I’ll probably go into everything that happened on the show tomorrow, but I wanted to focus on one thing I received from Angus before we traveled down.
He showed it on his blog a week or two ago and I knew it was coming my way.
It was a nice, wrapped stack of Fleer stamps from 1982. I’ve mentioned this set a few times on the blog this year, most notably during the “Elusive ’80s Cards, Really?” series I’m doing (there’s another one coming in the next few weeks).
Angus picked it up at a card show in Detroit and assumed it was the entire set. I did that too. But something in the back of my mind thought something was wrong.
This set was issued in strips of 10 cards. I remember buying one pack of it. After seeing the Topps stickers in 1981 and then again in 1982, I was interested in Fleer’s reaction. I was quite disappointed. They were actually postage stamps, with a blank back. You licked them – apparently – and put them in an included book, which I never saw. Because I lost interest as soon as I saw what they were.
But in the forty years that have passed, I’ve realized that there are Dodgers in that group that I need. And all the other guys are players I followed avidly in the early 80s. Yes, of course I want them.
So I gratefully accepted them and couldn’t wait to unpack them. The cellophane wrapping on it looked like it had been there since 1982. It was closed tight. And because I knew these came in strips from packages, I knew someone had separated them all and put them in a pile.
The Fernando at the top is a nice temptation, but it’s also the first card in the set, which arrived immediately after Fernandomania and the Dodgers won the World Series. I was looking forward to seeing what the Dodgers looked like after all these years (I only had the Cey, Garvey, and the Lasorda-Fernando combo).
Okay, “in the back of my brain”, you were right. Three duplicates at once. If you look at the tiny numbers in the corner, the numbers skip and are missing 2, 4, 6 and 10 (Monday, Baker, Guerrero and Lopes).
That pattern continued for the next team, the Reds. Multiples of Dave Collins, Davey Concepcion and Ray Knight, but no George Foster, Frank Pastore, Ken Griffey or Ron Oester. Another feature I didn’t like when I first saw this is that there are no IDs on anything. It’s a good thing I already know most of these guys, but some of the action cards, like Collins, are tricky.
The pattern of missing stamps and duplicates continued throughout the stack. Although the initially packed stack appeared to be the entire set (there are 242 stamps in the set and I counted 226 stamps in total), this stack is not quite half the set.
In reality,
Anyone want a Steve Rogers?
Al Oliver?
Dear Lou?
UL Washington? (Or the man behind him with a camera?)
I have now entered the wonderful world of dupe stamps.
Still, there were many beautiful, new photos of those super-famous players.
Joe Sambito on the phone, Pete Rose pointing his mouth at Concepcion and Bowa, Stargell and Bibby living it up, Rose answering a question into an early ESPN microphone, Eddie Murray angry, Gary Carter smiling, Dave Parker and Steve Carlton at the All-Star Game, and action shots of Nolan Ryan, Carl Yastrzemski and Rod Carew.
It was a lot of fun watching it, even between all the reruns.
I also surprised myself by immediately knowing which players were in that strip of 10 stamps I bought in ’82.
Here they are: Willie Wilson, Chet Lemon, Dave Concepcion, Leon Durham, George Hendrick, Phil Niekro, Neil Allen, Rich Gossage, Paul Molitor and Jose Cruz. No, I don’t remember the order.
I wish the things I encountered now could stick in my mind the way things from 1982 do.
Also, the stamps ended on a high note, as one of the last ones I pulled (or one of the last six) was this:
I have never seen this photo in the 46 years since it was taken. Fernando Valenzuela and Warren Spahn together. No explanation whatsoever from 1982 Fleer Stamps as to why or how this happened, but I’m so glad it’s in the set and I’ll be able to put it in my binder as soon as I buy a few more 15-pocket pages.
As for the rest of the set, I’m fine with what I have. I’m not going to chase the other 128 stamps I need. As usual, I’m almost mainly concerned with the cards.
But those four Dodgers…
#Stamped #incomplete