.  J.R. Richard 214
3.  Rogers 206
4.  Carlton 198
5.  Seaver 196

Now I know the knuckleball can be a tough pitch to hit, but Phil left those other strikeout artists in the dust during the '77 season!!

The Tommy Lasorda card is one that I know I saw on the Owl's blog a couple months back and had asked Greg if he had an extra copy lying around.   Voila!!

The '78 set want list is rapidly dropping, now down to just 48 cards to go.  When I started the year, I needed 79 cards, so I'd say progress is going rather well.  Maybe my ebay shopping in the next couple of weeks will net me the Molitor/Trammell RC, and then it'll be all down hill from there.

Greg, thank you for the PWE, the cards are really appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Battery

When going through the last 5 cards of my recent eBay order from The Battersbox, the first thing that came to mind was the two cards below featuring one heckuva battery.

For most of the sets I'm working on now, I've progressed to the point where I'm picking up cards in the $1-$5 range, of which these two certainly fall into.  When scanning these I thought for a moment and wondered if Seaver ever pitched to Carter, hence the battery title of this post.

First thought, Carter played for the Mets in the 80's, I couldn't remember if Seaver did the same.  Sure enough, Seaver was in Shea in '83, but of the 5 catchers that played for the Mets that season, Carter wasn't one of them.  Carter didn't start his Mets career until '85.  The only other way they could have been a battery is in the All Star Game, and sure enough Seaver pitched in the 2nd inning of the '81 ASG, giving up a HR to Ken Singleton.  Carter was the starting catcher for the NL in the game, which the NL won 5-4.

These two cards dropped the want list for '78 down to 50 cards, which is even lower now.  You'll see why on tomorrow's post.

These three '72 Topps cards round out the envelope, no catchers here to support the pitching of Jim Lonborg.  I believe these 3 cards cost me just under $5 total, Nowhere near as close to finishing '72 as I am '78, but I've made nice progress so far this year, nearing the 54% completion mark.  Completion this year is out, possibly by the end of 2021 if all goes well.  A lot of high numbers that are pricey is something that will likely hold me back, similar to the '64 set I completed a few years back.

I've kind of taken to going after singles on eBay for the time being, as I can acquire them relatively quickly, compared to COMC which has been my other go to for singles.  The bigger change, especially mentally, is grasping that I pretty much have very few cards on my baseball want lists right now that I can buy cheaply.  This is OK, as I know that I'm moving towards putting together some sets that I'll appreciate for a long time to come.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Royals for Royals (and a Yankee and a Mariner)

Knocked off a few more wants with a recent trade with Matthew (TCDB ID: jmswyo), and outside of a pair of player collection cards, nothing but KC Royals went in the mail.  I'm sure if John Olerud or Andrew McCutchen had played for the Royals, I'm sure those cards would have went in my direction as well!

This trade was so easy, I decided to limit it to just one scan.

Right in the middle of the scan, a bit of 2017 A&G help   The Cain is a SP, and I now have 26 out of the 50 short prints from the set, and that's with 145 total cards left on that want list.

Bat rack card aficionados I'm sure have the Bob Oliver card from 1970 Topps in their collections. If they don't, or worse if they weren't aware of it, it may have become part of an updated want list.  The Steve Busby card for '78 Topps drops that want list to 50 cards, as I received a couple of star cards from that set today from a recent eBay purchase, which you'll see in the next few days.

Any cards that help out player collections are always welcome, and I believe that the McCutchen card you see above is the first one that I own that features him in pinstripes.  I don't know what to make of the Olerud in the Topps 205 design from 2003; I think the design is OK but it doesn't really wow me.  I actually like it better looking at it in hand than on the scan.

Still, it's a half dozen cards from a great trade partner, thank you very much Matthew they are appreciated!  Look forward to our next trade.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Slowly chipping away

First off, Happy Mothers Day to all the moms out there who may be reading this (of which I'm sure that there are few).  I was fortunate to get on a video call with my 2 younger sisters and my mom this morning for a 1/2 hour, and it was quite entertaining to chat with everyone and to wish my mom a Happy Mothers Day face to face, or at least as close as I will get to that.

On to card related matters.  To go along with yesterday's 55 Bowman Bobby Thomson card, I snagged 6 others as part of my purchase on eBay.  I managed to knock a few cards off of a couple of different sets.  One of the sets has long been neglected, and the other I'm slowly striding towards the fnish line.

First up is a handful of commons from the '68 Topps set.  Got them all for roughly $1-$1.50 apiece, and they're all is pretty good condition, despite how the scans show.  Still a long way to go on this set, as I'm just nearing the 45% complete mark, but this set has no timeline for completion.  It's just fun to pickup a couple of cards here and there when I'm window shopping for other cards, such as this one...

Got this '78 Topps Nolan Ryan for $7, which I thought was quite reasonable considering I've seen copies online for $20-$30.  '78 Topps is on the radar for completion in 2020, as the want list is down to 57 cards.  The big card still to buy is the Trammell/Molitor RC, but there's still some time for that.

I actually used yesterday, which would have been the day of the monthly card show for me, to go online and buy some more cards, which should arrive by next weekend and knock off some more numbers on the want lists.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Want list Wednesday: 1978 Topps

A trio of Yankees start off this post, as this recent TCDB trade with John (ID: herkojerko) knocked 3 more cards off of my 1978 Topps want list.  With roughly a handful or two of these cards in my COMC cart, with ship date to be determined, I decided to show the want list to the masses on tonight's blog post.

3,4,5,7,10,19,20,34,40,45,60,72,96,99

120,131,143,170,175,179,189,196,200,203,205,206,212,216,259,270,282,293,

300,301,320,325,336,350,374,378,400,411,419,450,451,479,499,510,530,580,

606,670,689,700,705,707,708,709

Everything highlighted in bold is on the way via COMC, leaving me with roughly 50 cards to go.  Just looking at the list there's a trio of Blue Jays that I need, so I'll probably end up raiding my Jays collection to take care of those.  A couple of key RC's including the Dale Murphy, along with the Molitor/Trammell combo are needed.

Plenty of other big names like Ryan, Morgan, Carew, Bench, Rice and Seaver are also part of the remaining numbers on the list.  Not many commons left, so finishing this one will cost a few bucks to pick them up on various sites unless I can swing a couple of more trades for a few of these.

Hit me up if you have anything extra you're looking to trade, as I'm still doing PWE trades here for the most part.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

The smaller half

Maybe calling this post 1/2 of this trade might do a disservice to the other half, but I decided to break up the trade with Greg from the Collective Mind blog into 2 pieces, so both posts get the "half" designation.

In what started as a harmless trade involving just a few cards going in both directions turned into a 100+ card trade that took a chunk out of both of our want lists.

Totally unexpected were these 4 1974 Topps cards, including Canada's own Ferguson Jenkins!

Little bits and pieces of want lists like these 4 are always great, especially when you get Jenkins and Ken Griffey Sr.'s rookie card.  Still 88 cards to go to finish off '74, but that's a task which is a few complete sets away. 

1978 Topps was nicely represented in this envelope, as 14 cards are now off of that want list.

Unmarked checklists.   Check.

The hitters portion of the group, including the man who managed the Jays to two World Series titles, Cito Gaston.  894 wins as the Blue Jays manager still ranks him 1st all time with the club.  I remember Butch Wynegar well, 2nd round pick of the Twins in the '74 draft, he was up with the big club by 1976.   A quick dive into his stats and I noticed something interesting, his number of BB's vs. K's each season.  Butch walked more than he struck out each season of his career but one, which was 1987 in which he barely had 100 plate appearances.  A pretty good eye indeed.

Decided to scan all the pitchers together, and I started to notice the names.  Carlton and Tanana, lefties.  Denny and Leonard, righties.  So I wondered, what were the chances of having an equal number of left/right hand pitchers of this group of 8.  Sure enough, 4 lefties and 4 righties.   Bullet points for all!

• Paul Mitchell was part of the trade that brought Reggie Jackson to the Orioles.
• Joe Kerrigan's birthday is today, happy 66th Joe! I remember Joe as a pitching coach for the Expos, Red Sox and Phillies.
• I didn't know that Ken Brett died young in life, just 55 years of age back in 2003.
• Steve Carlton and Frank Tanana combined for just under 7000 K's, Carlton still ranks 4th all time, Tanana is 23rd.
• Dennis Leonard missed most of the '85 season, the year that KC beat the Blue Jays in the ALCS.
• John Denny had that one great season, 1983, in which he won the Cy Young.  Only won more than 11 games one other time in 13 MLB seasons
• Doug Rau had a great 5 season run with the Dodgers, winning 73 games.  His rotator cuff gave out in '79 and his career ended after a 3 game stint with the Angels in '81.  Doug tripled in his first career AB, and never hit another one after that.  The same picture on his '78 card above is used on his baseball reference page.

 Next up, the bigger half.  1972 Topps.  Lots of them.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

2020 is upon us. Time to finish some sets.

Happy New Year to everyone!  I do hope that you had an enjoyable evening celebrating the ringing in of a new decade.

For me, collecting in 2019 was quite enjoyable, and successful.   I completed a few sets, and I also wound up with 154 transactions on the TCDB website (which becomes www.tcdb.com as of today so update your bookmarks), far better than I ever expected to accomplish this past year.

What I want to do this year is pretty simple.   Complete 10 sets.  Easy right?  All 10 sets that I'm going to discuss have want lists of 100 cards or less, 8 of which are under 30.  How I'm going to do it will be a little bit of a challenge, because why would I make it easy on myself?

OK, so here goes.  Here are the 10 sets that I will finish this year, in order of completion. 

1981 Topps

Robin Yount is my first scan of the 20's, and finishing this set is fait accompli.  I mentioned recently that I only needed Mark Wagner to finish this set, and I received a message shortly there after from Bruno in the Great White North (thank you Bruno!) that he was willing to send me the card in a trade, so this is done.  

1982 Topps

As part of that same trade, Bruno is sending me 5 of the remaining 15 cards that I need to finish the '82 Topps set.  That left me with 10, so I hopped on COMC and picked those up.  So, this set is done and is either in transit, or will be in transit in a couple of days.  Which brings us to...

1983 Topps

This was one of 4 cards from the '83 Topps set that I received in a recent trade package (thank you Jason!) that took 3 weeks to travel from Wisconsin to Florida via the USPS.  Dog sled, no doubt.  My '83 build is down to 26 cards, with 2 of them being the Gwynn and Sandberg RCs.  I bought the  Steve Carlton base card on COMC yesterday, so this set is currently in progress.  Once this is complete, next up is..

1979 Topps

Evidence as to why Mario had trouble hitting over 200.  Donuts on the bat make it tougher to hit the ball

This is where a bit of the fun begins.  I have 24 cards left to go to finish this set.  The Ozzie Smith RC will be the one that costs the most, but there's also Nolan Ryan and a host of other star cards to pick up, so I'll be hunting to try and find them as cheap as possible, like usual.  A bit of a hurdle, so after this is done I'll drop down a bit and make things easier for myself again with...

2012-13 O-Pee-Chee

This set will be one that I'll be glad to have out of the way.   I've stalled on it for way too long, and with only 6 SPs left to go, getting this completed will bring a bit of a sigh of relief.   Brandon Manning and his $5 SP (why???) be damned, I'll finish this one in the first half of 2020 finally.  Then I'll move on to...

1976 Topps

This set completion may not be as daunting as I thought.  20 cards remaining including a George Brett 2nd year card, Ellis Valentine and Ron Guidry RCs along with 4 All Star cards and a few other big names will make it a challenge on the wallet, but it's what I signed up for with this set so I'm looking forward to working on this roughly around the start of baseball season in late March.  After this is done, I'll finally finish...

1973 Topps

Yes, I've been down to 2 cards left to go for about 2 years now.  Mike Schmidt RC and the high number series checklist.  The stalling will end this year.   I promise.  Once this is done, we'll move back to hockey and finish...

2013-14 O-Pee-Chee

27 cards left to finish this up, 2 from the base set (Andrei Sekera and Taylor Hall) and 25 SPs.  This situation actually improved while writing this post, as I had the Vladimir Tarasenko RC on my want list, which I was pretty sure I had.  Checked the box and sure enough, there it is, so that dropped the want list by one.  When this is done, I've got two want lists that are a bit bigger, so we'll start with the more recent...

1978 Topps

Still a bit of work to do on this one, with 79 cards to go.  The Molitor/Trammell RC and the Dale Murphy RC are the two big starters on finishing this one, but there's quite a few commons that should help to knock the list down to a more manageable number quickly.  Once those are in hand, several big names such as Rose and Ryan will cost a few bucks.  I also need 11 team checklist and 2 manager cards, which I thought was interesting (Night Owl, do you have a Tommy Lasorda dupe from this set?).  Once this is done, the 10th and final set from this list is...

1974 Topps

92 cards remaining to finish this set.  Let's start with Dave Parker and Dave Winfield RCs.  4 Hank Aaron Special cards at the beginning of the set.  A Ryan/Seaver combo card.  Ryan, Bench, Stargell and Rose cards.  This will take a bit of time to finish up.  But I believe with the other 9 sets above completed and distractions to a minimum (hopefully), I can knock this out in a reasonable amount of time.  

There you have it.  10 sets that I'm going to finish in 2020.  The only other thing that I can promise is that will not rip any 1/1 cards in half.  

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

In the nineties

This has been one helluva year for me trade wise.   I received a couple of envelopes in the mail this week, bringing my trade count for 2019 to 92. 

I honestly thought that 100 trades would be a fight right to the bitter end of the calendar year for me, but with 8 currently on the go (and 1 on "lost" status), by the first week of October I'll have hit my goal.  

Incredible...

The first envelope was another USPS surprise, making it from Washington State to Florida in 2 days.  Jim (TCDB User ID:  jmkidd) snapped up a few Seattle Seahawks cards from me, and in return I got a bit of set help and a bit of help with 3 of my player collections.

First up, the set help.  Fred Lynn's card from the '81 Topps set was a nice one to grab, along with the Saves leaders card from '78 featuring Rollie Fingers and Bill Campbell.   Would love to see the term firemen come back to the game..

The '69 Topps Darrell Brandon reminds me that the '69 set is becoming similar to my 85-86 OPC hockey build.  1 card comes in at a time, slowly nibbling away at the set.  Only problem is, I still need about 460 cards to finish the set, and that's a lot of trades at 1 card at a time!

A pair of cards each for Olerud and Fitzgerald were nice additions.   I'm actually doing quite well adding Olerud cards featuring him in uniforms of the Mets and Mariners.  T. Y. Hilton's card brings him to a paltry 19 cards, but there's a ton of base cards on my want list on the TCDB site, so I'm sure eventually that number will start climbing.

Next up is a nice lot of cards from Edward (TCDB ID: kaline6), which hit want lists for a couple of sets I expect to finish by the end of the year, along with a few other goodies.

Both the '81 and '82 sets are winding their way to completion, I believe combined they are around 100 cards from being finished.  Still some star cards to pick up here and there, but it shouldn't be a major dent to my wallet to get these done.

Four more cards off of the '79 want list takes that set below 80 cards needed to complete.  Need both the Ozzie Smith RC and the Nolan Ryan cards on that group, so that's a big maybe to see this complete by the end of the year.  And yes, the George Foster card is quite a bit off center,  you're not seeing things.

The lone wolf from the '69 set, Joe Sparma of the Tigers.  Just 10 more cards to reach the 200 mark.   Not a big priority at the moment however.

Four more cards for the Olerud collection.  Every time I write one of these posts, and see all the Blue Jays cards that I've added to the sets and player collections, I often wonder if I should just have poached my Jays collection to reduce these lists.  I'm glad that I didn't...

Thank you to both Jim and Edward for the trades, the cards are really appreciated!!

Thanks for reading!

Robert

A couple of nice card show pickups

Spent almost $50 at the monthly card show yesterday, probably the most I've spent there in several months.  In addition to the star cards that I plucked out of the 3 for a $1 bin for trade bait, I found a few cards to add to my McCutchen and T.Y. Hilton collections.

Hilton is really easy to buy for right now, as I only have about 20-25 cards in that PC.  I hadn't seen the die cut Playmakers insert anywhere before, so that was snapped up really quickly.  The McCutchen PC is a little harder, as that's nearing 200 cards, but I was pretty sure that I didn't have the Legends blue parallel, as well the Fire parallel was something I was OK with buying even though I may have had it.  

My thoughts over the past couple of years have also turned from being a Blue Jays collector (which has gotten way out of hand with all the baseball that is released now a days) to my other hometown team, the Maple Leafs.   There's nowhere near as much hockey product out there, and down here in the south, I can usually find it for cheaper than up north.

When I saw this Morgan Rielly "brick" for $6, I snapped it up...

It's hard to see but the card is #'d 31/49 from the SP Game Used Edition set from 2015-16, so adding that to the pile was also easy. 

But this next card was the biggest addition of the day, and almost half of what I spent.

This Eddie Murray RC was in the display case of the first table I sat down at, and was an easy buy at $22.  Now I just have to find a Molitor/Trammell RC to my liking, and then the other 134 cards needed to finish the '78 Topps set should fall into place.  Probably will not finish this in 2019; 1st half of 2020 is more realistic if I get some of the other sets I'm close to completing done.

Now it's time to get back to trading, and see if I can hit the 100 trade mark for the year by the end of September.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

One zero is all it takes to F--- things up

I didn't scan a lot of cards tonight, only 11 because I thought that the story behind this post was more entertaining (at least to me it is).

I received a nice package from 3 time trade partner Craig (TCDB ID: DukeyDevil) that contained a bunch of '78 Topps.  71 of them.

The cards are really just for show here, although I must say that the George Foster/Jim Rice Home Run Leaders card is really bad ass.

But the fun here, is the trip that my cards took.

Step by step, in bullet point form, just to make it easier to read, is the journey:

• Package leaves MA on the 19th of August
• Arrives in Miami on the 21st.  Not bad.
• Makes it to a Ft. Lauderdale post office on the 21st.  Not the correct post office by the way, but it's in Ft. Lauderdale
• Because the package is missing a 0 on my address, it sits in that post office.  For a week
• On the 28th, the package is sent to the Opa Locka distribution center (N. Miami)
• Opa Locka sends it back to the wrong post office on the 29th. 
• It gets sent back to Opa Locka on the 30th. 
• The package finally makes it to the correct post office on the 30th, and is delivered that day.

9 days to go 9 miles locally.   I work in the package delivery business.   I've had people on the phone scream at me for a lot less than this.

I've had lots of packages make it across the country in no time flat.

Funny how one zero can F--- things up.  Oh well.

Thanks for reading!

Robert

78 Topps is also in my sights

Following up on yesterday's post, Adam also sent a nice lot of '78 Topps cards, another set which until the past 2 weeks I thought I had no shot of finishing this year, but things have changed a bit recently. 

Now there's still 136 cards on the want list, and with the Eddie Murray RC part of that list, this may not happen in 2019, but with the way my luck has been recently with trades and generosity such as Adam's, who knows?

Oakland is heavily represented in the first 3 scans, as 5 of the green and gold warriors found their way here.  Maybe my favorite card of the first 27 is the Roy White card, a nice action shot of Roy just after contact.  Not sure but maybe that's Carlton Fisk behind the plate?

2nd scan.  Dick Pole.  Commence snickering....

Love the Al Oliver card, him sitting in the dugout with his elbow resting on his batting helmet, just waiting for his turn to pick up one of his 2743 hits. 

Had no idea that Donnie Moore was a Cub.  My memories of him were as a closer for the Angels, and the unfortunate circumstances of his death.  Interesting to note that while he spent pretty much his entire career as a reliever, he wasn't a bad hitter.  16 hits in 57 AB's, including 2 doubles and 2 triples!

I remember Len Barker as an Indian, throwing a perfect game against the Jays in '81.  Buck Martinez is still the play by play voice of Blue Jays TV broadcasts, it seems like he's been doing that for an eternity. 

Dwight Evans without a mustache just doesn't look the same to me...

I miss the days of light hitting, great glove middle infielders such as Fred Stanley and Denny Doyle.  Manny Sanguillen's only season away from Pittsburgh was 1977, when he played for the A's.  He actually led the A's in hits in '77.  I had no idea that he was traded to the A's for Chuck Tanner. 

To finish off the envelope, and continue the theme from yesterday, there were a couple of '83 checklists in there that I needed...

Adam, thank you very much for the cards, they are greatly appreciated!!   A link to his want lists for all just in case you may have something he needs...

Thanks for reading!

Robert