Sports Cards Ate My Brain

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...

So Georgia lost to Belmont in the first round of the NIT this year.  While this is considered an upset, it is not a surprise to me.  UGA basketball history is full of probations and disappointing teams.  Winning 20 games in a season is almost unheard of so this year's team settled on 19. Georgia basketball was terrible until Hugh Durham came along in the early 80's.  He somehow lured Dominique Wilkins to Athens and then recruited some fine player around him.  In 1983 Georgia made it's one and only Final Four appearance, losing to the famous Jim Valvano NC State team that year. Georgia's star player on that team was Vern Fleming. Vern came down to Athens from New York City and ended up being a first round draft pick by the Pacers. This is card 83 from the 1986 Star set.  For those of you who may be unaware, there was no major card set available for the NBA during the mid-eighties.  I had no way to get these cards near my house and ended up g...

Ok, it's not actually from the past but the card designs are. I have not been actively collecting lately but 2015 Topps Archives includes the 1976 Topps design so I had to get blaster and see what is what. Cards 1 - 100 are in the 1957 design, 101 - 200 in the 1976 design and 201 - 300 in the 1983 design. Pack 1 37 Jhonny Peralta - The "h" right after the "J" always confuses me. 47 Henderson Alvarez 50 Ken Griffey Jr. 105 Joe DiMaggio 139 Michael Wacha 149 Hunter Pence 169 Jon Lester 275 Ted Williams 299 Mark Trumbo 300 Willie Mays The cards did not come out of the pack in numerical order.  By mistake I sorted them before posting.  This is great mix of all-timers in this pack.  The 1957, 1976, and 1983 are three of my favorite designs so I'm hyped so far. Pack 2 220 Jay Bruce 18 Homer Bailey 171 Ian Desmond PGGWB George W Bush Presidential Chronicles - not a fan 19 Hisashi Iwakuma 148 Hyun-Jin Ryu 281 Hanley Ramirez 123 Anibal San...