Sports Cards Ate My Brain

  While looking through the pictures of my personal collection I came across the buyback cards that I've accumulated over the years. I don't have many of them and they seem random to me. Topps put a bunch of buybacks in products for their 75th anniversary.  This is a player I have never heard of but I like 1959 Topps so I'm happy to have this. This card I got out of a hobby box of 2008 Topps Heritage.  It fits in my PC perfectly as it is a Brave and I have a small collection of 1950's Crandall cards. Another Topps 75 buyback.  I have a regular copy of this card as part of my 1976 set build.  Maybe I should start looking for more 1976 buybacks. A 1984 Topps Paul Householder?  Rediscover Topps?  Why?!?! The final buyback comes from Bowman as part of the 70th anniversary.  At least this card is of a future Hall of Famer even if it is just a common card. Overall, I'm not a big fan of buybacks unless they are of a star player or from an older set....

Page six is all 1984.  There were 3 major manufacturers and Topps and Fleer was also generating food sets and other oddities so there was plenty to buy. This was between my junior and senior years of high school so any job many I made went toward cards. Nestle Dream Team 3 Topps made these cards and Nestle packaged them with candy bars.  I'm pretty sure I got this card from a local shop as I was more of a Snicker's fan. O-Pee-Chee 212 Those crazy Canadians!  They are more aboot hockey than baseball but I appreciate them having separate sets of cards. Ralston Purina 13 This is a Topps product even though it's not a clone of the regular Topps cards like almost all of the others. Seven-Eleven Coins 5 These discs came on the bottom of a Slurpee Cup inside a compartment on the underside.  As Seven-Eleven was close to my house I bought a bunch of Slurpee's in 1984 (Cherry and Cola swirl.) Topps 500 Here is the actual Topps cards from 1984, not to be confused with it's 1 m...

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...

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 ...