Thursday 18 December 2008

1980 Topps Baseball variations

I realised I needed to attack my 'Pursuit for 1980 Topps' with a bit more gusto and started to search e-bay US for some sellers with the 'complete your set' tag. I stumbled across, to my surprise, quite a few. There were two types; those that said they had some 1980's Topps and those that listed all the numbers they had available. I purchased 100 from 1 seller and 75 from another on the same day. The 100 cards charge for postage was $13.95 ! (When it did arrive the postage cost $8.50- that is some very expensive packaging.). The second lot of 75 cost a mere $5.00, but has yet to arrive. Hmmmm. I'm not here to talk about the irregular postage system but in my search I stumbled across:

An unopened pack of 3 1980 Topps cards free with Squirt (washing liquid?, Actually a soft drink- thanks Steve.),

An unopened pack of 3 1980 Topps cards free with Hunts bread and

An unopened pack of 3 1980 Burger King 'Pitch, Hit & Run cards.

These were according to the seller '...regular 1980's Topps cards...plus... the possibility of a Rickey Henderson Rookie...' I didn't think for a minute that these would be un-searched. I have also come to appreciate the variety of places that baseball cards can be obtained like cheese, dog food, fast food places and now bread! Plus my oddball meter did a little dance. I bid and won all three.

They arrived today.
In the 1980 squirt packet:
A squirt card with Lifetime .300 hitters statistics on the back ,
#421 Doug Bird (needed)
#596 Rick Matula
#662 Red Sox future stars.

In the 1980 Hunts bread packet:
A Hunts bread card with Players with 3000-or-more hits statistics on the back, oddly with a O-Pee-Chee branding,
#216 Phil Mankowski
#417 Craig Chamberlain (needed)
#598 Fred Kendall.

Finally the 1980 Burger King:
Hang on a minute, red backs! Not blue! What is going on here?
Luckily the Burger King card is a checklist and I have realised that this is not the regular 1980 Topps set, but rather a 33 card set of Pitchers, Hitters and Runners. Hence the name.
It looks like Topps, feels like Topps, made by Topps but not Topps.
Included was:
#3 Rollie Fingers
#16 Keith Hernandez
#32 Frank Taveras

Sadly I have missed the Pitch, Hit and Run competition running from July 7th -13th, its for boys and girls aged 8 to 13 years. Oh well.

If you can shed some light on these cards, it would be greatly appreciated.

3 comments:

Steve Gierman said...

Squirt is a citrus soft drink. Honestly, I'm not overly familiar with the cards that were with those products in 1980, but I am aware of most of them.

jackplumstead said...

Thanks Steve. A soft drink hey. Cards with soft drinks- brilliant!

night owl said...

I'm not sure how the Burger King cards were issued. I think they actually provided them at the restaurant with your purchase (not the whole set, probably just a handful). My memory is hazy on that. But I love those cards.

I have a couple Burger King Yankees from 1979 and they're great because they look like Topps cards, but some of the poses are different than the regular Topps issue.