Yeah, I know it's Sunday. I'm lazy on the weekend so sometimes these things get a little delayed. Sticky Saturday is catchy and alliterative, Sticky Weekend just sounds disgusting. Here's yer weekend sticker courtesy of FleerFan.
Wooooo! Dale Murphy album sticker! Whammo! He's whackin' the ball!
This was supposed to be a big fat hairy post about how Upper Deck can fill a niche in the market in 2010 that is currently being neglected by bringing back the album sticker set since they own the Fleer brand and they did a basketball sticker set in the '90s, but screw 'em. Let' Upper Deck sink or swim on their own. I ain't getting a consulting fee.
Now if you'll excuse me I have tickets to the Braves vs. Marlins game and it's time to get on the road. Wooooooo Braves! Lets eat some fishies!
Ok, I finally got my '84 Fleer wantlist straightened out. It's linked on the set building page now. I'm doing pretty well so far, I'm 2 cards away in '83 Topps and only 1 away in '91 Topps (and I'm almost sure I have it buried somewhere). To commemorate the momentous occasion of finally getting my wantlists together I'm celebrating by ripping a pack:
Last year I bought two packs each of '83 and '84 Fleer from a seller on eBay. He screwed up and sent me one '83 pack and three '84s. Oops. I already have the '83 Fleer set built so it was no big deal. I ripped two of the '84s and saved the other one. Time to open it so see if any cards I need are hiding in there.
Astros cap sticker
389 Luis Aponte - Don't need it. 575 Frank Viola - Don't need it. 551 Rick Sutcliffe - Don't need it. 276 Bill Gullickson - Don't need it. 236 Luis Pujols - Don't need it.
A third of the way through the pack and it's a total dud so far. Frank Viola with Cheech Marin skulking in the background is the only card even slightly interesting. I'm crossing my fingers for the next five...
448 - Don Hill - Don't need it. 219 Robin Yount - Nice, but I don't need it. 167 Dave Stieb - Don't need it. 109 Alejandro Pena - Don't need it. 519 Andy Hassler - Don't need it.
At least this group didn't suck. Yount is one of the few Hall of Famers I already have for this set. Stieb and Pena are pretty good too. Ok, last chance here, I gotta get something, right? Right?
654 Braves Checklist/ Joe Torre - Don't need it. 596 Doug Sisk - Don't need it. 303 Ruppert Jones - Don't need it. 127 Ron Guidry - Don't need it. 206 Bob McClure - Don't need it.
Like Andruw Jones flailing at a breaking ball, that is a STEEERIKEOUT! It certainly wasn't a bad pack at all though. Yount and Torre are Hall of Famers (eventually in Joe's case). Guidry was awesome. Viola and Stieb were damn good. I just have them all already.
Here's what I'm a gonna do for you. First person to e-mail me that has just one stinkin card off my want list and offer me that card gets this whole pack. Sticker, wrapper, price tag and all. It can be anyone on that list, I don't care if it's Ripken or Mickey Hatcher. I'll even throw in a second unopened pack of something and a few extra '84 Fleers. Any takers?
grcl gets the pack, but I'll still happilly trade you something for sone '84s...
Ok, new year means resolutions. Even Spike Jones thinks so.
You guys don't want to hear about the 'start exercising' 'call my dad more' 'quit eating deep dish pizza and cheesecake for breakfast' kind of resolutions but I will share my card collecting goals for '09. I'm not even going to look at the ones I did last year, 'cause I know I didn't do very well. I'm going to keep it simple this year. First thing I want to do is get some focus.
I like building sets. That has been established. Thing is, I want to collect EVERY set. I've got 50 years worth of sets all over the place and there's at least two dozen more coming out this year that I'll be distracted by. If there's one thing for certain, it's that it's impossible to collect everything. So, I've decided to concentrate on a few sets and once I knock them out I can go on to the next. I've chosen one set for each decade except for the '80s where I'm going to work on three at a time. The goal is to knock 'em out and then move onto the next set instead of trying to complete every set all at the same time.
So here's the sets. First off is three from the '80s because really, there is no excuse for me not having every set from the 80's completed already. I could buy outright half of the sets from that decade with the money I spent on my box of 2008 Allen & Ginter. Like I said, I would get really close to one set, then the calendar flips and I get distracted by a bunch of shiny new stuff. So here's the three to focus on, one from each of the Big Three.
1983 Topps
This is the set that really started off my addiction. It's still one of my favorites of all time. It looks great, has an awesome rookie class and includes the 1982 division winning Braves. I actually completed this set in 1983, but some of it went by the wayside since then. Once this set is complete, I'm taking out '86 Topps.
1987 Donruss
This is my favorite design from Donruss, I always liked those little gray baseballs on the sides that showed you exactly how off center your card was. Like '83 Topps, it also has a pretty hefty rookie class. This was also the first full box I ever bought from a hobby shop. I always assumed I had the full set, but I'm missing a few here and there. 1983 Donruss will be next on my list when this is complete.
1984 Fleer
It's odd, but I never got into this set when I was a kid even though I loved '83 Fleer. I wasn't collecting as much in '84 though and packs became much harder to find around then too. It's a really solid set though even though the huge rookies were saved for the update set. Gotta love the crazy photos they used though. I bought the contents of most of a box of this stuff from a friend in the late '80s after he gave up collecting so I'm not that far from a set even though I never bought a single pack myself in '84. After this is done, I'm going to complete '87 Fleer.
I'm not going to specifically focus on any sets from the '50s or '60 because this project is about completing the sets and one of those sets will take years unless I just focus on it exclusively. I'm pretty sure you readers out there don't want this blog to become "The 1956 Topps Blog" so while I will always be on the lookout for Vintage stuff, I'm not putting it in my main focus for this year. The '70s is completely different. Once the difficult high series cards were done away with in 1974, Topps sets became entirely completable. The only difficulty is with the rookies and between prices falling and the fact that I love Tiptons, I'm counting any Topps set after 1974 as one I can complete if I just get my butt in gear. the one I chose to start with is....
1979 Topps
Why 1979 Topps? I'll be honest, I was not a big fan of this set when I was a kid. 1980 Topps I liked. 1978 Topps I liked. 1979 didn't do much for me for some reason even though I got lucky and found a brick of cards that was stuffed with stars one time. I've grown to appreciate the elegant design now, and the fact that I am much closer to completing this set than any other one from the '70s makes this a no brainer. Really, the only challenge I'll have is the Ozzie and I'll be able to find that easy. Once this is done I'm going to get ambitious and tackle 1974 Topps.
I'm a little less enthusiastic about working on my '90's sets, but I'm going to at least plan for it now that I'm in a set building frenzy. The '90s is when cards really first started to no longer be about the sets anymore but there's still a bunch of great sets to put together from that decade.
1991 Topps
The last real Topps set, as far as I'm concerned. Chipper's rookie is in there for Pete's sake! 792 cards, real cardboard stock, a solid Toppsy design and a boxed Traded set tacked on afterwards. I just picked up the Traded set from D&A so now I just need to pick up the few stragglers from my set. I haven't actually figured out which ones I need yet, or if I need any at all. It's entirely possible I've completed this set and forgotten about it. If so, they next set in my sights will be the utterly fantastic 1993 Upper Deck set.
There are a lot of sets from the new millennium I'm chasing. Heritage and all of the retro sets immediately come to mind. I'm going to be laser focused on two in particular though... One base set and one parallel set.
2006 Allen & Ginter
I've got the '07 and '08 sets, now I need to finish '06. This set drove me crazy. When it first came out I absolutely loved it, but hobby box prices almost immediately zoomed way out of my price range. It didn't help that I was going through financial difficulties in the fall of '06 either. I was able to pick up some loose packs and a few blasters from Target, but once the eBay sellers realized they could make a neat profit on blasters, they evaporated rapidly. Still, I got a decent amount of the set and I should be able to complete it if I buckle down. I'll definitely be chasing the '09 set so it would be cool to have all four completed by the end of the year. After I complete this one, I think I'm going to attack the 2007 Goudey short prints.
2003 Topps205 mini set
If you think I'm nuts over Allen & Ginter, you should have seen how loopy I got over Topps205. T205 is my favorite tobacco card design and I loooooooved the minis from this set. I bought multiple boxes of Topps205 and pestered the local hobby shop owner for every boxtopper bonus of 20 cards in a little box. I am really close to completing this thing but I haven't paid attention to the set for a few years once singles started drying up at shops and on eBay. Time to finish the sucka.
I'm working on the want lists for each of these sets and I'll let you know when I've posted them to the sidebar. I'm still busy with giveaway packages and a a couple of other trades so I'll do a seperate post once I'm ready to start trading. That's enough to think about today, I'll continue on with my 2009 plans tomorrow.
16 Jim Palmer 17 Cal Ripken Jr. 23 Tim Stoddard 24 Marty Bystrom 25 Steve Carlton 37 Joe Lefebvre 46 Pete Rose 48 Mike Schmidt 49 Ozzie Virgil 52 Floyd Bannister 58 Carlton Fisk 68 Vance Law 71 Mike Squires 73 Greg Walker 74 Gary Allenson 85 Chet Lemon 88 Lance Parrish 90 Dave Rozema 102 Burt Hooton 106 Rick Monday 114 Derrell Thomas 130 Matt Keough 141 Bob Shirley 142 Roy Smalley 144 Butch Wynegar 146 Doyle Alexander 156 Alfredo Griffin 157 Garth Iorg 168 Willie Upshaw 171 Steve Bedrosian 186 Dale Murphy 187 Phil Niekro 190 Rafael Ramirez 196 Mike Caldwell 201 Bob Gibson 210 Ben Oglivie 229 Ray Knight 232 Mike Madden 235 Terry Puhl 247 John Candelaria 255 Lee Mazzilli 256 Larry McWilliams 257 Jim Morrison 258 Dave Parker 262 Don Robinson 263 Manny Samiento 283 Jeff Reardon 286 Dan Schatzeder 291 Tim Wallach 295 Juan Bonilla 296 Bobby Brown 301 Tony Gwynn 311 Luis Salazar 312 Eric Show 330 Ken Oberkfell 339 Andy Van Slyke 352 Gaylord Perry 356 Leon Roberts 357 Pat Sheridan 358 Joe Simpson 378 Johnnie Lemaster 384 Tom O'Malley 399 Glenn Hoffman 403 Rick Miller 408 Jim Rice 411 John Tudor 415 John Butcher 416 Danny Darwin 417 Bucky Dent 451 Rick Langford 452 Carney Lansford 457 Mike Norris 505 Lee Smith 516 Tim Foli 527 Luis Sanchez 541 Mike Fischlin 546 Neal Heaton 552 Pat Tabler 566 Mickey Hatcher 576 Gary Ward 586 Danny Heep 588 Ron Hodges 593 Jesse Orosco 595 Tom Seaver 599 Darryl Strawberry 601 Walt Terrell 621 Rick Sweet 628 Steve Garvey 638 Brett/Perry Superstar 639 1983 No Hitters
Have: 656/660 99.3%
Thanks to: Todd Querry, grcl, Duane, Night Owl, Mr. Haverkamp, Jacobmrly
Wooooo! Dale Murphy album sticker! Whammo! He's whackin' the ball!
