Sports Cards Ate My Brain

With my fourth Ebay money purchase I decided to fill a couple more holes in my PC.  While I had gotten a 1933 Goudey out of the way I found a couple of 1934 examples to add to my Braves and Tigers collections. First we have card #59 of Boston Brave Joe Mowry.  The "Lou Gehrig says" on these cards is a major plus as I could never afford an actual Lou Gehrig card from this time period. This is card #70 of Detroit Tiger Pete Fox.  Having a Brave and a Tiger from this set is very satisfying. Another player that I could never afford from his playing days but is a need for any Tiger collection is Ty Cobb.  This same dealer had the 1960 and 1961 Fleer cards available so I took the plunge.  These cards are in fabulous condition. 1960 Fleer #42 1961 Fleer #14 Having these PC needs filled leaves a great taste in my mouth.  These cards come from 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in Manchester, Missouri and was my second purchase from them.  I will definitely look out for ...

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 th...

Page 3 is all 1981 cards.  1981 was the first year for Donruss and Fleer and there were also more readily available food and oddball sets than previous years. Here are the cards:G Donruss 537 George ended up winning three batting title and Rod Carew seven so this card is pretty much spot on. Drake's 5 These came with some sort of snack cake that I don't remember us having in Georgia.  They were produced by Topps so the backs look almost identical to the regular Topps release. Fleer 28 I liked the 1981 Fleer design better than the Donruss.  One of the main reasons would be the full stats on the back.  In fact, Fleer even included minor league stats for veterans for many years. Fleer 28 What?  Didn't we just have card 28?  The first one was an error in numbering.  This is what the actual card 28 should look like. Fleer 655 This is how that first card should have been numbered.  At some point in the production Fleer corrected the issue. Fleer Star St...

To recap:  These are the cards I would take with me if I could take ten 9-card pages with me to Mars. I decided that each part of my collection cannot have more than one page.  The cards must fit into a regulation page as far as height and width but I am taking liberties with how thick some of the cards are. Next up is basketball.  I rarely watch basketball anymore and I recently realized that the NBA lost me as a big fan when they started allowing zone defense. 1952-53 Wheaties I don't know why I love this card so much but I just think it is seriously cool. 1985-86 Star #83 Star distributed cards in team sets at hobby stores.  I got this card out of a box of Crunch & Munch.  It was a great pull for me since Vern was a star at UGA and played on their 1983 Final Four team. 1986-87 Fleer #91 This was the first widely distributed NBA set in a few years so there are many rookie cards in the set.  This is a great card of my second f...

To recap:  These are the cards I would take with me if I could take ten 9-card pages with me to Mars. I decided that each part of my collection cannot have more than one page.  The cards must fit into a regulation page as far as height and width but I am taking liberties with how thick some of the cards are. The third page is made up of non-Brave, non-George Brett baseball cards. 1909 T206 Rube Geyer This card has to be included because it is my oldest baseball cards and is from one of the great sets.  This one has the common Piedmont back.  I got it at a pawn shop for $3.  For those of you who may be unaware, cards of all types were packaged with cigarettes in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century. 1968 Topps Game #8 Topps Game cards were inserted in 1968 packs.  This is my favorite one because it is an all-time great plus it is a Home Run.  This is one of the sets I'm trying to complete. 1969 Topps #237 This is Bobby ...

To recap:  These are the cards I would take with me if I could take ten 9-card pages with me to Mars. I decided that each part of my collection cannot have more than one page.  The cards must fit into a regulation page as far as height and width but I am taking liberties with how thick some of the cards are. Page 2 is all about my favorite player, George Brett.  I got to see George play exactly once.  The game was on August 5, 1980 in Detroit.  We were in Michigan visiting family and my dad took me to see the Tigers.  George hit a 3-run bomb in the first inning and then was knocked down twice by inside pitches in the 6th by Detroit starter Milt Wilcox.  George flew out and, as soon as the outfielder caught the ball, George charged the mound and started a brawl.  It was sublime. 1975 Topps #228 For those of you who don't know, this is George's rookie card.  It has to be included here just because of that. 1979 Kellogg's #50 ...