Virtual 1982 Topps Sticker Album - Front cover and page 1

I've been trying to figure out how to do this for months. I thought about taking pictures of the album and doing videos and posting individual stickers and vast grandiose dreams of sending the album to other bloggers and having them take a picture of themselves sticking a sticker in the album until it's complete, but after all that, I'm just going to take the easy way out. Post the page with before sticky and after stucky scans. It's a good way to kill a month of posts at least.

Thanks to Todd Querry who sent the album and to Ben Henry who provided the bulk of the stickers and thanks to anyone else who sent a sticker or two my way. My memory sucks and my organization is worse. Remind me in the comments and I'll give ya a shout out.

Ok, let's begin at the beginning.

Front Cover:

I'm guessing that's Gary Carter, but it could just as easily be some guy on a semi-pro team Topps hired to take the picture and subsequently airbrushed to death. I wouldn't have thought such chicanery may have occurred  until I noticed the four stickers at the bottom right corners that scream "FAKE". Is that a green A's jersey inside that blue National League border?

Front Inside Cover:

Gotta put something inside the front cover and the MVP and Cy Young winners of the past decade is a decent choice. I'm not entirely sure why Topps didn't bother to add the 1980 and 1981 winners on there too... there's plenty of room. The backgrounds of just about every page has ghostly images of various players. Here he have a lefty pitcher for the Cincinnatuh Redlegs, a leaping infielder for the Brewers, and God only knows who is batting in the top left. I can't even figure out the team. Twins? BlueJays? Orioles? Mariners? It's an American League team at least. The uniform is not stripey enough for the Expos or ugly enough for the Padres.

Ok, finally, an actual page with stickers. YOU HAD TO WAIT ALL THE WAY TO PAGE 1. We start off with the NL and AL batting leaders. Here's the Before...

And the After...

I'll bet my boots that is Rod Carew there in the background. Mike Schmidt and Eddie Murray were bad, bad men. Mike beats Eddie for most stickers on the page 2 to 1.25. Betcha didn't know Tim Raines had more steals than Rickey in 1981, didja? Put Rock in the Hall, dammit! That's an interesting group of AL home run hitters there for sure. Yes, Bobby Grich won a home run title. Or a piece of one, anyway. The real question is... who wins the mustache title on that sticker??