Wow, that’s a lot of wear and tear on that card. It remains surprising what you see when you scan a card.
Before I get into the meat of this post, I’d like to thank reader Casey for taking the cards from the downsizing post off my hands. There will be more posts like this, with (slightly) better maps!
Okay, while I’m trying to get rid of some cards, I’m still adding cards at a pretty good rate. Lately I’ve been swimming in 1980s Donruss, which would certainly make you chuckle if you knew me in the early 1980s.
I’ve written about this several times – Donruss was my third choice in the 1980s from the time I first saw the brand in 1981. Topps first, Fleer second, Donruss third when I walked to the drugstore or deli to look for cards. In 1983 I wasn’t even concerned with Donruss anymore. The next year Donruss produced what I have often called “the only Donruss set that matters,” but the reason I bought one in 1984 was mainly because I bought the entire Topps set at the beginning of the year.
But now, to my amusement, I currently find myself caring a lot about those Donruss sets from the 80s (we’re talking the first half of the 80s here). I finished ’81, ’82, ’84 and ’88. I’m currently working on ’83 (which I turned my nose up at in ’83) and ’85 (which I really liked but only bought a few packs).
So I’m getting closer to being the first to finish the 1983 Donruss set. Recently one of the large cards from the set came my way.
I mentioned that I owned this card as one of maybe 30 cards from 1983 Donruss that I originally had. Then I traded it away, because who’s trying to complete ’83 Donruss?
The Sandberg card came with a 2024 A&G Chrome card by Mookie Betts. This is the card I requested from Matt, it seems a bit inadequate compared to the Donruss card, eh?
So Sandberg and a few other newcomers get me down to the very last few needs.
These two needs emerged in a TCDB transaction with Mokolai. I sent him another bunch of Dodgers dupes for quite a few key set needs, I’ll make that deal every time.
So if you throw in the Sandberg with these two cards, my wishlist claims I need five more cards to complete the set.
They are:
530 – Whitey Herzog
586 -Wade Boggs
593 – Don Werner
606 – Ozzie Virgil
639 – Ron Jackson (any version)
We’ll see how official that is. Set collectors know that a wishlist means nothing, you have to confirm it by searching your physical set and finding the Gremlins. In fact, I just added the Virgil, Werner, and Jackson cards to the wishlist as I wrote this post. Who knows what other cards are hidden?
I’m not content with completing one Donruss set at a time, but I’m still looking to get the ’85 set completed, which was most of the cards Mokolai showed.
So good. It took me too long to get that Expos Pete Rose card. And Vic Mata, you don’t know how many years I’ve wondered what he looked like!!
My TCDB list says I now need fifteen more cards to finish 1985’s Donruss, but ha, ha, since two of them are Gooden and Clemens — oh wait, since three of them Gooden, Clemens and Puckett – I don’t take that seriously. I haven’t put this set in a folder yet.
Right now I’m concentrating on finishing 1983 and hopefully I can get that done before the year is out. Maybe I’ll make more progress if I hum “Hello” by Lionel Richie as I tackle those last few cards.
I used to hate that song.
Wait… me still hate that song.