One of the major things I miss from my youth; is spending the night at friends’ houses or vice versa. It seemed like every weekend I was trying to coordinate various destinations and events for my enjoyment. The entire weekend would be full for me before I even got permission from my parents.
I had a few circles of friends that I could count on when the weekend came around. I had the neighborhood guys; Brewer, Jim, Rusty, etc. Then there were my school friends; Josh, David, Michael. Finally, there were my cousins; Adam, Trent, Jared, Corey, and Dusty. Each group of friends meant small differences in the way the weekend was spent, but almost every weekend had the same basic plans.
I remember staring at the clock on Friday afternoon in Ms. Lee’s computer room. The final bell would ring at 3:20 but that time from around 2:30 to 3:20 seemed like a lifetime. When it finally did ring, I would sprint to my locker and unload everything. There was no such thing as homework on the weekend for me. In reality, homework was rare during the week for me as well. But I digress.
Most of the really memorable weekends that come to mind began with a trip to Dairy Queen on the way to the Mitchell-Baker Football Game. Our football team was very good when I was a kid and up through High School. We were a small school but we could pack “The Woodyard” every Friday night!
The stadium was dubbed “The Woodyard” because of the huge wood preserving plant behind the stadium that is now on the EPA Superfund site list. We now have a stadium built on the High School property. While I will always remember the good times at The Woodyard, I would have LOVED to have a stadium right there at the school. That would have been perfect!
I would usually spend the night with Josh or David after a football game. Josh’s step-dad was the announcer for the local radio station (and our English teacher) and we could sometimes sit in the booth and listen to the call. And David was in the band; a trumpet player. Sometimes we would all go back to Josh’s house. After the football game, we would usually spend the rest of the night playing Nintendo or something stupid like “Bloody Mary” to try to scare each other.
We were too old for Saturday morning cartoons but we were right in the thick of the drama that was unfolding at Bayside High School on “Saved by the Bell”! We would watch the “grown kids” shows and then find something to get into during the day. We went fishing, played Home Run Derby, rode motorcycle’s, played mini golf in the house, or would sit and go through sports cards to compare who had the best collection.
I would usually get back to my house sometime in the afternoon on Saturday. Upon arrival, my plans would begin for either heading over to Brewer’s or having Adam come over to the house. Saturday nights were usually the typical Pizza and a movie kind of nights. We loved cheesy horror movies and would try to find the oddest looking VHS cover at the video store to bring home.
Of course, there was Nintendo that night as well. We played a ton of RBI Baseball 3, Tecmo Super Bowl, and Double Dribble during those days. It led to some tension among friends at times, but we couldn’t get enough of the 16 bit action! It was absolutely the typical 90’s scene; Mountain Dew, Pizza, Video Games, and Horror Movies.
Here is where I list some of the awful horror movies that we watched. I list them because it is going to make me look them up to see if they are on some streaming service so I can relive the glory days. We watched The Video Dead, Return of the Living Dead 2, Phantasm (not awful but definitely weird), Ghoulies 2, Leprechaun, and Dr. Giggles. We watched some good ones too, but who wants to hear about those?
When my parents would come into the Living Room on Sunday morning, it would look like the aftermath of one of those “Living Dead” movies. We would be spread out on the living room furniture, pizza still in hand, dead to the world. Those were some long nights but were so fun! I usually didn’t know how I was going to do it, but we were less than 24 hours away from that school bus pulling up to carry us off again.
Sunday’s were all about sports. We would play sports, watch sports, play sports video games, and trade sports cards. No matter what time of year, you could find NASCAR, Basketball, Sunday Night Baseball, or Sunday afternoon Football to satisfy the sports craving. I even recorded Sportscenter back then and we would re-watch it during the week like we hadn’t seen it 100 times already. Sunday was the culmination of the week’s events.
There is one thing that was constant on Sunday’s during the basketball season; NBA on NBC. I can still hear Marv Albert, Mike Fratello, and Ahmad Rashad in my mind. The NBA was at a peak for me during the 90’s. And every Sunday brought some of the biggest stars in the league together to battle. Whether it was Jordan & Pippen vs Starks & Ewing, Reggie vs Bird, Barkley & KJ vs Stockton & Malone, or Run TMC vs Kemp & Payton; the games were loaded with Hall of Famers!
I was also at my peak in the early 90’s when it came to collecting basketball cards. And you knew that this would all come back around to cards in some way, right? I don’t care if I am the old man yelling at clouds, I will forever stand by those early 90’s players as being the best of all time. I legitimately get chills when I think about those days.
A small insert set that gives me the same chills if I haven’t seen it in a while comes from 1991 Fleer Basketball. Fleer had it’s ups and downs in other sports, but it was the King in Basketball during the late 80’s and early 90’s. And the King of inserts from the early 90’s was Pro-Vision.
Found at an average of 2-3 per box, the Pro-Vision cards were artist renderings of some of the biggest superstars. The art work was illustrated by Terry Smith. These remain some of the most aesthetically pleasing cards from the Junk Wax Era. And they remain extremely popular to collectors. Here is the 1991 Set breakdown.
Card #1 David Robinson – The Admiral was the College Player-of-the-Year, NBA Rookie-of-the-Year, the league’s top rebounder (13 rpg), two-time NBA All-Defense (first 2 seasons), a top ten scorer (25.6 ppg), the second best shot blocker (3.9 bpd), and the fastest center the NBA had seen up to that point. He was a game changer at the center position. This card depicts Robinson with his smooth left handed jump shot surrounded by a beautiful, cloud-filled sky.
Card #2 Michael Jordan – MJ had cemented himself as a superstar by 1991 but was still growing his legacy. He was on the way to a tremendous championship run and dominance on a scale that we would remember forever. He had led the league in scoring for 5 consecutive seasons (31.5 in 90-91), and shot at a then career-high field goal percentage (53.9%). He was named the League’s MVP and led the Bulls to the first of six titles during the 90’s. The card features Jordan rocketing into space to dunk the ball. This was foreshadowing for the 1996 movie titled “Space Jam”!
Card #3 Charles Barkley – Many people from the 2000’s or later think of Barkley as the jovial but controversial round man on the NBA on TNT broadcast. But basketball fans who got to see him play during the 90’s remember just how dominant an athlete he was. He was really unbelievable. He did not have the body type of a Jordan or Dominique Wilkins; but he had led the Sixers in rebounding from his rookie season in 84 through 1991 and had never shot below 57%. He was the MVP runner-up in 1989-90 and won the 1990-91 All-Star Game MVP with 17 points and 22 rebounds. And this was when the All-Star game was more of a game.
Card #4 Patrick Ewing – I would meet Mrs. Dub a couple years later and found out that this was her favorite NBA player. I was a fan of Ewing as well. In 1990-91, he finished in the Top 10 in scoring (26.6), rebounding (11.2), and blocked shots (3.19). He had led the Knicks in scoring from his rookie year in 1985 through the printing of this card in 1990-91. He scored 20+ points in 70 games that season while leading the team in scoring for 61 of those. The card is a beauty, with Ewing standing at the forefront of the New York skyline. Coincidentally, this is the same skyline that is seen at the beginning of Super Tecmo Bowl.
Card #5 Karl Malone – “The Mailman” was somewhat overshadowed in the Western Conference in the late 80’s and early 90’s by the last player in this set. But he was an absolute stud in the league. He would eventually get a shot at a championship in 1998 but would fall to Jordan and the Bulls. In 1991, he was 6’9″, 256 lbs of pure muscle. Over the previous four seasons, which included 1990-91, he averaged over 29 ppg and over 11 rpg; all while only missing 3 games. This card features Malone standing in front of a pane of broken glass with the ball crashing through it. That is what I think about when I see him; just crashing through teams.
Card #6 Earvin “Magic” Johnson – It turns out that as dominant as Malone was, he isn’t even the best #32 in this 6-card set. That distinction belongs to “Magic”. He was known in 1991 as the best point guard to ever play in the league. He was bigger than the average point guard but could move the ball with the best of them. By the end of that season, he passed Oscar Robertson as the NBA’s All-Time Assist Leader (9,921). He was an 11-time All-Star, 3-time NBA Champ, Athlete of the Decade, NBA Man-of-the-Year, and the MVP of the NBA Finals 3 times as of this card’s release. He truly was Magic on the floor.
I challenge you to look at any of these 6 cards and find a flaw, besides the actual condition of these 30 year old cards in my collection. The artwork is perfect, the player selection is on point, and the cards hold a place in basketball card history as one of the best inserts of all time (as per a study conducted by me and for me only).
These are the kinds of cards that make collecting what it is for me. These cards look good, feature great players, and come from an era that is full of great memories. I can look at Barkley and think about hanging out with Adam and battling for rebounds. I can look at MJ and think about Rusty wearing his Jumpsoles around the house. And I can look at Magic Johnson and think about all of the fancy passes I would try to pull off in the backyard.
And as I have said time and time again; that is what it is about. It isn’t about the flashy 1/1 autograph from the best prospect we’ve never seen play. It isn’t about scooping up all the retail boxes when find them at Target. And it isn’t about “investing”. It is about a piece of cardboard and what it means to you. It is about what the card says to you. Mine speak to me. I’m just the only one that hears them.
J-Dub
All this horror movie watching and planning has me thinking about which monsters I’d least like to face at the end of a dark hallway. It’s also got me thinking about Jamie Lee Curtis but that’s not what this post is about. While I’ve watched some movies and wondered why the main antagonist was feared in the first place, I’ve also watched movies where the mere thought of the creature being real was horrifying. I was never really afraid of Chucky or “The Ghoulies”, but the crazed, zombie-like, virus infected, sprinters in “28 Days Later” make me constantly think about hiding places and quickest escape routes of my home. As a kid, they were all pretty scary but as an adult, it’s easy to draw the line between fantasy and reality. But for the sake of this post, let’s pretend that they are all real. And if they are all real, which ones are contenders and which ones are pretenders?
Michael Myers – There is no better place to start than with Michael Myers. This is a contender without a doubt. He’s not the quickest on this list but he’s ultra stealthy and can hide just as well as he can seek. The mask has always been my favorite among horror villains and he’s always felt the fairly realistic, until he was killed 4-5 times. Contender
Jason Voorhees – He’s definitely one of my favorites and is worthy of any list made for Halloween Monsters. He’s a little quicker than Myers but he’s also a behemoth that doesn’t really on silent kills. He is in your face and you generally know he’s coming before he actually gets you. Aside from that side trip he took to New York that one time, you can usually avoid him if you stay out of the woods and don’t engage in illicit activities. But if you do like the outdoors, you’d better work on your agility when running through the forest; or you’ll wind up on the end of some rusty tool shed implement. Contender
Freddy Krueger – Being totally honest; Freddy has never been scary to me. The premise of being killed in your dreams and it carrying over to real life is frightening but Freddy has always been a little too hokey and jokey for me. The tongue in the phone is a cool visual but we aren’t using many rotary house phones in 2018. His worst kill to me was Johnny Depp in the first movie but most of them are just kinda silly. The overgrown head that is eating people, smashing a TV on somebody’s head, haunting a junk yard? That’s a pass for me. I enjoy the movies but as for being a monster that frightens me? Pretender
Leatherface – Ok, this may be the scariest of them all for me. Because as far as I know, Leatherface is in fact real and keeps to himself in his creepy house out in the middle of nowhere, waiting on some poor passerby to break down. There have been versions of Leatherface that were more goofy than scary, but overall he is a legitimate badass psycho that I can only hope I never bump into. The concept is terrifying because it is the closest to a reality as any of the above killers. Besides Leatherface himself, the entire family is scary as hell! Contender
Zombies – This is a tough one. There are really two main types of zombies that are portrayed in films. One is the original, raised from the dead, clumsy walker that is trying to find “brains”. They lumber along and as Barbara said in the original movie, “we could walk right past them and they’d never be able to get us.” Those are not as scary as the other version. A horde would be difficult but even then, I think you could just avoid them altogether without too much of an issue.
Werewolf – Like with zombies, there are multiple variations to werewolves as well. But for the most part, they are all faster than I am and they have sharp teeth and claws. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would be able to take one of these creatures down by myself. I don’t have silver bullets laying around and they don’t seem to be affected by bats or knives. So I’d say my chances of survival are between slim and none. Contender
Vampire – There are only two vampires that have ever been frightening to me. They were in “Fright Night” and “The Lost Boys”. Those vampires were downright scary! But my overwhelming feeling on vampires has always been iffy. On one hand, they can certainly kill me if we get down to the brass tax but there is always a chance that I would turn into one myself. And that’s somewhat of a glass half full/half empty conundrum. I may get some argument on this one but for now; Pretender.
There are plenty more we could debate; like Pinhead, Puppets, Ghosts, Apparitions, etc. But I think we hit the high spots. The good news is that “most” of these things are not real and we’ll never have to find out if we can survive their attacks or not. I’ll let you decide which ones are real and which ones are not. But one thing that I know is real, and related to monsters, is the 1994 Coca-Cola “Monsters of the Gridiron” 30 Card Collector Set. You can thank 
One of my all-time favorite Falcons is Jesse Tuggle. He played his college ball at Valdosta State, where my wife and many of my friends went to college. He then became the best linebacker Atlanta has ever seen! We have certainly had some lean times throughout our franchise history but even when we struggled in the 90’s, Tuggle was so much fun to watch! I included the back of the card for this first one to give you an idea of how the nicknames come into play. I’m sure Zibby would love Jessie “Tarantula” Tuggle!
Cornelius Bennett would’ve been better served being called a werewolf with this card. But the “Big Bear” moniker made sense when I read the back. I don’t really think of a bear as a monster but Bennett surely was. This is one of my favorite cards in the set.
Eric Turner was a stud safety in the 90’s. And this card is perfect for the Cleveland Browns! There are actually a lot of fans in Cleveland who dress like this on Sundays.
This is the biggest superstar in the bunch but what is this costume? It’s not a monster, that’s for sure. Emmitt Smith was no doubt a Contender but this “Lone Star Sheriff” getup is a major Pretender.
This was a pretty cool costume for Pat Swilling. This was during the time of “Sub-Zero” from Mortal Combat and he had a block head that reminded me of something you’d see on He-Man. I really liked Pat Swilling but the fact that he played at both Ga Tech and New Orleans never sat well with me.
Again, this isn’t much of a monster but it fits for Marshall Faulk. This dude was a serious baller and he hadn’t even become a member of the “Greatest Show on Turf” by this time. I was a fan of Edgerrin James but I always wondered how things would’ve turned out if Peyton Manning and Marshall Faulk had played several years together.
I don’t even know what to think of this one. I loved Derrick Thomas but “Attack Cat” leaves a lot to be desired. You can certainly feel the mid 90’s cheesiness with this one. I actually enjoy mid 90’s cheesiness but this one is a miss.
I just had to include this one because……I mean, look at that!
John Randle was a nightmare without a doubt. The face paint, the motor, everything about him made him a scary dude on the field. He was certainly a “Runaway Train!
Much like “Cobra” Coleman, Ronnie Lott tries on reptile scales for his card. This one was pretty decent though. Ronnie Lott was a safety that would absolutely “strike you” if you entered into his territory. He usually didn’t give you a warning though like a real rattler will. I can’t tell if this one is photoshopped or if Lott is somehow coiled in that outfit.
Well, QB Eagles was definitely a “Rocket Man”! He was fast, stealthy, and could sometimes fly! Remember 
Junior Seau was an amazing linebacker that had the misfortune of playing on a team with Stan Humphries as the QB. Can you imagine Seau with some of these Phillip Rivers teams? Seau was an awesome talent and a man the game misses.
I loved this Tom Rathman card! Rathman was a bit of a “Psycho” on the field and he had no regard for human life as a fullback. Interesting stat: did you know he caught 73 passes one season? I think that is incredible when you think of pass catching backs in today’s game. He was not built like Darren Sproles or Alvin Kamara but when he caught a pass, he made people pay!
So I included this one because it was easily the silliest costume of the set. Cortez Kennedy was a very good defensive lineman but this “Tez Rex” persona made him feel more like a character at a kids birthday party. Can’t you see going to a T-Rex Arcade/Restaurant like Chuck E. Cheese and seeing Cortez come out and dance while your kid blew the candles out on their cake?
This set doesn’t really meet the guidelines to receive an official grade on the Dub-O-Meter scale. It is a fun set and can still be found pretty cheap today. I actually paid $4.99 for this one, unopened. It’s not something that you will find on a collector list looking for BGS 10’s and you won’t find somebody who is trying to find the white whale of the set because there aren’t any SP’s or anything. It’s just an old school oddball set that is fun to sift through from time to time. I’m glad Rick brought this one up because it had totally slipped my mind and there were some cards in the set I didn’t remember. Did you have this set as a kid?
I think that we are all losing a bit of our originality at this point. By and large, most things in pop culture today are things we have already experienced, right? I’m really looking forward to the Halloween movie release in October; but why? It isn’t because it is going to be a “new take” on horror. It isn’t because I haven’t seen Michael Myers walk the streets of Haddonfield and hide in the shadows on Halloween night 50 times before. I do expect it to have its differences but they even brought back Jamie Lee Curtis again. I am looking forward to it and will watch it because I love Halloween; the holiday and the franchise. But it isn’t a groundbreaking film in 2018.
Halloween isn’t alone. There is a lot of buzz surrounding “Suspiria”, the reboot of the cult classic by Dario Argento (1977) that still sits at a stellar 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. There have been numerous recent re-imaginings of Predator, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and now, even Candyman. I saw Magnum P.I. commercials over the weekend while I was watching college football and I’m pretty sure I saw Murphy Brown come up on Sunday. Roseanne came back last year, Full House has been on Netflix for the past couple of years, and Double Dare has been on my TV at home more in the last month than it was when I was 15. Call them what you want; reboots, revivals, re-imaginings, whatever. The fact is, we are almost solely relying on the entertainment that was popular yesterday for our pleasure today.
Some of you might be saying right now, “wait a minute, aren’t you the RETRO GUY?” Why yes, I am! I love all things 80’s and 90’s and I have no problem with holding on to the good old days. I just prefer the originals over the reboots. I am sure I will love Halloween but I probably won’t be searching for the 20 year anniversary DVD when I am 61. Sidebar – Do you think we will still have DVD’s in 2038? Or will we have gone full circle and be searching Amazon for BetaMax again? Because let’s be honest, if you are really going to enjoy the classics, you have to have some integrity issues with the picture quality. I remember barely being able to see most of the original Halloween film when I first saw it in the 80’s because the lighting was so dark. I was adjusting brightness and tracking and anything else I could think off but it was just made dark.
Here is my point, my thesis statement, five paragraphs too late. If you like retro, find the original and enjoy it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a VHS tape, but if you plan on getting excited about the potential for a Candyman reboot, go watch the one that was released in 1992 and appreciate it for what it was in the early 90’s. Part of being original is appreciating things that are originals. Do you remember how New Coke flamed out and they had to go back to the “Classic” recipe? That was the original and that is what is still popular today. Companies mess around with packaging all the time but they always label it, “New Look, Same Great Taste”, because that is what needs to stay the same. The taste, figuratively and literally speaking, is what we always remember.
That brings me to originality in wax. And let me be clear on one major part of this discussion. “Wax” encompasses cards that were presented to us in wax wrappers. We are not buying “wax” at the LCS that is labeled 2018. We are not picking up “wax” at Target unless we are buying one of those repacks with some actual wax in it. I have been guilty of this before as well so I am not singling anyone out but I think we should start making the clear distinction between “wax” and the current product. Wax is, by its very name, specific to the era where we bought cardboard packaged in wax wrappers. Score threw us off a little when they introduced the little plastic bags and Upper Deck floored us with the foil but they are at least in the same era. That has actually been on my mind a lot lately and I wanted to go ahead and walk up the hill I am willing to die on.
Some of my favorite sets today are Heritage, Archives, and Classics. And some of my favorite inserts are the retro designs like the 1988 Donruss in football and the 1983 Topps in baseball this year. But you can actually go out and buy the real thing much cheaper than you are buying the current re-imagining. Sure, there is no Todd Gurley in 1988 Donruss and we won’t find Mike Trout in 1983 Topps, but we will find their 80’s counterparts, or originals, if you will. There are players like Bo Jackson, Marcus Allen, and Thurman Thomas that are found in many of the 80’s-90’s sets while players like Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr., and Jose Canseco are the cream of the crop for those 80’s wax packs.
I have found myself drowning in 2018 product because something gets released every week and I can’t seem to keep up. I love the rips on Periscope but we are seeing the same things over and over, just slightly repackaged. There is just too much to sort through and it can really drive you mad if you are still trying to collect with an old school mindset like I do. I have about 30 partially filled 500 count boxes in my closet with anything from Unparalleled, Chronicles, Origins, Certified, Chrome, Platinum, Bowman, Optic, Elements, and the list goes on. It has become maddening. I can feel myself losing some of my own originality because I am constantly bombarded with a new design concept but the checklist never changes.
This is Wax! There is a special feel and even a special smell that is only found in wax packs. There is no substitute.
One of the aspects of baseball cards that no longer exists in the current product; learning about baseball history.
For the most part, unique batting stances have faded. There are definitely some left but think about the batting stances from the 80’s and 90’s that are so unforgettable.
Major League Baseball has upped their game on jersey quality. Even Spring Training threads are top notch today.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a baseball helmet with no flaps! Was Olerud the last player? These were even better in the mini version with Dairy Queen Ice Cream in them.
Steve Jeltz could have made this list as well. Maybe it’s a product of global warming but we certainly don’t have enough warm up windbreakers in the game in 2018.
And without the windbreaker, we are also deprived of the windbreaker under the jersey look!
Back to the batting helmets, when was the last time you saw a player wear their cap under the helmet? I remember doing this in Little League and not even knowing it was possible to wear without the cap.
“Back in my day”, nickname cards were special inserts. These were actual player nicknames and they were showcased on their base cards.
These guys were good enough at their craft that they didn’t need contacts to play the game. No player represents the glasses era any better than Kent Tekulve. And I’m pretty sure that Kelly Paris and Ken Phelps are the same person.
I won’t say that this is completely gone from the game but you really don’t see eyeblack like you used to!
We had a Mike Trout in the 80’s too! He may have been medically enhanced but he was so fun to watch. Imagine what sort of stardom this guy would’ve experienced long term if things would’ve work out differently.
You want superstars? Dollars to doughnuts, there are not as many bona fide star players in the league as their used to be. This isn’t even all of the players that make the ’89 superstar list!
Card companies tinker around with box bottoms from time to time but these were common place in the 80’s. These made even the boxes collectible.
Error cards in the 80’s weren’t intentional either. Card companies made legitimate mistakes and then they reprinted cards trying to cover them up, indirectly creating a secondary market for the cards that were printed in error. These are the two famous errors from 89 Fleer, with Billy Ripken being arguably the most famous error ever.
Finally, though these are more readily available, I’ll bet a box of ’89 Bowman that Ken Griffey Jr. finished his career with better stats than any rookie from 2017-2018 will amass in their career. That includes Judge, Ohtani, Acuña, and others. That’s not a knock on those guys, but why wouldn’t you want a Hall of Fame rookie in your collection when it could be had for such a reasonable price?
I didn’t think about that burger again until McDonald’s reintroduced it in 2015. Life is funny like that. Even when you really enjoy something, if you go long enough without it, you start to find other things to take its place and it eventually fades from your memory. You could never forget about the Big Mac because it’s always there. Even if you aren’t ordering it, you see it out of your peripheral and you think, yep, the Ole Big Mac. That’s sort of what happened with Saved By the Bell. Yeah, I know; I loved that show a little too much. But it’s still on in syndication at weird hours of the day so I can get my DVR to record some episodes and quench my Kapowski thirst anytime. The same can’t be said for “Hey Dude”. I loved that show too but it doesn’t show up in any current DVR searches. So SBTB will always rule because it’s nostalgia we can still enjoy.
Music is a little different because we can download just about anything from iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. But there are still groups that get lost in the shuffle because “Metallica”, “Journey”, and “Pearl Jam” are still touring somewhere. What about “Oasis”? Remember how great they were? Or the original “Everclear” group? “Counting Crows” is still touring but they aren’t releasing new music per se. Their last release was 2014 and if you go to their show, you are still going to hear “
But here is the point. Not being relevant today doesn’t mean that you weren’t big time back then. There are plenty of things that were awesome in the 80’s and 90’s and would still be awesome today if given their proper amount of respect. McDonalds thought enough of the Triple Cheese to bring it back. Whether you know or remember the “Counting Crows” or not, you can still go see them in Hartford CT on 8/15! “USA High” is not “Saved By the Bell” and Elena Lyons is not Tiffani Amber-Theissen but it doesn’t mean she isn’t worthy of our time and admiration! Sometimes we get too hung up on the mainstream and we forget that there can be greatness hiding just behind the headlines. We just aren’t used to looking beyond the spotlight.
The same can be said for Baseball Players from my youth. We all remember Ken Griffey Jr., Bo Jackson, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Nolan Ryan. And we absolutely should because they were dominant players. Some are in the Hall of Fame, ESPN makes a “30 for 30” about some of them every year and some of are still visible around the league. But what about the rest of the 80’s/90’s baseball? We had more than 20 stars at any given time throughout the 80’s but we tend to only celebrate the elite of the elite. Some of the other players just don’t get remembered by collectors today because they aren’t in the Hall or they don’t have a statue outside of their stadium or they didn’t do anything crazy enough to warrant a tell-all book. But between the white lines, they were absolutely star players.
Gerald Perry
George Bell
Jesse Barfield
Glenn Davis
Tom Henke
Ramon Martinez
Bret Saberhagen
Ruben Sierra
Tim Wallach
Lou Whitaker
What are your thoughts on this list of players? I’m convinced that these will be some of the guys we look to 50 years from now when we are naming top players from the 80’s. Young collectors may not know these names all that well but when we start looking at the 80’s as somewhat of a vintage era, these players will deserve to be in the discussion. I think these guys deserve to be in any collections that include top players from their generations. Sometimes you have to look a little past the glitz and glam of the “Hall of Fame label” to find some great collectible players. Sometimes we overlook greatness because of the elite around them. You have to admit, while we all loved Phoebe Cates in “Fast Times”, Jennifer Jason Leigh was pretty hot too!
In 1985, I was 8 years old and in the 3rd grade. We played outside from dusk til dawn, our parents never worried about it and we weren’t really getting exposed to all of the garbage I have to worry about with my kids today. I did stay up late one night and sneak in the last 15 minutes of Friday the 13th as a kid and saw a little more than what I was allowed to see but that was about it. I remember getting scared when I saw David Banner transform into the Hulk and I thought it was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. My kids laugh at those 80’s special effects today.
Bailey (11) and I watched “Silver Bullet” a few weeks ago (released in ’85) and at the end, she said, “I thought this was going to be scary.” I remember seeing that movie for the first time and being terrified! I guess I’ll show her “Maximum Overdrive” and “Night of the Living Dead” next and see what she thinks about those. In fairness, when I take into account that “The Walking Dead” is one of the most popular television shows in history and it is uber gory, it makes sense. She doesn’t watch that show because I don’t think she is quite old enough but it is far more disturbing than anything mainstream that came out during the 80’s.
That’s part of why I remember my time as a kid fondly. Who knows, maybe my kids will look back on there childhood the same way. But when I look back at being a kid, I realize that I didn’t have a whole lot to worry about. I’m not saying it was a utopian society by any means but there really isn’t much of a comparison to what the kids of today have to face. I grew up watching Transformers and He-Man fight for mankind. My kids have YouTube and all the craziness that lives there! You can upload almost anything there these days. There is a Peppa Pig video floating around where the pig goes on a murderous rampage. Yeah, I love horror movies but I don’t want to mix them with my kid’s cartoons.
In the 80’s, about the worst thing we could see on TV as kids was going to be a “Saved by the Bell” episode about taking pills to stay awake and study. Do you remember when Jesse was “So excited! So excited! So excited!”? I will admit though that I watched “Tom and Jerry” a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty brutal by today’s standards. Jerry chased Tom around with a meat cleaver and hammer, which felt out of place in our modern society. I don’t know if Disney would get away with that one today but I’m sure Nickelodeon would slip it in to their rotation. Who knows; maybe all of it is relative to what you are used to?
Whatever the case, pop culture was at a peak in 1985 if you ask my opinion, and if you click on the blog link, you did. Television was rocking shows like; “Mr. Belvadere”, “Growing Pains”, “Cheers”, “The Cosby Show”, “Night Court”, “Family Ties”, “Different Strokes” and “The Facts of Life.” How many catch phrases, character ideas and plot stories do we still get from these masterpieces? The sitcoms of today seem tired and boring compared to these. Maybe that is why we see such a difference in what is on TV vs. today as I mentioned with “The Walking Dead” above. Once it has already been done, you have to go a little further and create something new. Maybe that is why society as a whole has pushed so far beyond the boundaries we once had. I don’t know, it’s just a thought.
Movies were pretty classic in 1985 as well; and it only cost $2.75 to go see them in the theater! I wrote about my favorite 
I will never “move on” from opining about the 80’s and 90’s. The cold hard truth is that I miss everything that made those years fun; VHS tapes, cassettes, posters on the wall, Corey Haim films, drooling over Kelly Kapowski, watching MTV to see the latest video from my favorite band, tuning in to ESPN to see gosh darn sports highlights and not poker tournaments, playing Nintendo when there were only 2 buttons you had to master in order to win a football game. I miss eating whatever I wanted to without having to worry about cholesterol or calorie counts. I remember when bread was a part of the food pyramid and it always contained gluten!
Yes, things were simpler back then but what is wrong with that? What is wrong with sitting down and watching a movie about vehicles coming to life and terrorizing people and it not feeling hokey? What is wrong with believing that blood coming from Ric Flair’s head is real because Dusty Rhodes hit him with a tire iron? When our headphone batteries went dead, we had no choice but to go outside. We couldn’t text or FaceTime every minute of the day so we had to form personalities and then learn how to cope with people who did or didn’t like us because of that personality. WHY HASN’T ANYONE INVENTED THAT TIME MACHINE YET DR. BROWN???
Of course, there is something else I miss about the 80’s; simple but awesome sports cards. By 1989, we had about 6 options to choose from if you included Sportsflics and the companies put everything they had into that annual set they released. You could even buy a collectors kit from the Sears Catalog and 80’s cards were considered “hard-to-find”. While the current year cards weren’t hard to find because they were in every convenience store in America, I do remember the previous year’s sets being difficult. That is why ’87 Topps was so hot in 1989! We spent the whole year trying to collect the entire set through packs and now, you have about a week before the next product releases.
I know there is a good and bad side to those days but the bad only came later when we realized how much we were missing. If I ever find a way to go back to the 80’s, I am staying there so the Junk Wax Era will never really be the Junk Wax Era anyway. That Mark McGwire RC will always be valuable and Donruss will always have logos. As you can see, I really don’t ask for much. Just take me back to a time when video games were 16 bits, TV shows had to be recorded with VCR’s and baseball cards were made to be collected. Is that really too much?
I feel like I’ve gotten heated for some reason. Let me pull back the reigns and focus on something from that will relax me. Here is a prime example of an excellent baseball card set from the 80’s. The 1985 Topps set is a beauty and is loaded with superstars and some heavy hitting rookies. The packs still had gum, the cards still had borders and information on the back, and the big hits were simply the best players. This set was right before they started getting a little crazier with the designs as ’86 and ’87 would attest. This was a true baseball card, all the way around.
They certainly don’t make packs like they used to!
What better card to show off the design than this sweet Gary Pettis? The backs of the 85 Topps has a real holiday feel with the green and red.
The catchers are always a little slim in these rips but here are 3 good ones. Always love Tony Pena in his Pirates uni!
The infielders are a little more stacked with Chicken Man, Ryno, The Wizard and Donnie Baseball. I was a fan of Sweet Lou during the 80’s as well thanks to RBI Baseball.
The outfield was loaded with studs. The first thing I notice about this selection is the uniforms. Rock has the sweet Expos, Hendu has the old school Mariners and Willie McGee had the baby blue St. Louis jersey. Teams should still be wearing these jerseys! I’d also like to know how Jorge Bell became George Bell.
This was before Dennis was Oil Can and before Tommy John was a surgery. The Brewers had 2 Hall of Famers in their rotation and Eck and Dave Stewart were about to embark on a World Series run together in Oakland. Good times!
There were some sweet manager cards in 85 Topps. Bobby Cox would soon be an Atlanta Brave but not before Chuck Tanner took his shot. Pete Rose was one of the last player/managers and we all know how that worked out. LaRussa was about to join Eck and Stewart in Oakland.
The Record Breakers included Juan Samuel with the most steals by a rookie. He wound up winning ROY in 1984. While he had a serviceable career with 3 All-Star appearances, he never caught fire in the hobby.
Here are some of the All-Stars from 1984. Again, some of the uniforms jump right off the page. That Padres uniform is one from the 80’s I could probably do without but please bring back the Expos, Cards and Astros uniforms.
There were a lot of Father/Son inserts in 1985. Another couple of Boone’s were on their way into the league too. There were also a couple of future Fathers of major leaguers in this set; Ken Griffey Sr. and Jose Cruz.
This is the only Darryl Strawberry I pulled but it’s pretty sweet. I also love the Dunston but it has pretty severe gum damage. Look at that beautiful jersey on Floyd Bannister!
The rookie class was pitcher heavy with Rocket, Doc, Saberhagen, Key and Gubicza. All of these guys had nice careers and a few of them had great careers. The Eric Davis is one of my favorite RC’s from this year. Alvin Davis is one of the more underrated superstars from the 80’s.
Here are some of the players from the U.S. National Team. I missed out on Will Clark.
But I didn’t miss out on the stud of the set! This card was three bills when I was in high school and one of the most sought after 80’s cards in the entire hobby. I only pulled 1 but it is the first one I’ve ever pulled from a pack. This made the box well worth it!
This Score is a product of nostalgia and pulling a Mark McGwire Team USA card. If I hadn’t pulled it, I’m afraid I would’ve landed on a 3. This is not the best design Topps had in the 80’s but it was not the worst either. The box is a little pricey if you don’t wind up pulling some of the studs. Even with McGwire, I missed out on Puckett and Strawberry. But this set has a strong rookie class and there are several stars who were still very early in their careers here. I kinda like the green and red backs and definitely enjoyed the #1 Pick inserts. You can run the risk of pulling some gum damaged stars because they didn’t discriminate on the cards they put in the back of the pack. But overall, this is a classic set from the 80’s and has good value for retro collectors.
The closure of Toys R Us has sort of affected me in a way I can’t explain. I’m not depressed or anything but riding by that empty store is just a very weird feeling. Their slogan was, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid!” What are we supposed to do now that they are closed? Does that mean we have to grow up? I still went in the store quite a bit because I have kids of my own and there was a feeling that you just couldn’t get at other stores, at least locally. Other stores have toy sections but let’s be real; nothing compared to Toys R US, or even Kay-Bee for that matter, which is also gone now.
While I understand that the closure of this store was part of natural selection as we all continue our move to an online world, it is hard to lose something that was a big part of your past and not feel some sort of way. Another quote that hits a nostalgic person right in the feels is attributed to Buddha, who said, “You can only lose what you cling to.” That’s what “we” do. We cling to the tiny fabrics that make up the tapestry of our lives and each one means something to us. If you start pulling threads out of the overall work, things have a tendency to start to fray.
Sam Goody
Big “B” Drugs
Piggy Wiggly
Arcades
Video Stores
Upper Deck
The packs were pretty sweet – tamper proof foil like the years before but blue this season with pinstripes.
A staple of Upper Deck was the hologram stickers. These were full size team logos.
Here is the design of 1991 Upper Deck. As you will recall, 1989 had the base line on the right side of the card. 1990 had the base line across the top. This year had the base line running down the left side of the card. Upper Deck always had some unique photos too, like this Bert Blyleven.
There was only one notable catcher but it was one of my favorite ’91 Upper Deck cards when I was a kid. This Sandy Alomar Jr. was so colorful and I loved the photo.
The infield was stacked with young players and grizzled veterans. There were 2 future Bravos here with Fred McGriff and Andres Galarraga. Big Cat is rocking the Expos uni, which is always great. Paul Molitor was such an underrated player. By this point in his career (13 seasons), he had a career .299 average, was averaging double digit home runs and had multiple 40+ stolen base seasons. You can throw Alvin Davis in that underrated category as well.
The outfield is pretty loaded up too. Deion Sanders and Dave Justice were key cogs in the Braves outfield and lineup during the great run of the 90’s. And because this was the high series box, I landed a Bo Jackson in both Kansas City and Chicago. While I didn’t pull a Ken Griffey Jr., he did appear on this card of Ken Sr. And I will always see Kirby in that Twins uni but will never get used to seeing Strawberry in Dodger Blue.
The pitchers were pretty legendary in this set. Randy Johnson was getting started on a Hall of Fame career while Nolan Ryan was wrapping his up. This card of Nolan features a pretty iconic image of the Express. Maddux would soon discover that chicks dig the long ball so this bunt might have been one of his last. And the Braves got their fill of Scott Erickson, Jack Morris and Doug Drabek in the playoffs that year.
These cards are very memorable from the early 90’s junk wax era. Everyone remembers the Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock card, along with the 1917 White Sox throwback.
I only pulled two of the artist checklist. One was a sweet Chris Sabo while the other was a ho-hum Roberto Kelly.
These are some of the rookies and prospects that stood out in 1991. I didn’t pull a Chipper but I did snag a Mo Vaughn and Eric Karros. Steve Decker was a huge prospect for the Giants in ’91 but he didn’t pan out.
I didn’t pull an Aaron autograph but I did load up on the Baseball Heroes cards. Those 70’s Milwaukee uniforms were hot!
These cards deserve their own segment and comment. The first was the Hank Aaron hologram. I searched for this card like a 1/1 Trout back in 1991. This is a sweet insert!
I was a huge fan of Jose Canseco in 1991 so I was blown away by this card of his twin brother, Ozzie. At the time, I had no idea that Ozzie was playing so I thought it was an amazing card.
Though I didn’t pull the Chipper RC, I did pull what was considered THE ROOKIE CARD of the set in 1991. This Todd Van Poppel was on the cover of Beckett and highly sought after in the hobby. I actually think this card is better than any I have pulled so far in 2018 Topps Inception.
This was one of those “retirement cards” from the junk wax era. This was as hot as Gregg Jefferies’ 1989 Future Stars for a while. This would have been a huge box in 1991.
The first of two Hall of Fame RC’s is this Jeff Bagwell. Bags was a hot rookie and he turned out to have a stellar career. I pulled 5 of these in the box!
The other Hall of Fame RC I pulled was this awesome Frank Thomas. Though he and Bagwell both had cards in 1990, this was their first Upper Deck cards. This is a very special card for me and one that I will slide right into my current PC.
1991 Upper Deck is a classic set from the junk wax era and had some great individual cards that are memorable. The Ozzie Canseco, Todd Van Poppel and Kevin Maas cards were so hot when this set came out. Some other players turned out to be the long term guys like Chipper, Bagwell and Big Frank but this set really covered the spectrum of hot rookies and solid veterans. The design was typical Upper Deck and the only change from year to year was the base line on the card. Boxes can be found relatively cheap now with this one costing me $12.95 and regardless of the odds, there is a chance to pull a Hank Aaron autograph if you are extremely lucky. I really like this set better than 1990 but not as good as 1989. I’d give it an overall “4” on the Dub-O-Meter and would lean closer to a “5” than a “3” on the scale. What do you think about 1991 Upper Deck?
The things that can trigger these weird moments in time can vary but inevitably, they are always just as random as the memories themselves. Take the hexagon shaped pizza pictured above. Most people my age will remember this as the school lunch pizza. At least that’s what it was at Mitchell-Baker High School. It was damn good too! This was one of the meals where I would splurge and drop an extra .50 for a second pizza. I have not had a pizza like this in 22 years but it’s the first thing I think of anytime I walk into a school cafeteria, which is more often than I ever imagined before I had kids.
While we are on the subject of school, let’s talk about the smell of the athletic field house. Turn away for a moment if you are the squeamish type. I can’t even pinpoint the smell I’m thinking of but it was a solid mixture of sweat, feet, icy hot, wet grass, old cleats and school pizza farts. It’s not a good smell at all but it’s one that was somewhat addictive as a teenager. That smell is representative of baseball and some of my earliest friendships. The smell was certainly one of a kind but every now and again, I’ll open my bat bag today and get this faint memory of the spring of 1992; Coach Davis, our manager “Chicken Box”, my buddy David and his lanky 6’7 delivery or something else totally off the wall. It is a smell that can cross my nose at a moments notice if baseball is on the brain.
Another memory from my school days involves a Sheriff Deputy; Frank “Deputy Dawg” Sumner. Deputy Dawg was over the youth division of law enforcement of the big metro area 30 miles north of my hometown. I now live in that metro area and it’s not as daunting as it seemed back then. But when I was 15, Albany was the kind of place I wasn’t ready for. It was more dangerous than Camilla and I didn’t really know my way around outside of the movie theater and Putt-Putt. Deputy Dawg would go around to the local high schools and scare the hell out of us kids with his presentation on drugs, gangs and violence. I think of him often; when I’m watching a crime show on TV, when my kids have speakers at school or at other random times. He saved a lot of lives in the late 80’s-early 90’s!
I am often reminded of the cold water at our American Legion pool in my hometown of Camilla. We do a lot of summertime water sports with the family now and many times I find myself about to dive into water much colder than I’m prepared for. When I’m standing on the edge of that water, pumping myself up for what’s about to happen, my mind often goes back to the summer of ’93 when I spent almost every day at the Legion. The pool was spring fed and made you shiver on 110 degree July afternoons. I used to think that the kids that hung out at the top of the “Super Slide” were just being cool but now I think it was because they were scared to get back in the water after they had dried off. Every bit of fear of cold water in my adult life can be traced back to those days.
Speaking of fear, I’ve always been a fan of horror movies. To be more specific, I’m a fan of 80’s horror movies. I’d rather watch Friday the 13th than any of the new stuff that comes out that is not so much scary as just filled with “gotcha” moments. I also enjoyed the cheesy horror movies that weren’t scary but had a lot of blood and gratuitous, almost always unnecessary, nudity. I loved “Night of the Comet”, “Cheerleader Camp” and “Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama” for those very reasons. At 15, you couldn’t beat horror and scantily clad chicks! I got my fill of both from Rhonda Shear and her late night weekend show, “Up All Night”. Cable TV was a godsend when I realized I could stay up late on a Friday night and watch some corny ghoulish looking creature chase babes in bikinis without leaving my house! I still think of Rhonda from time to time and wish she would make a comeback for old times sake.
Those type of memories work with my baseball card love too. When most people hear the name “Leaf”, they think of the awesome ’90 set that was the first real competitor of premier giant, Upper Deck. The 1990 Leaf set is the most famous, most revisited and most valuable set from Leaf in the junk wax era. But that’s not the first set I think of when I hear Leaf. That mental image belongs to the 1992 set. I didn’t have a lot of the ’90 set because it wasn’t available in the local Wal-Mart and I didn’t make it to the card shops in Albany much, thanks to the healthy fear of the big city instilled by Deputy Dawg.
By 1992, the Leaf craze had settled down a little bit because Stadium Club, Pinnacle, Upper Deck and Ultra were all competing in the premium realm, making them more accessible. Also, scarcity wasn’t as big of an issue as was perceived when Leaf was introduced to collectors a couple years prior. By ’92, while Leaf was more accessible, it was still a top of the line card to own. The much sought after Leaf Gold Rookies were a hot chase too! This is the first Leaf set that I really bought a lot of so the design has stuck with me over the years.
First up; the First Basemen! Here you can get a good luck at the clean silver border with a nice black nameplate to accent. This is the design I see when I close my eyes and imagine Junk Wax Leaf Baseball!
Here are some strong Second Basemen as well. Knoblauch and Alomar were 90’s superstars. DeShields was supposed to be but never really panned out. Julio Franco was as steady a ball player as you would ever want but we really didn’t recognize his true place in the game until he played 100 seasons.
I missed out on Ozzie Smith but these 3 were all good replacements. I always liked this Cal Ripken card because it showed that he was a player that didn’t shy away from contact or getting dirty. That makes his consecutive game streak all the more impressive.
In the early 90’s, Ken Caminiti was the scariest Third Baseman in the game in my opinion. The dude could smash with the bat and had an absolute cannon for an arm. He was really fun to watch!
1992 Leaf has a very nice mixture of aging veterans and young superstars. Kirby Puckett was in his prime, Juan Gonzalez was the hot youngster and Robin Yount was on his way out. That Mariners outfield was a horror to face too with Mitchell, Buhner and Ken Griffey Jr.!
The arms in 1992 were hot! These guys didn’t have pitch counts or innings limits and a couple them destroyed the radar gun. One of the most underrated players of my lifetime is Lee Smith. All this guy did was shut down games. He barely missed 500 saves and that has kept him out of the Hall but he was a dominant pitcher coming out of the bullpen!
My favorite part about 1992 Leaf was the Black Gold cards found one per pack. These came as a variation for all players so they weren’t always great. But when you got a good player, they looked SO good in that binder! I even pulled a Black Gold Checklist in this box!
I snagged up 5 Leaf Gold Rookies but none of these guys were true MLB Superstars during their career. I remember the hype around David Nied in Atlanta. We had a great rotation and the thought of Nied becoming that 5th arm was tantalizing! And Turk Wendell never let collectors down with his cards.
The big rookies in this set are somewhat debatable. Mo Vaughn and Jeff Bagwell were both included in the ’91 Gold Rookie Checklist but ’92 represented all of their first base set inclusions. 1990 through 1993 are hot right now because the entries into the Hall of Fame have been and are coming from these rookie classes for the most part. While there are David Nied’s and Matt Stairs’ to contend with, the chance of pulling the rookie card of a hall of famer always ramps up the excitement a bit.
While this set will always be memorable for me, I just can’t get overly excited about this rip. The Gold Rookies only include 2 key names with Pedro Martinez and Kenny Lofton among the 24 on the checklist. The actual rookie class of Bagwell and Pudge may or may not be considered rookies depending on your standards. There are some big names like Nolan Ryan, Ryne Sandberg, Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas but those names are found in every set of 92. The design saves it from being a complete bust and the Black Gold brings it even to a 3. I bought the entire box for $8 so you can’t really complain about the price of the nostalgic trip. So while this set is clearly not as gross as a Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama, it’s probably not as good as lunch pizza either.
I made my money mowing lawns of a local insurance company and church in Camilla. I ALWAYS had my headphones on! The music in 1992 was about as good as I remember. That was the year that Pearl Jam’s “Ten” was at the height of popularity and I was blown away by “Black”, “Jeremy”, “Even Flow” and “Alive”. While Pearl Jam was #1 on the tuner, there were some others that were pretty hot back in the day. I enjoyed Toad the Wet Sprocket, Nirvana, Cypress Hill, Boyz II Men, The Cure and House of Pain. I wore out the House of Pain CD with “Jump Around” and it finally became useless due to scratches and damage.
Reservoir Dogs – I learned that it is actually possible to form the perfect cast for a movie. I have been a Steve Buscemi fan since that movie. But I also have always enjoyed Michael Madsen, Tarantino and Harvey Keitel. This was such a great film!
Basic Instinct – I learned that rewinding and pausing a movie on the same scene over and over will eventually do enough damage that tracking can’t even fix the picture. Oh, Sharon Stone, you minx!
Unforgiven – This remains my favorite western of all time. I learned that you just don’t mess with Clint Eastwood, even if your name is Gene Hackman. Hackman may have been the boss in “Hoosier’s” but Eastwood was the shooter in this film! Is that play on words lousy or what?
A Few Good Men – This is where we learned that despite Tom Cruise’s ability to fly a plane inverted and take out Jester below the hard deck, he wasn’t quite prepared to handle the truth from Jack Nicholson.
League of Their Own – Perhaps the greatest lesson for a young sports fan; “There’s no crying in baseball!”
Wayne’s World – I learned that if a woman became President, someone would undoubtedly call her Baberham Lincoln. Also, Led Zeppelin didn’t write tunes that people liked; they left that to the BeeGees.
My Cousin Vinny – This one taught me quite a bit about “good ole boy” politics but I can’t seem to ever get past Marisa Tomei.
Mighty Ducks – I’m telling you, the Flying V would never work in real life! I learned about true fiction in this film.
Dead Alive – What is there to say about this one other than I learned that there was a movie out there that could even make ME sick to my stomach.
White Men Can’t Jump – Finally, I already knew this one so didn’t really learn anything new. I had been playing basketball for several years and you would have had trouble sliding a piece of notebook paper between my foot and floor when I jumped.
But in 1992, they did a complete 180! They released high quality card stock with glossy photos and a border design that was much easier on the eyes. They brought back Pro-Vision and also introduced a new All-Star insert set that was reminiscent of other premium brands of the early 90’s. Finally, the checklist was really, really good and is very reflective of a wonderful time in baseball. They moved away from the wax packs and went to more of a cello type wrapper but it was pretty thick and easy to tell if tampered with. I found this box at my LCS for $8.95. The box has 36 packs with 16 cards each.
This year had a pretty good mix of young and old catchers. One of these guys wouldn’t be a catcher for long and one of these guys was a catcher for 100 years.
One of the deepest power positions in the set, First Base featured some true sluggers. Three of these hitters topped 500 home runs and one fell just three short.
The middle infielders didn’t have as much pop but they certainly got on base a ton! And I don’t know that you’ll find a slicker fielding trio than Larkin, Vizquel and Ozzie.
The hot corner was pretty hot in ’92 as well. You had a little bit of everything here with Caminiti’s arm, Williams’ bat and Sheffield’s all around skill.
I could barely fit all the outfielders in one picture. These are 20 legitimate stars from the early 90’s! Sosa, Belle and Justice represented the young guys while Murphy, Strawberry, Henderson and Hawk provided veteran leadership.
There were quite a few Hall of Fame pitchers in 1992. The following year, Maddux would join Glavine and Smoltz to form one of the deadliest rotations in MLB history.
You can bet your bottom dollar that these guys are going to make an appearance in the “Dated Rookie” Project!
Historically, Fleer has been known to swing and miss on the prospects in their sets. They do hit on one or two each year and I suppose Kenny Lofton would be that ONE in 1992.
How about some “Super Stars”? Who are Boggs and Baines looking at?
Another insert set was the “Record Setters”. Joe Carter got a three-photo card for his 100 RBI seasons.
“League Leaders” was a staple in Fleer over the years. Most of the time the insert set featured both AL and NL players on the same card but this year was a bit different.
Here is the nice glossy All-Star insert along with the Roger Clemens Career Highlights Card. These were very nice looking Cards and had a ’92 Fleer Ultra feel.
Here is what I came for! I pulled the 5 best Pro-Vision Cards as far as I’m concerned. The one thing about ’91 that is superior to ’92 is the black border but damn I love these Pro-Vision cards!
Bernie Williams was one of the three big rookies I pulled from this box. Bernie is a fan favorite in the Bronx and a welcome addition to my collection.
The next big rookie I pulled was one of the newest members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, Jim Thome. He was a very classy ball player and one of the best power hitters of the 90’s that didn’t get linked to steroids. Thome was a beast!
The last big rookie I pulled was Pudge Rodriguez, another recent inductee into the Hall. Pudge was one of the best catchers I’ve ever seen play and was a stud on the field and in the Hobby.
This particular set break is the exact reason I do what I do with junk wax sets. I really had forgotten just how good 1992 Fleer was. The cards are in better condition than most boxes I open from the era, the checklist is loaded, the inserts are very retro and you simply can’t beat Pro-Vision Cards. It’s easy for some to label ’92 Fleer as one of those sets that was smack dab in the middle of the Junk era but the set really stands out when you take the time to look at the design and players found in the packs. In a complete rebound from 1991, I’m giving ’92 Fleer a “5” on the Dub-O-Meter. I can’t find a real problem with this set. It truly holds up 25 years later and deserves to be remembered in a much better light than we currently hold it. Give ’92 Fleer a shot and I know you’ll feel the same!
There are a lot of things we see and think could be amazing but simply turn out to be entries into our “crash and burn” memoirs. Anybody remember the NES Power Glove? Yeah, Kelly Kapowski couldn’t even save this abysmal product. This was supposed to change gaming forever but all it did was make me long for the days of the Power Pad. It was virtually impossible to play a video game with the controller on one of your arms. But it had so much promise! I wanted it to work out so badly that I gave it more chances to fail than I normally would have any other toy or game at the time. It was just brutal.
Let’s talk about Caddyshack II for a minute. Was there a better opportunity for a great sequel in the comedy genre in the 80’s? I can do a whole separate post about terrible sequels but the original Caddyshack remains one of the funniest movies in the history of cinema and deserved a better follow up. I just KNEW it was going to be awesome and marked it down as a sure thing. But when you replace Rodney Dangerfield with Jackie Mason and remove Bill Murray from a movie cast, you just can’t expect it to be as good as the first. My heart hurts a little when I happen to catch CS II on the tube nowadays. How could something that was destined to be so right turn out so wrong?
Then you have some things that start out blazing and even have a reasonable enough run that you get sucked in more than usual. Notwithstanding the 2017 UGA Bulldogs (which I still love) in that particular scenario, think about Guns N Roses. They put out pure gold when they released Appetite for Destruction in 1987. They gave us such gems as “Paradise City”, “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child Of Mine” but by 1990, they were kicking guys out of the band, showing up late for gigs or just not showing up altogether. What could have been a magical run as one of the best rock bands ever was derailed by narcissism, greed and hard drugs; or more simply put, the 80’s!
So where am I going with this? You know it always ties into my sports card addiction and this is no exception. I’ve started a new personal project that is related to this premise of Optimism Bias. I started collecting in the late 80’s and there were players that we all had to have and pulling them from folded up wax wrappers was the first step of retirement planning at 10. During that time, the illustrious Junk Wax Era as it’s so lovingly referred to, we firmly believed that these 3×5 pieces of cardboard were going to make us rich. We coveted certain cards like some would bitcoins today. All we needed were toploaders and time and we would be set for life.
Well, like many of the above examples, that didn’t really work out as planned either. A big reason is because the card market was more saturated than any early teen could understand or even be aware of. We didn’t know that there were 10 billion Ken Griffey Jr ’89 Donruss Rated Rookies floating around. What we did know was that Beckett Monthly was our version of Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money” and if it was on the hot list, we were investing! Another reason the financial planning hit a Cecil Fielder sized bump in the road was that most of the players didn’t pan out. That’s the reason I’m more focused on with this project.
With the help of my Twitter buddy Nick (@
Jim Abbott was a pitcher for 10 years in the majors despite the fact that was missing his right hand. He actually pitched a no hitter in 1993 and had a reasonable career but his rookie Cards never took off like I thought they would. He finished his career with an 87-108 career record, a 4.25 ERA and less than 1,000 K’s so he wasn’t a statistical monster by any stretch. But I always admired Abbott and stocked up on all of his rookies.
Sandy Alomar Jr was not exactly a bust but he wasn’t even the best Alomar in baseball at the time. He played a robust 20 year career and hit for a .273 average but with only 112 home runs. He won both AL ROY and a Gold Glove in 1990 so his cards were hot but his card values always fell a little short. I still have Alomar as a top 3 catcher from my collecting youth but he’s not making many lists in 2018 with collectors.
Eric Anthony is one of the players that I went after hard! I had a ton of these Score rookies as well as the 90 Donruss Rated Rookies. Even though Anthony played 9 seasons, he did not have a career that will ever equate to Hobby Love. He hit for a career .231 average, never hit 20 home runs, never had double digit steals and never topped 80 RBI in a season. All of my wishful thinking was for naught. He was a home run crusher in the minors with 31 in 1989 and his first MLB Hit was a 414 foot bomb in the Astrodome. But he never put it all together.
Every collector worth his salt knows the name Gregg Jefferies. As this project grows, I will make it a point to find a 1989 Topps Future Star Autograph. That was the first card that was going to make me rich. Ken Griffey Jr wasn’t quite there yet and Jefferies was as sure a bet as ever. After being drafted in 1985, he won Minor League POY in both ’86 and ’87 before being called up in late August 1988. He hit .328 for the remainder of 1988, which led to the Mets trading their starting 2B, Wally Backman, to the Twins to make room for the young star. He responded by hitting .258 in 1989 and the rest is history. He had a career that was probably better than most on this list with a career .289 avg, 196 steals and 2 All-Star appearances. But his career was supposed to be better than all the guys on this list. It was just supposed to be a lot better than it actually was.
This is the guy that makes me unable to trust Aaron Judge. While Judge put up mammoth numbers that make Maas look like Rafael Belliard, Kevin had his own amazing rookie season in 1990. He set a record for reaching 10 home runs in the fewest at bats (72) and ultimately hit 21 home runs in only 79 games as a rookie. For you mathematicians out there, that is a home run every 3+ games which, when extrapolated over a full season, would be about 45. He played 148 games the next year and hit 23 home runs but his 5 year career would close with a .230 average and only 65 home runs. It sure was fun collecting him in 1990 though!
Big Ben McDonald was one of the hot young arms in Baltimore with Curt Schilling and Gregg Olson. He won a Gold Medal as a member of the 1988 Olympic Team in Seoul, Korea and is an inductee in the College Baseball Hall of Fame. But his major league career did not meet the expectations of a young Dub who was hoarding his 1990 Fleer rookie cards. I expected more than his 78-70 record but he just didn’t get it done.
Another Yankee makes the early list with Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens. You may be too young to even remember Bam Bam from the Flintstones but he carried a wooden club around and smashed things with it. Thus, Meulens was nicknamed Bam Bam because of his propensity to smash things. In 1990, Kevin Maas was at 1B and Bam Bam was at 3rd and I had yet to fully develop my hatred for the Evil Empire. In 1987, he hit .300 with 28 home runs and 103 RBI at Single A so he was a hot commodity when his cards started getting produced a couple years later. Not only did he never hit .300 or 28 home runs or 103 RBI in a major league season, his career totals never reached those numbers either. He mustered a .220 avg, 15 home runs and 53 RBI over 4 years with the Yankees.
I’m going to add Planier in a Red Sox jersey at some point but this one is a start. I do like Plantier’s autograph as it puts many players today to shame. Plantier finished 8th in ROY voting in 1991 despite only playing 53 games. But in 148 at bats, he hit 11 bombs while maintaining a .331 average. After a disappointing follow up in 1992, he was sent to the Padres. He had a very nice season in 1993 hitting 34 bombs and collecting 100 RBI but that was as good as it ever got by a long shot. He would only have one other double digit home run season and wouldn’t hit more than 41 RBI again either. After a promising start, he finished his career with an average of .243 and 91 home runs.
Here is the pitcher that helped provide Braves fans the wonderful career of Chipper Jones. He was drafted 14th overall in 1990 and the Braves were so bad, Van Poppel said he would not sign with them if they chose him. They didn’t choose him and instead drafted Chipper Jones. They would then go on and win 14 straight division titles. What did Van Poppel do? He put together a career shorter than the Braves run (11 seasons) and finished with a career 40-52 record along with a 5.58 ERA. I was in on him as a rookie and his 90 Upper Deck is a classic but I’m grateful he didn’t like my Braves that year.
Greg Vaughn was a home run blaster for the Brewers and a mainstay in my binder in the early 90’s. He really had a serviceable career but he was the #4 overall pick in 1986 and had high expectations placed in him. He was a 4x All-Star, hit 355 home runs and even won a Silver Slugger award in 1998. He also hit 50 home runs in 1998 but was overshadowed by a couple guys named McGwire and Sosa. He never hit for an average, finishing with a career number of .242 but he also clubbed over 1,000 RBI. He was a very solid home run hitter in the 90’s but is mostly a forgotten man in the Hobby today.
Ole Jerome Walton was quite the tease. The Cubs were on my TV every day thanks to WGN and Walton was somebody I got to see often. He won the ROY in 1989 by hitting .293 and stealing 24 bases in only 116 games. He even had a 30 game hitting streak that season. Together with Dwight Smith, a future addition to Dated Rookies, the youth movement in Chicago, along with veterans André Dawson, Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston and Mark Grace was supposed to translate into big things and they did win the NL East in 1989. But like Walton’s career, they dropped off in 1990. Walton would settle into a career backup role and only muster 25 home runs and 58 stolen bases while hitting .269.
The last player on the list for this first installment is Todd Zeile. Zeile’s career finished better than most on this list but didn’t match the hype that came with his rookie cards. He played 16 seasons and hit for a .265 average to go along with 253 home runs and 1,110 RBI. He topped 30 home runs and 100 RBI just once in that 16 year career and never touched .300. He had a good but not great career but I had a ton of his rookie cards and was hoping that they would one day give me a shot at early retirement. It was not to be and his career highlight for me will always be his appearance on Seinfeld.
Everyone who is over the age of 30 likely remembers the Sears Wishbook. This 600 page publication had just about everything your heart could desire. Kids loved this book but now that I have a couple kids of my own, I can imagine that parents didn’t get the same enjoyment from it. I found the 1989 book online and was able to sift through the entire 683 pages. It brought back some great memories but one thing that stuck out to me was how expensive some of the items were some 28 years ago. If they seem expensive now, imagine how that felt in 1989 currency!
For example, can you believe that VCR’s in 1989 were as much as $300? You can buy 8-10 BlueRay players for $300 today. You had to rewind tapes and constantly adjust tracking on your VCR too! I do remember these old sports videos though and they were certainly worth the $15 price tag.
You had to have a TV to watch those videos on as well. I’m pretty sure we actually had the middle TV when I was a kid. This is a 27 inch TV for $750! Computer monitors are bigger than 27 inches now. But these were top of the line in 1989.
And what about communications? A normal corded phone would run you anywhere from $50-$100. If you wanted a cordless, it would cost upwards of $125! For the fun loving teen, there was also the Garfield phone for $50. I’m going to guess that this phone outsold all other designs throughout the course of history.
If you wanted personal music, that was going to cost you as well. Some of these Walkman’s were over $100! We are talking about cassette playing, wired headphones, AM/FM devices that cost a Benjamin. I totally feel for my parents and what I probably put them through.
Video games were certainly more important to me back then than VCR’s. And for half the price of a VCR, you could own the sweet Nintendo Entertainment System. No piece of technology has ever been more important to me throughout the course of my life. And just look at these games; Friday the 13th, Marble Madness, Double Dribble, Excitebike and Tecmo Bowl! I really think time could have stood still in 1989 and I would have been just fine.
There were other choices in 1989 for video game consoles but I was a couple years away from the 16-bit Sega and had outgrown the Atari.
If you wanted your gaming on the go, you could opt for the GameBoy. I played it a ton but I actually never owned a GameBoy of my own. I never really wanted one all that bad but I did enjoy the occasional playing of my friends games.
Some people were lucky enough to even have a computer. This Commodore wasn’t much more costly than the Nintendo but that didn’t include the monitor and the mouse. If you wanted those necessities, you were approaching $500. And you certainly had to have the disk drive, which was another $200. By the time you threw in the printer, you were looking at a $1,000 setup. The games were pretty awesome though!
For the gamer on a budget, you could always go with these gems. I had several different baseball and football handhelds during my youth.
When I had to put down the video games and actually go outside and play, I would throw baseballs at my pitch return. I threw at that net for hours on end and learned just as much about fielding as I did pitching.
I always wanted one of these pool tables as well but the closest I ever got was the small pool table in the picture. This wasn’t the easiest table to navigate but I remember playing quite a few games on it.
Then there was the clothing. Pajamas and Sweatsuits were my go to choices back in the day. The Nintendo sweatsuit was pretty sweet. And the team pajamas were pretty awesome too.
I’m pretty sure I had one of these get ups as well but it was UGA. I think there is a picture floating around somewhere with me wearing it. Maybe I’ll find that one day.
And of course, I had a couple of pairs of the sweatpants with the team names down the leg. I had some bicycle shorts too but they weren’t Lakers design.
I had to include this because who didn’t love a great sleeping bag. I remember taking mine to spend the night parties and zipping myself up in it to get all cozy. My daughter sleeps in her sleeping bag now in her bed so kids must still like them.
Finally, for the collectors out there, Sears offered some pretty sweet sports card deals. They had the exclusive Sears Ingots, which I bought at a recent card show(’85 version). They also had “Talking Baseball”, Baseball Star Pop Ups, the Baseball Card Collector’s Case, Price Guides, Binders and more! But item #8 could be had for $14.90 and it’s one of my favorite football sets from my youth; 1989 Topps.
I recently picked up a wax box of 1989 Topps to relive some of the magic of the greatest year ever. Even though some of the key rookie cards from this set are found in the Traded Set, the base set is still loaded with stars and some of the classic rookies from 1989. I love the box and wrappers from 1989 and who will argue over a .45 cent pack?
There were also box bottom cards as was customary for Topps in the 80’s. This year was Players of the Week and I picked up Week’s 13, 14, 15 and 16.
Also a customary inclusion in late 80’s football were the 1,000 Yard Club cards. These were glossy inserts at 1 per pack and covered a plethora of players that hit 1,000 yards. There are familiar names here!
The late 80’s were loaded with Hall of Fame and Star QB’s in the NFL. I pulled Boomer, Jim Kelly, Moon, Cunningham, Elway, Marino and many others.
It’s hard to beat the stud running backs in 1989. Bo Jackson and Christian Okoye were on the way in while Herschel and Craig were mid stride and Tony Dorsett and Eric Dickerson were wrapping up their illustrious careers.
Wide Receiver was not devoid of stars either. Jerry Rice and John Taylor were both 1,000 yard receivers on the same team. Sterling Sharpe, Cris Carter and Andre Reed were some of my favorites.
In 1989, Tight Ends were more blockers than pass catchers. While that isn’t too much the case today, these were some good pass catchers back in the day. And we have the rare Jay Novachek in a Cardinals uniform.
The Defensive Line in 1989 was nasty! Bruce Smith, Richard Dent, Chris Doleman, Reggie White and Howie Long?? These dudes were absolute beasts!
Things didn’t get easier for the offense if they got to the second level of the defense either. LT and Mike Singletary were legendary at the linebacker position but all of these guys were studly.
Finally, the big hitters were in the secondary. Ronnie Lott was a man among men and Joey Browner and Rod Woodson could cover as well as they could hit. Now I am pretty sure Chuck Cecil wouldn’t have had a long career with today’s NFL safety rules. This guy was not scared of anything and he would absolutely take out receivers any time they came across the middle.
The Record Breakers were pretty dang good players too! Tim Brown, Eric Dickerson, Steve Largent and Dan Marino are all 80’s Icons!
I pulled 5 of the League Leader cards and I’ve always loved the Herschel/Dickerson card.
I pulled a ton of these team leader cards as well but I’ll only picture a few to show the design.
The “Super Rookies” were solid in ’89 with the inclusion of Brian Blades, Mark Rypien and Chris Spielman. Though there were two others I pulled that deserve their own photo spots.
Michael Irvin was the man and was one of the key players that helped turn the Cowboys around in the 90’s. This RC is always a welcome addition.
Then there is the gem of the base set, Thurman Thomas! I used Thurman so many times on Tecmo because the Bills were loaded. I wish they had won at least one of those Super Bowls because those guys deserved one.
Because I wanted to make this post complete, I also swiped the Traded Set for $7.95 from my LCS. Not including the big guys, there are still some solid names in this Traded Set that make it well worth the price. Steve Young, Don Beebe and Herschel headline the non-big guys. And I didn’t forget about you Scotty; Mr. Steve Grogan is included!
Here are the studs (except one) in the traded set. The rookies of Aikman, Deion, DT and Rison make this Traded Set worth so much more than the cost!
The best card in the entire 1989 Base and Traded Set is this awesome Barry Sanders. I love this card and it might be my favorite 80’s football card!
I don’t think anyone would argue that the 1989 Topps set is loaded and a great addition to any collection. I give it an easy “5” on the Dub-O-Meter because the design is classic 80’s and the checklist is star studded! This was such a great rookie year and still included many big stars that were either in the middle of their careers or winding down. There is really nothing I don’t like about this set, except for the 28 year old gum!