Completed set & “master set” – one last look at 1982 Topps

The 1982 Topps and Traded set is my 12th set completed in the project – and it completes the 80′s decade for regular cards for me!  I’ve also completed my “personal master set” for this year as well – which I’m defining as the base set, the traded set, and any regular inserts.  Here’s the “look back” I do for each completed set.

Also, because it completes the decade, look for a bunch of completed decade posts to be forthcoming this month.

Info about my set:

How I put the set together:

408 cards from the wax box

208 cards from a vending box

158 cards from trades

17 cards purchased from Sportlots

1 card purchased on eBay

Card that completed my set: #21 – Cal Ripken RC (and Bob Bonner too! – I didn’t get this in either my wax or vending box, so I finally bucked up and bought a nice copy on eBay for 18 bucks in November)

Set composition: 792 cards (658 individual player cards, 26 Future Stars tri-player, 26 Team Leaders, 22 All-Stars, 40 In Action, 6 Checklists, 6 Season Highlights, 8 League Leaders)

Representation of ’81 MLB season: There are 736 different players represented in the set – 658 individual player cards, and 78 players from the Future stars subset.  Of those 736 players, all but 4 of them played in the majors in 1981.

• JR Richard was attempting a comeback from the stroke he’d suffered in 1980, but would ultimately be unsuccessful and never reach the majors again
• David Palmer of the Expos was hurt and only pitched a handful of minor league rehab stints in 1981
• Pat Underwood of the Tigers went to the minors to switch from a reliever to a starter, and would come back to the majors in 1982
• Brian Milner was on the Future Stars card for the Blue Jays, but was in the minors.  The only cup of coffee he’d get was in 1978.

The 732 players represent 80.7% out of the ~907 players who played in MLB in 1981.

Last active player from this set: #610 – Rickey Henderson

Rickey played his last major league game on 9/19/03 for the LA Dodgers.  He came in as a pinch hitter against the Giants in the 7th inning, was hit by a pitch, and came around to score the 2,295th run of his career (still the MLB standard) on a single by Shawn Green.  Henderson kept trying to catch on – he played 2 more seasons of professional baseball in the minors with the Newark Bears in 2004 and with the Independent San Diego Surf Dawgs in 2005.

Player with the most cards in the set: Mike Schmidt, Pete Rose and Tom Seaver – 5 cards

These 3 guys all have 5 cards, though they get there in different ways.  They each have a base card, a card in the In Action subset, and an All-Star card.  Schmidt has two League Leader cards (for leading the league in Homers and RBI), Rose has a card in the Highlight subset (for breaking Stan Musial’s NL hit record) and in the Team Leaders subset (for leading the Phillies in Average), while Seaver is on a League Leader card (NL, wins), and the Reds Team Leader card (leading the Reds in ERA).

Seaver – #30, #31 (IA), #165 (LL), #346 (AS), #756 (TL)

Schmidt – #100, #101 (IA), #162-163 (LL) #339 (AS)

Rose – #4 (HL), #337 (AS), #636 (TL) #780, #781 (IA)

First Card and the Hundreds: #1 – Steve Carlton HL, #100 – Mike Schmidt, #200 – George Brett, #300 – Reggie Jackson, #400 – Johnny Bench, #500 – Rod Carew, #600 – Dave Winfield, #700 – George Foster

Highest book value: #21 – Ripken RC (see above)

Most notable card: #21 – Ripken RC (see above)

Not really much of a question on this.  Ripken’s first card is easily the most notable card in that set.

Best card (my opinion): #610 – Rickey Henderson (see above)

The all-time stolen base king ready to practice his craft.  This is probably my favorite Rickey Henderson card picture.

Second best card (also my opinion): #90 – Nolan Ryan

There are a lot of things going on with the 1982 Topps set design.  And this card uses all of them in a way that works.  The hockey stick design works with this photo of Ryan.  It’s showing him in that crazy tie-die Astros uniform from the 80′s.  Nolan has one of the sharpest and most recognizable autographs of any athlete, and the placement here is great.

Best subset card: #111 – Cartlon Fisk IA

Favorite action photo: #111 – Carlton Fisk IA

I kind of hate picking the same card for two categories, but I don’t think there’s much choice here.  This could be argued is the best card in the whole set.  It’s definitely the best action shot if you just go by the picture itself.

Favorite non-action photo: #239 – Jon Matlack

We have found the true originator of the “Discount Double Check” move!

My Favorite Reds card: #400 – Johnny Bench

Another card that works with the design.  Bench has a pretty cool signature himself.  There aren’t a ton of great Reds photos here, so I’ll go with the best catcher of all-time.

Topps Reprints:

• 1999 Ryan reprints – Nolan Ryan
• 2001 Through the Years – Ripken (cropped)
• 2001 Archives – Lee Smith, Al Hrabosky, Willie Stargell
• 2001 Archives Future Rookie Reprints – Ripken (cropped)
• 2001 Topps Traded – Reggie Jackson (’82T), Cal Ripken (’82T), Ozzie Smith (’82T)
• 2002 Archives – Claudell Washington, Robin Yount, Al Oliver
• 2005 Rookie Cup Reprints – Fernando Valenzuela, Mookie Wilson, Tim Wallach, Tim Raines
• 2010 CYMTO - Robin Yount, Steve Carlton, Rickey Henderson
• 2011 60YoT – Jim Palmer, Steve Garvey IA
• 2012 Archives Reprints – Jim Palmer IA

Yount is really the only duplicate, though they’ve cropped the Ripken RC twice.

Other Notable Cards:

There really aren’t any other notable cards, but I included cards that I like from the set – cards I considered for best action shot or best pose. I really like the Mookie Wilson; I think it’s the best action shot from a regular card (non-subset) in the set.  The Wallach was in the running for best pose.

My “Master” Set Info:

924 cards – 792 “base”, 132 “update”

• Update set: Traded

How I put the other sets together: I purchased the Traded set on eBay in 2010.  This was an interesting purchase – because I wanted to see the Ripken, which is the most expensive Topps card from the 80′s.  There were stickers inserted into packs, but they are identical to the Sticker product Topps released that year, so they aren’t included for me to collect.

Update set composition: 132 cards (131 players, 1 checklist)

In the update set not in the base set: 8 players

Total in base and update sets: 740 players

Highest book value in the update set: #98T – Cal Ripken

Most notable card from the Update set: #98T – Cal Ripken

Pretty easy.  Though it’s not his rookie card, this card is his first Topps card by himself, and is the most expensive base Topps card to pick up from the 1980′s (ahead of the 80 Rickey RC by a decent amount).

Topps Archives #3 – comparing the retail only inserts

Both of the retail only inserts are throwbacks to subsets from earlier Topps base sets.

Archives 1958 Classic Combinations – 10 cards (1:32, retail only)

The 1958 Topps set brought a number of firsts to modern card collecting.  The first Stan Musial Topps card.  The first cards featuring players west of the Central Time Zone (LA Dodgers and SF Giants).  And the first subsets were included – one of which was the Sport Magazine All-Stars, which came in the last series as the final 20 cards of the set.  But the first real subset in baseball card history was started in the 4th series – card #300 to be exact.  That card was titled “League Presidents” and featured Warren Giles of the NL and William Harridge of the AL.  This was the first of 6 cards in that series and 3 more in the 5th series for a 9-card subset.  All the rest were player cards; I guess Topps is now referring to these as classic combinations.  The first player card was #304, “Tigers Big Bats”, featuring Detroit sluggers Harvey Kuenn and Al Kaline.  The full subset consisted of the following:

• 300 – League Presidents (William Harridge / Warren Giles)
• 304 – Tigers Big Bats (Harvey Kuenn / Al Kaline)*
• 314 – Dodgers’ Boss & Power (Duke Snider / Walter Alston)
• 321 – Sluggers Supreme (Ted Kluszewski / Ted Williams)
• 334 – Mound Aces (Bob Friend / Billy Pierce)
• 351 – Braves Fence Busters (Del Crandall / Ed Mathews / Hank Aaron / Joe Adcock)*
• 386 – Birdie’s Young Sluggers (Ed Bailey / Birdie Tebbets / Frank Robinson)*
• 418 – World Series Batting Foes (Mickey Mantle / Aaron)
• 436 – Rival Fence Busters (Snider / Willie Mays)

As you can see, about 1/3 were from the same team.  The Mays and Aaron card is the one most recognizable to me, though the Snider / Mays card – featuring them in their “Cali” uniforms – is a pretty cool combination as well.  In the 2012 Archives product, Topps put a spin on these cards – they put a former player and placed him with a current player from the same team.  There are two players who are featured in both sets, so I’ll show those here.  The first is the aforementioned Willie Mays.  He’s on a card “Say Hey Meets Cy Young”.  By Cy Young, they actually don’t mean Cy Young.  They mean … Tim Lincecum.  OK, so he did win 2 Cy Young awards, but if you ask me (and if you’re reading this, I’m assuming you did), it would be better if they had called it “Say Hey to the Freak”.

The second guy featured in both sets is Mr. Kaline, who is appropriately put next to Miguel Cabrera.  I know they aren’t the same position, but Kaline was a 400-homer (OK, 399) and a 3,000 hit guy, while Cabrera is one of 3 or 4 guys who are legitimate triple crown threats.  Instead of “Touch ‘Em All Tigers”, I wish they had gone with the same “Tigers Big Bats”.  That would have made this post that much cooler.

There were a couple of other guys from Archives who were playing in 1958, but just didn’t have 1958 combo cards were Koufax (with Kershaw), Whitey Ford (with Sabathia).  Jackie Robinson (with Kemp) and Car Yastrzemski (with Ellsbury), just missed by a couple of years, but on opposite sides of the 1958 set.

Archives 1982 In Action – 10 cards (1:32, retail only)

I hear the 1982 Topps set most often referred to as the “Hockey Stick set”, since two lines run parallel down the left-hand side and around the bottom of the card front.  In years ending in “2″ from the 1960′s, 1970′s and 1980′s, Topps did a subset called “In-Action”.  In 1962, this was done as a 3-frame shot, in 1972 it was just an action shot with a slightly different frame, and in 1982, Topps modified the “Hockey Stick” design to put the player name vertically in the top left border and the words in action in the bottom right hand part of the border.  Naturally, the photos in place are action shots.  The 40 cards from 1982 are dispersed throughout the set – the In-Action card always follows right after the player’s base card in the checklist.

The players who got the In Action treatment in 1982 were established stars or veterans.  Unfortunately for the purposes of my comparison post, Topps didn’t have any overlap between the players selected for the 10-card Archives set and 1982 players.

There are 5 current players and 5 retired players.  Ripken is the only player with a card from then – his 1982 3-player rookie card. Tony Gwynn was a year away, Ken Griffey Jr. and John Kruk were a few years from the big leagues, and Roberto Clemente had passed away a decade earlier.  I’ll start with a Clemente comparison – since he actually had a ’72 In Action card, I can cheat and compare that one!  Gotta say, neither of these are the greatest “action” shots – putting down his bat after a hit and rolling his head after what looks like a strike out?  Not really action – but between the two, the 1972 card is certainly the more interesting picture!

From there, I can get some more symmetry from my favorite player.  Ken Griffey Junior may not have a 1982 Topps In Action card … but his father most certainly does have one!

Junior is shown getting a jump on a fly ball from a photo that I believe is late 90′s. I wish they’d have done the Reds uniform for this one!  Or any 2012 Topps cards for that matter!  Senior is shown in that lovable Reds uni, following through on what I’d imagine is a double laced down the line.  If I was scoring at home, I’d be giving the point to Senior from my perspective as a Reds fan!!!

Next, I’ve got to get a comparison in here of a current player.  Troy Tulowitzki seems to fit the bill. He hasn’t won an MVP yet, but Tulo seems like he’s always up there.  I looked it up – he’s been 5th, 5th and 8th the past 3 years in MVP voting.  I’d have thought he’d actually have a higher finish than that, but still impressive.  He’s also finished as the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger award winner at short in each of the last 2 years.  There weren’t any shortstops in the 1982 In Action subset, though I’m surprised there was no Robin Yount.  So I’ll go to the closest position to shortstop, and the guy who was coming off 2 straight seasons as the NL MVP, along with the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger.  That would be Mike Schmidt, the best player from the 80′s.

Of course, he got the In-Action treatment in 1982!  I like the different approach – putting him on there as a base runner.  Though Tulo’s is still the better shot here.  Maybe that’s where Kemp first hurt that hammy (which is killing my fantasy team now!!!!)!

Lastly, I’ll take what I think are the best two In-Action cards from each set.  The Carlton Fisk from 1982 is possibly the best card in the whole Topps set itself, and you can’t go wrong with the backstop Topps put into Archives – Mike Napoli with a play at the plate.  Grant it – he’s the runner here, but it’s still a cool card.

1981 & 1982 Topps odd-ball sets

Continuing with what I went over yesterday – here’s some of the odd-ball sets Topps issued from 1981 and 1982 that I hadn’t covered before.  I only have one to add from each of these year.

Other releases associated with the Topps flagship – 1981

#1 – Topps issued a 11 team sets in 1981 as a promotion with Coca-Cola.  Each of the 12-card sets features 11 players from the team and an advertising card.  The sets have the exact same design and photo as the base Topps cards, except there is a Coca-Cola logo in the upper right-hand corner.  The teams featured are the Reds, Tigers, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Astros, Mets, Royals, Phillies, Pirates and Cardinals.

I remember having the Reds set of these cards, and particularly remember the Johnny Bench.

Other releases associated with the Topps flagship – 1982

#1 – Topps again issued a couple of team sets as a promotion with Coca-Cola, though it was only 2 teams this year – the Reds and Red Sox.  The cards carry an extra Coca-Cola logo on them, but are otherwise the same as the base set.  The Red Sox set was issued in Brigham’s ice cream stores and also carry their logo.  Each set contains 22 players and 1 header.  Cards of the Yankees were going to be issued – there are a few known in existence according to the SCD Standard Catalog (Gossage, Reggie, Cerone).

’90 Reds Catchup Post – 1982 Topps

Piniella and Oester are back from 1981, and Rick Mahler, who was a reliever for the ’90 Reds, has his RC in the set and a subset card as the Braves’ team leader in ERA.

1982 – Lou Piniella, Ron Oester, Rick Mahler RC, Rick Mahler (TL)

1982 Topps Traded

82 Traded Box

In 1982, Topps again issued its 132-card factory “Traded” set. The set was no longer numbered as an extension of the set, but carried its own designation as #1-132. It still has the same design as the base set. Similar to the sets from the 70′s, these cards now carry a “T” suffix on the card number. They are again organized in alphabetical order and again include players who switched teams, with some first-year players sprinkled in.

 

Two Big Red Machiners were traded to the Big Apple. Griffey Sr. was traded to the Yankees for 2 guys who would go on to play a total of 3 games for the Reds. George Foster, was traded to the Mets in a deal that was a little more successful.

Eric Shaw has an XRC in the set, but other than that there aren’t really many rookie cards. Most of the cards in this set are similar to Cal Ripken’s. Ripken has his first single-player card (as opposed to the “future stars” multi-card in the base set). There are 5 Hall of Famers in this set.

• Reggie Jackson has a card reflecting his move back to California to play for the Angels
• Fergie Jenkins is shown with his old team, the Chicago Cubs, whom he returned to via Free Agency
• Gaylord Perry made the “Traded” set for the 2nd year in a row, signing with the Mariners, his 7th team and 8th stop
• Ripken, as mentioned
• Probably the 2nd best card in the set – Ozzie Smith is shown in his first card with the Cardinals

 

Jenkins, Ripken and Smith are featured with the teams on their Hall of Fame plaque. Winfield’s decision to wear a Padres cap, as opposed to a Yankees cap, was a bit controversial, though he spent over 1/3 of his career with both teams. No other player in the set will likely make the Hall in the future, or even should be considered.

I picked up the set on eBay; it was key to be sure the Ripken was in good shape, particularly after not even getting his base card in the regular set!

1982 Topps Scans

Here are some of the more “historic” cards.  I’ve included the 2nd-tier (i.e., not Ripken) Rookies Cards. Out of these rookie cards, there is a future MVP in Bell, a future all-time saves leader (Smith), and a future World Series /ALCS (2x) MVP, and one of the more intimidating pitchers of my generation (Stewart). I liked the Braves card because Butler and Bedrosian, while not truly great players, had very good careers, and that isn’t common on these future stars cards (see my Ripken rant).  Also, 2 good 2nd year guys with some good shots (love the Mookie card), and the 2 more prominent individual stories in 1981.

7 future HOF-ers, all with some good-looking photos. So far, Dawson is 3 for 3 in having awesome looking pictures in the sets I’ve collected. Finally, a good pic of Lee May in the twilight of his career. Lee was a true slugger, holding an interesting distinction as the best player (by far) traded to set up the big red machine.

Finally, here’s some more cards I liked. Look closely at the two “leaders” cards featuring Henderson. Topps made sure to keep the costs low, ensuring they didn’t have to pay some freelance photographer twice to get Rickey’s grill on 2 separate subset cards! The next two cards are of players who had some interesting “moments” in 80′s baseball history. First is Brett. The “pine-tar incident” is a well-known story in baseball, though I didn’t realize that the Brett homer actually counted. After the Royals protested the game, the AL president actually upheld their appeal (that has to be rare). They replayed the game from the time the game ended – with Brett ejected for arguing and Gaylord Perry ejected for hiding the bat (Perry knew a thing or two about concealing foreign substances). Though the picture for this card is taken before the incident, which occurred in 1983, I think any 80′s Topps card of George doctoring up his bat is hilarious.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Rick’s “Blue Monday” home run was most likely the biggest in Dodgers history at that point. Though it was certainly surpassed by Gibson’s shot 7 years later – I’ll cover that in a future blog – it won a postseason series for the team in a year they won the World Series. That’s a good idea for a future post – the biggest home run(s) in each team’s history, and any cards that commemorate them. Monday is also famous for stopping a flag-burning incident in 1976 as a visiting member of the Cubs at Dodger Stadium.

The Dent and Fisk cards are two great examples of the in-action cards actually being great shots (sometimes they aren’t – the Mike Schmidt one is a pic of him standing up at 3rd base). I have no idea who Bobby Castillo is, but there’s no way in God’s green earth that is a legal pitching glove, or even a legal beer-league softball glove.

Finally, I’d like to point out that, in order to lead the league in saves in the late 70′s and early 80′s, it must have been required to have some crazy facial hair. Sutter and Fingers are two of the best examples, but I’d also submit Goose Gossage, Dan Quisenberry, Jeff Reardon, and Sparky Lyle.

1982 Topps Big Red Machine

Big Red Machine card scans. I didn’t get Morgan or Geronimo, so those are swiped from the world wide web. Concepcion also has a sticker card insert.

Down to 4 players left who are still on the Reds; except for Bench, though, the ones that are still playing in Cincy still have quite a few years left. Not true for Morgan, Geronimo, and Perez. No card for Sparky this year since Topps temporarily abandoned the manager cards.

Here’s the subset cards – 7 in-action (everyone but Geronimo), 3 All-Stars, 2 Team Leaders and a Highlights:

Bob Bonner RC & 1982 vending box break

Crap.

That’s the best way to describe it. I think this is karma for putting the main card of the ’82 set on the top of my blog. I just opened my 1982 vending box. As mentioned in an earlier post, I bought this on ebay along with an ’81 vending box. Well, both the wax box and the vending box were missing the significant card in this set – #21, the Rookie Card for the up and coming Shortstop for the Orioles. Yes the Bob Bonner RC! This card also contained the RC for pitching prospect Jeff Schneider. Bonner went on to amass a total of 21 hits in the big leagues, while Schneider registered his lone save on August 25th, 1981 in Seattle. Interesting that, in 1982, Schneider was a 29 year-old “prospect”.

I didn’t pull the RC of these guys, whom I assume are wonderful human beings, but weren’t exactly the greatest ballplayers in the ’82 set. No, the reason it’s irking me that I didn’t get at least 1 copy of this card is the third-sacker sitting in between these career minor-leaguers. Somewhere along the line, said third baseman jumped Bonner on the totem pole and became the Orioles starting Shortstop. He would go on to win the Rookie of the Year award that year, the MVP the next year, and redefine offensive expectations for the position. Oh, yeah, and he played in 2,632 consecutive games, including a stretch where he played every inning for around 6 years. No wonder Bonner never got much of an opportunity! Unfortunately, Cal Ripken’s prowess makes it bad luck that I didn’t get this card. I’ve got a set of rack packs including a 1982 pack, maybe I’ll get really lucky there. Doubtful, so this may need be an ebay purchase.

The “500 card box” had 516 cards. As before, numbers below don’t include the wax box – overall, the vending box definitely gives me a better chance to complete the set than the wax box:

53 doubles, 1 triple

462 of the 792 card set. (58.3% set completion)

Again, pretty good collation for a vending box. Though I’ve now not gotten the Raines RC in ’81 and the Ripken RC in ’82 between both the wax and vending boxes.

Also, though, the crossover between the wax and vending boxes wasn’t bad, in fact it was terrible this time. I’m 176 cards short out of the 792 after opening both boxes. I guess with that many, there’s a good risk of not having the Ripken.

I’ll post some pictures from the box breaks later this week. Sans the Bob Bonner rookie, obviously.

1982 Topps Wax Box Break

I just finished my 1982 wax box break. I also bought this box from BBXC, only this time I bought it from them at the National. I did not pull the Ripken RC, which is far and away the best card in the set. In fact, I didn’t get the Dave Stewart or the Lee Smith Rookie Cards. Kind of depressing, actually. The collation is getting worse as we go newer in the years. This box had the same number of cards, and the set actually had 66 more cards. So it should be harder to get doubles. Unfortunately, I got 30 more doubles than the 1981 box, and 80 more doubles than the 1980 box! I did get the Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan cards, and Mike Schmidt as well. I guess that’s something? The gum stains (on the rear card) are still not fixable, but most of the wax stains (on the first card) were. “Statistics” listed below:

36 packs per box * 15 cards per pack = 540 cards

113 doubles, 6 triples

421 of the 792 card set. (53.2% set completion)

24 stickers (and 12 doubles)

13 singles were ruined (so many were doubles), so I really only completed ~51% of the set from this box. Down 5% from the ’81 box. Part of that is the increase in set size, but it’s a bit frustrating to not get the Ripken! Hopefully it’s in the vending box I bought, which I’ll open later.

Pack Promotions

I haven’t really mentioned much in previous posts about what pack promotions Topps had in previous years. I’m updating those previous posts with that info, but here’s a quick summary:

1980 Topps

• You could send in for information on personalized trading cards, “just like cards in this pack”, except supposedly “with your personal data on the back”
• For 1 Topps baseball wrapper and 50 ¢, you could send in for an uncut sheet of all the Team Checklist cards.
• Topps also issued some “test” wrappers with the “Hit to Win” promotion that was available in every wax pack in 1981 - I would presume this was issued later in the release run
• You could send in 1 Topps wrapper (any sport), plus $5.25 plus 75 ¢ S&H to receive a Topps Sports Card Locker that held 1300+ cards

1981 Topps

• Every pack contained a scratch off game called Topps “Hit to Win”, where various hits would win you prizes ranging from a Wilson Jim Rice model glove to various supersize glossy photos of “top players”
• You could again, (though for 75 ¢ now) Send in 1 Topps baseball wrapper for an uncut sheet of all the Team Checklist cards
• For $1 and a baseball wrapper, you could receive a collecting box with 5 “easy-to carry files”
• For $8 bucks and a wrapper, you could get a “classic stripes cap” of an MLB team of your choice

1982 Topps

• The back of packs advertised buying an album for the insert stickers where Topps cards were sold.
• For $2 + 60¢ S&H, you could send in for 10 “Official Topps Sports Card Collectors Sheets”; these are 9-card sheets to store your cards, similar to what Ultra-Pro has today
• Again, for $5.75 plus 75¢ S&H and 1 Topps (any sport) wrapper, you could send for the 1982 version of the Sports Card Locker
• You could send in for the collecting box for the same cost as the year before