2012 Topps Archives Blaster

If you have followed this blog at all in the past 4 years, you will know that one of my favourite baseball cards sets is the 1980 Topps. It's not the prettiest, there are no game used, autographs, short printed, shiny X fractors to find. Just a simple straight 726 cards to collect.

There are some challenges hidden amongst the checklist, everyone knows about the Rickey Henderson RC, but Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, George Brett and Ozzie Smith are valued pretty high. Just don't tell COMC as there are about 70 Nolan Ryan's for sale, a $15.00 card can be bought for about $1.50, the O-Pee-Chee variation for about $5.00.

Topps used the 1980 design as part of the 2012 Archives and as I one of the card carrying members 1980 Topps Appreciation Society, I felt strongly compelled to collect all 50 cards in the 1980 design.

Follow my slow trawl.

In an effort to boost my fledgling collection, I purchased a blaster. I would buy a box but the postage costs are too high, etc, etc...I've said it all before.

The blaster contains 8 packs and each pack has 8 picture cards.

 

Pack 1:
#28 Melky Cabrera Giants
#44 Cal Ripkin Jr Orioles
#84 Nyjer Morgamn Brewers
#136 David Ortiz Red Sox
#139 Ivan Nova Yankees
#187 Nolan Ryan Astros
#190 Josh Hamilton Rangers
#683D-JV Joey Votto

Pack 2:
#34 Jaime Garcia Cardinals
#37 Jose Valverde Tigers
#80 Troy Tulowitzki Rockies
#87 Clay Buchholz Red Sox
#125 David Freese Cardinals
#154 Starlin Castro Cubs
#175 Justin Morneau Twins
#176 Wilie McCovey Giants gold stamp

Pack 3:
#17 Mat Latos Reds
#47 Drew Pomeranz Rockies
#69 Ryan Zimmerman Nationals
#98 Johan Santana Mets
#120 Tim Lincecum Giants
#148 R.A.Dickey Mets
#195 Brandon Morrow Blue Jays
#77C-EH Eric Hosmer

Pack 4:
#8 Matt Moore
#12 Pablo Sandoval Giants
#61 Brain McCann Braves
#65 Jordan Zimmermann Nationals
#105 Torii Hunter Angels
#171 Lucas Duda Mets
#151 Stephen Strasburg Nationals
#530 Dave Winfield Padres gold stamp

Pack 5:
#41 Corey Hart Brewers
#42 Aroldis Chapman Reds
#53 Adam Wainwright Cardinals
#67 Justin Verlander Tigers
#118 Desmond Jennings Bay Rays
#141 J.P.Arencibia Blue Jays
#169 Michael Morse Nationals
#67S-TL Tim Lincecum sticker

Pack 6:
#2 Nick Swisher Yankees
#40 Nelson Cruz Rangers
#58 Tommy Hanson Braves
#111 John Axford Brewers
#117 George Brett Royals
#162 Jayson Werth Nationals
#168 Carlos Santana Indians
#69DE-15 Joe Morgan deckle edge

Pack 7:
#78 Micuel Montero D-backs
#94 Anibal Sanchez Marlins
#130 Giancarlo Stanton Marlins
#145 Howie Kendrick Angels
#173 Daniel Hudson D-backs gold parallel
#192 Brad Peacock Athletics
#199 Mark Reynolds Orioles
#218 Dave Righetti Yankees SP

Pack 8:
#18 Tom Seaver Mets
#52 Geovany Soto Cubs
#57 Josh Beckett Red Sox
#102 Dee Gordon Dodgers
#109 Cliff Lee Phillies
#152 Johnny Cueto Reds
#159 David Price Bay Rays
#227 John Olerud Blue Jays SP

Blaster breakdown:
13 1954 Topps
14 1971 Topps
14 1980 Topps (9 needed)
14 1984 Topps
1 gold parallel
2 short prints
2 gold stamped reprints
1 1977 cloth insert
1 1967 sticker
1 1969 deckle edge
1 1968 3D

This is such a nice set.

Do I need more 1980 Topps cards?

A pile of 1980 Topps cards, consisting of 133 cards with no duplicates, became available on ebayUK a few days ago. It has been well over a year since I collected the last few I needed to complete the whole set.
I have a few duplicates tucked safely within a box, my complete set neatly placed in 9 card sleeves (shown below) and the original 84 1980 Topps, the cards that initiated my descent into baseball card collecting in the first place, displayed for my regular enjoyment.

 

Despite all this, I just couldn't help myself, I had to bid to win these cards.

Why? I don't need them.

There are other cards missing from my collection, I could concentrate on those.

It is no secret that the 1980 Topps is high on my list of favourite sets, but so are the '50's Bowman's

What motivates us poor collectors into accumulating like this?

Am I alone or is there a set of cards that drives you so mad that you just must gathering them?

2012 Topps Archives 1980 Topps design.

  

A set that featured in the early days of this blog was the 1980's Topps set. As I explained back then, the 1980's Topps cards were the first baseball cards I owned -EVER.  Cards #101-150 from the 2012 Topps Archives are in the 1980 design. So there is no better way to celebrate collecting all 726 cards from the original 1980's set but to try and collect the 50 cards available in the same style.

1980 George Brett

2012 Archives George Brett

2012 Topps Archives
1980 Base design
101 Adrian Gonzalez
102 Dee Gordon
103 Ricky Romero
104 Yovani Gallardo
105 Torii Hunter
106 Alex Gordon
107 Josh Johnson
108 Cliff Lee
109 Catfish Hunter
110 Jose Bautista
111 John Axford
112 Todd Helton
113 Ryan Howard
114 Jason Motte
115 Gio Gonzalez
116 Alex Avila
117 George Brett
118 Desmond Jennings
119 Yu Darvish
120 Tim Lincecum
121 Heath Bell
122 Dustin Pedroia

123 Ryan Vogelsong

124 Brandon Phillips

125 David Freese

126 Rickie Weeks

127 Evan Longoria

128 Shin-Soo Choo

129 Darryl Strawberry

130 Mike Stanton

131 Elvis Andrus

132 Ben Zobrist

133 Mark Trumbo

134 Chris Carpenter

135 Mike Napoli

136 David Ortiz

137 Jason Heyward

138 Joe DiMaggio

139 Ivan Nova

140 Buster Posey

141 J.P. Arencibia

142 Ozzie Smith

143 Marco Scutaro

144 Ike Davis

145 Howie Kendrick

146 Jarrod Parker

147 Justin Masterson

148 R.A. Dickey

149 Dustin Ackley

150 Clayton Kershaw

28/06/2012 48 to go 130, 149 from packs
10/08/2012 42 to go 121,122,125, 137,147 from The Angels, in Order.
16/10/2012 33 to go 102, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 124, 135, 144 from Home of the Toddfather
19/11/2012 24 to go 105, 108, 117, 118, 120, 136, 139, 141, 145 from packs
24/01/2013 19 to go 101, 103, 104, 106,107 COMC
12/02/2013 14 to go 110, 109, 116, 119, 126 COMC
25/03/2013 8 to go 128, 132, 133, 134, 142, 149 COMC
11/04/2013 0 to go 123, 127, 131, 138, 140, 143, 146, 150 COMC

Completed  11th April 2013

Trade with Section 36

There is plenty of misery in the Red Sox camp, but the ever positive Section 36 has dissected, sew back together and then dissected again to recent failings in the Red Sox franchise. It's no choke (see what I did there), he is a real fan sitting week in, week out, in what he calls the best seats in the Fenway house-Section 36.
Who better to make a Red Sox trade with than a diehard fan and New Hampshire resident. My package of Red Sox made its way to Concord in New Hampshire and before long a Red Sox heavy package arrived in Westgate.

Ron wrote a short message on the back of a baseball score sheet. It is either of his own making or do they give these out at games?  I remember seeing Kevin Coster recording the score in Field of Dreams, at the game where Archibald Graham's statistics flash up onto the screen. I am presuming that it is quite common. Is this correct?.
Thanks to Ron at Section 36. Always nice to trade Red Sox for Red Sox.

1982 Topps Sticker Album

Sticker Albums. What a lovely invention.
I'm not alone in my fondness of sticker albums and have collected football (soccer) sticker albums for years.

Recently an incredibly nice looking 1982 Topps Baseball sticker album, two unopened packs and a batch of roughly 200 stickers ( a few short of the 260 required for a completed album) came up for auction on a popular selling site. At £2.99 including postage I just couldn't pass this opportunity away.

Although the 1982 set is one of Topps earlier sticker albums. A name that is all too familiar now Panini, an Italian company, have produced sports sticker albums since the 1960's. Back then the stickers were called figurines, meaning literally 'little figures' and were not actually self adhesive stickers. From 1961 until 1970 the 'figurines' were attached to the album using glue and were sold per 'sachet.'
Panini had produced Calciatori (player) albums and figurines for 10 years and it wasn't until the 1970 World Cup in Mexico that Panini produced an album for the international market. For a really good look at this album the 1970 completed album pages, has a page by page completed album. Some of the players depicted have faces only a mother could love.This album semi-completed was selling for around £450.

When Topps entered the sticker market, Fleer had produced stickers for a number of years. For a far greater knowledge than I will ever have, read The Fleer Sticker Project.
The 1982 Topps Baseball Sticker Album is 32 pages. There are 260 stickers to collect to complete the album. Stickers came 5 per pack. No surprise that the album and stickers were made in Italy. The stickers are all the same size, roughly 2 1/2 inches by 2 inches and come in a variety of backgrounds. American League All-stars have a gold background, National league All-Stars have a silver background, read into that what you will. The NL and AL batting and pitching leaders have a red/white/blue background.
The 1981 World Series have yellow/red and yellow/blue backgrounds.
The rest of the base stickers have just solid red or blue backgrounds.
There are 8 stickers that I definitely do not have, which come under the heading of 1981 highlights #113 to #120.
The album and stickers are in lovely condition and I will refrain from the temptation of placing the stickers within the album

Topps Million card giveaway

I had completely forgotten about some packs of Topps 2010 Series 1 and opened them at Pursuit of Red Sox. Two of the packs contained Million card giveaways. This appeared like a pretty good idea at the time, but when I obtained a giveaway card way back in April the results was pretty poor, to say he least. So I wasn't filled with optimism.

Here's one I opened earlier- 1987 Topps Don Sutton.

I wasn't hopeful that these cards would lead to anything of any note but the

#TMC-4 Ichiro became...

1972 Topps #110 Ron Hunt Expos.

The #TMC-6 Mickey Mantle became...

1969 Topps #176 Joe Azcue Indians

Wow that was a big surprise and improvement. What are my chances of getting these sent to the UK?

1966 and 1967 Topps with a dash of '56

Following on from the 1955 Bowman, the same seller had a small stack of cards from 1966 and 1967 Topps cards for sale. I actively search out 1964 Topps and have a few '66 and '67, so this was a lucky find. What came as a surprise was the added bonus of the 1956 Topps #280 Jim Gilliam. I had noticed on the auction picture, a solitary '56 Topps but it was partially hidden so I concluded that it was either in poor condition or so badly aligned that it was a waste of the sellers time to list it separately.

When it comes to vintage, I apologies to those offended by referring to 1956 as vintage, they appear rarely so I am not concerned by condition. One day maybe, but today I am happy to add to my collection. The card arrived and is in good condition, a little high on the card but still great. So the bonus was the '66 and '67 Topps.

A final look at 1980 Topps Baseball

Here is one final look at the complete set of 1980 Topps before I move onto pastures new. I was given my original 84 cards in 1980 by a school 'friend' they consisted of 19 Red Sox, 21 White Sox,15 Tigers and 1 card from the other teams in the MLB. Although I made a serious decision to complete the set in September 2008. The decision to collect baseball cards, and ultimately the 1980 Topps set, started in October 1980 almost 30 years ago. Here's to patience. Enjoy.

The opening page with cards numbered 1 to 9.

The final page with cards numbered 721 to 726 and the backs of 712 to 720.

That's a wrap!! 1980 Topps completed

I set out in September 2008 to collect all 726 cards of the 1980's Topps set. They were the first baseball cards that I ever received way back in 1980 and it started a modest obsession with baseball card collecting.

Thanks to many people and to Brian who sent the last three cards I needed. I had intended to look at each card indivdually but another collector beat me to the punch, so it is back to the drawing board to think of another pursuit.

2004 Topps Bazooka Baseball

It is vary rare that this happens, so when this particular item, a whole box of cards-24 packs! of 2004 Topps Bazooka , appeared on e-bayUK I was fairly determined to acquire it.

And acquire it I did.

Odd thing though was that it didn't rise higher than my initial bid. Considering the rarity of such an item I presumed that it would go higher.
Each 2004 Topps Bazooka Baseball sealed box contains 24 packs (each pack including one sugarless slice of bubble gum) of 8 cards each in a 330 card base set. The base set is 300 cards with 30 cards being printed in 2 variations. Each box will contain THREE Memorabilia cards. Parallel sets: Minis 1:1 and Red Chunks 1:1. Inserts: Tattoos 1:4 - 4-on-1 Stickers 1:4 - Comics 1:4 - Stand-Ups 1:8 - and Relics Memorabilia cards 1:8 (Blasts > Game Used Bats #'d to 25; Adventures, Game Worn Jerseys #'d to 25; and One Liners Retired Game Worn Jerseys - #'d to 25).

This appeared to be an underrated set. The target demographics being children.

I have opened all the packs in 4 stages. I hesitated at opening them all in one go. Trying desperately to 'eek' this out for as long as I could stand.

From the 24 packs I pulled:

118 base cards, 3 doubles (39% of the set), although this caused some initial confusion as some of the cards are printed with two different images on the front. There were 3 cards with both variations in this box.

24 Mini parallels

22 Red Chunk parallels

and the following inserts:

7 Comic cards (1 double)

5 4in 1 stickers

5 Tattoos

5 Stand-ups (1 double)

and finally 2 Game -used Relic cards, although the box specifically states that there would be 3 in every box. Is 5 years too late to complain to Topps?

Bazooka One-liners #BOL-WS Willie Stargell

Bazooka Adventures #BA-AR2 Alex Rodriguez

My initial reaction is one of excitement as it is a novelty to actually open a full box of baseball cards. Overall as a collector I am pleased with the selection. Inserting only 5 base cards out of 8 may not be the ideal way for set collectors, however it adds to the uniqueness of the product.

2009 Topps Walmart 'Black' variation

I recently received a blaster of 2009 Topps and was surprised to find that it was a Walmart 'Black' variation blaster. Although I am not sure of the scarcity of these cards, I do know thanks to Things done to cards, way back in March 2009, that is was meant to be clandestine affair but Topps soon revealed that there was two variations on the 2009 Topps. The other being in Target stores and each had a different barcode...code. The person who bought these for me would have been unaware of this so I received these by dumb luck.

So what is the ratio difference between these black border variation and white bordered? Or they just as common?

Only 7 1980 Topps to go!

I have moved a great deal closer to my 'Pursuit of 1980 Topps'.

Thanks to the generous nature of a self-proclaimed philanthropist called Max.

Max sent along 17 cards from my 1980 Topps wants list. So that leaves only 7 cards to go until I complete the whole set.

So if you happen to have;

#435 Don Gullett,
#448 Jim Wohlford,
#501 Rennie Stennett,
#512 Jose Cardenal,
#514 Steve Ontiveros,
#659 George Bamberger,
#684 Frazier/Herr/O'Brien,

lying about somewhere and feel they need a good home. Please get in contact.

1980 Topps #580 Nolan Ryan

Another one of the harder to get 1980's Topps cards. Mr Nolan Ryan. 7 no hitters. At this stage in 1979 he was only at his second club, although transfered to the Astros in 1980.
24 to go.

1980 Topps #100 Johnny Bench

Following quickly behind Pete Rose was card #100 Johnny Bench, which leaves me perilously close to the 727 cards needed for the complete set. This is one of the more 'collectible' cards from the set, so I was pleased to have secured it.
As I said in the previous post I am edging closer, one card at a time.

1980 Topps Pete Rose

I have finally arrived at the 700 mark of my 'Pursuit of 1980's Topps'. I captured card number 540, a Mr Pete Rose, from e-bay recently, which took me a step closer to completing the set. Only 27 cards to go. One card at a time is fine by me.