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...

On page four we finish up 1981 and move into 1982.  Baseball had a short season in 1981 because of a strike.  George batted .314 in 1981, which would be good, but it is a drop off from hitting .390 in 1980. The cards: 1981 Squirt 1 These cards were sold with the Squirt soft drink.  I can't say it is one of my favorites and I don't remember seeing it in 1981.  I had to get this card on ebay.  These cards were sold in strips of 2.  George had two different combos, both of which I have.  The cards were produced by Topps. 1981 Topps 700 Usually with Topps having a card number that is a multiple of 100 means you are one of the best players in the set. 1982 Spotbilt 5 I believe Topps produced these for a sports shoe company.  I know I have seen Spotbilt ads of other players. 1982 Donruss 34 I like the bat and ball design on these cards even though they are pretty basic. 1982 K-Mart 38 Topps produced this set for K-Mart which highlighted MVP winners from...

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...

Picking up where we left off from "It's All About George" here is page 2 of my George Brett card album. The Cards: 1978 Topps 100 This is the Topps version of the O-Pee-Chee cards that ended page 1.  This was the first card I remember a George Brett card from even though I know I got the 1977 out of a pack. 1979 Kellogg's 50 If you were a Major League superstar in the 1970s you were going to be in every Kellogg's set.   1979 O-Pee-Chee 167 1979 Topps 330 The only difference is the logos on the front.  I like the anticipatory fielding stance. 1980 Burger King Pitch Hit and Run 13 This is identical to the Topps issue except for the Burger King logo and "Collector's Series" in the top left corner.  I never participate in Pitch. Hit and Run.  I did do Punt, Pass and Kick one year. 1980 Kellogg's 9 I like the two diagonal yellow stripes that break up the design. 1980 Topps 450 This is my favorite card fro...

Welcome back everybody! A friend of mine who asked me why I didn't restart SCAMB so I decided to take the suggestion since he is a professional writer.  I'm not saying this is great literature though. I've been looking for topics for the relaunch and have a few in mind, but to start I wanted to highlight my number one player collection. I've been a George Brett fan since I saw him play at Tiger Stadium in 1980.  He hit a home run and got into a brawl in the game.  I was hooked. Like many collector's I've been going through my cards and other things during all of the extra time I've had at home and came upon two card albums.  I think they came with Topps Attax kits that I bought randomly.  They each have 26 pages so I decided to put my Brett cards in them and discuss each page in an installment. This will be a long term series that will be interspersed with other topics as I find cards I didn't know I had or want to highlight my favorit...

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 ...