Page 5 brings us in to 1983. The Braves won the division for the first time I could remember and Dale Murphy would go on to win his second MVP award. The city was having a ball.
I was at the peak of my teen aged collecting, taking any money I got and going to 7-11 to buy some packs of cards and a Slurpee (with a baseball coin in the bottom.)
George's batting average stayed above .300 and he was still the perennial American League All-Star Third baseman.
Here are the cards for page 5:
1983 Donruss 338
This is an almost identical Donruss design from 1982 except there is a glove instead of a ball and the bat points in the opposite direction. Not a lot of imagination here.
1983 Fleer 649
Yes, it's a checklist but it has George's name on it. I will replace it with a regular Brett Fleer card some day and put it in my Braves collection since their checklist is on the back.
1983 Kellogg's 4
We say goodbye to Kellogg's after this set. It's a little on the small side compared to the previous years and not my favorite design but in completes my collection of George's Kellogg's cards.
1983 O-Pee-Chee 3
1983 Topps 600
Essentially the same card with different numbers and different stock. The 1982 Topps design introducted a second picture of the player on the front which allowed both a portrait and an action photo of each player.
1984 Donruss 53
This design is the best so far from Donruss and they apparently printed far fewer cards than the previous years so the prices are higher for this set.
1984 Nestle 399, 500, 710
Topps produced these cards for Nestle and they are basically the same as the base Topps cards, even down to the numbering. They were available as a redemption for candy bar wrappers from Nestle and came in 6 sheets of 132 cards each. Some people got the sheet and cut them into the individual cards so that gives us these singles. The are value at a bit more than the regular Topps from 1984 but are not too expensive, especially when you realize what new cards go for today. I got these three together off of Ebay.
The backs reveal to us that Donruss was not keen on redesigning their backs every year as we've gone from blue to yellow to greenish with the same setup from 1982 to 1984. We also have those dark Topps backs looking dank compared to our Canadian OPC friend.
Page 6 will be all from 1984 and some of the cards will look a lot like the ones on this page.
Thank you to everyone that comments on these post and please visit the blogs listed on the right of the screen for additional insights on this hobby.
It's a shame Kellogg's ended their run in 1983... especially since the card market boomed later in the decade. I would have loved seeing a lenticular card of guys like Gwynn, Puckett, and Canseco by Kellogg's.
ReplyDeleteAs for 1984 Nestle... I've wanted the Mattingly for years. But I probably should check that I have the Rickey Henderson and Tony Gwynn cards for my collections first.