Elvis Has Entered the Building

For my first post on Pack a Day, I present to you a little piece of vintage non-sport. There's no hope for an autograph or costume card in here. Just a really ugly design and a 30-year-old piece of gum that is likely poisonous if eaten.

Elvis may have left us but his legacy is filled with all sorts of merchandise. In 1978 Donruss gave the world a set of trading cards, a year after his death. I don't know much else about the set so join me on this one-pack trip of discovery, good tunes and nasty gum.

The pack:



The title and cartoon Elvis illustration standout nicely to the bright red background. . The back of the pack features and add for "America's Favorite Bubble Gum!" Super Bubble. Never heard of it. But then again, I'm not American.

Time to open the pack.

Ack. It stinks like a chest that's just been opened after being closed for some three decades. Perhaps this symbolic chest will give us some treausre.

First card:



We have wax stais! It's a bright art deco design that looks more akin to the Topps baseball designs from a few years earlier. What a way to kick things off - The King in one of his trademark jumpsuits, singing and dancing in front of the mirror.

For the sake of history, here's the back of the card:



So it's a 66-card set and this is card 35. Each card appears to have a little bit of Elvis trivia, or facts as they liked to call them to seem more important. Elvis fact 35 reads:

He was born January 8, 1935 , in a two room house in Tupelo, Mississippi. The house now has been restored by the city and is a popular attraction among Elvis fans.

Elvis Fact No. 26

Words like Courage, Honor and Virtue, moved Elvis. General MacArthur's "Old Soldiers Never Die" speech was a favorite of Elvis'; he could recite it word for word.

Elvis Facts No. 9

Elvis received the highest fee ever paid for a single guest performance on television. He appeared on the Frank Sinatra Show for $125,000.

Elvis Facts No. 20

His generosity was his way of showing friendship and a way of saying thank you to someone he cared about.

Elvis Facts No. 24

Because of his hit song, Elvis collected "Teddy Bears." Once in Hollywood he won eight teddy bears at an amusement park at Long Beach.

Elvis Facts No. 14

Elvis starred in "Jailhouse Rock" in 1957. He sang seven songs in that movie, they are: "Jailhouse Rock," "Treat Me Nice," "Young and Beautiful," "I Wanna Be Free," "Don't Leave Me Now," "Baby I Don't Care," and "One More Day."

The final card in the pack looks like this on the front:



I flip it over and this is what I get:



Now the gum gluing itself to the card was to be expected. But wait. There is treasure here. If it were 1978 I'd be jumping up and down because I got two, count 'em, TWO sticks of gum! Bubble Gum-jo for me! Except it's 30-years-old and eating gum that old is gross.

Donruss' gum looks and feels kind of like pink sandpaper. It's got little sparkle flecks. I hope it's sugar. I did manage to pry the gum of the final card and let's just say it's got a gum stain on it. Our final tidbit of the day reads:

Elvis Facts No. 4

Elvis had four number one hits in 1956. His first recordings for R.C.A. were "Heart Break Hotel," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Love Me Tender." It (1956) was definitely the year for the King.

1978 Topps - The Written Kind

I was about nine years old when these cards first hit the shelves. I can remember hopping on my Huffy "dirt bike" and hitting the trails with my friends. We'd ride for what seemed like miles (I actually looked it up once in Google maps, and it turned out to be all of a half-mile). When we finally broke free of the wooded "forest" near our subdivision in Western Pennsylvania, we'd come to the paved end of an incomplete road. Racing down the street, we'd try to see who could ride the fastest to the little store at the bottom of the hill. It was called "The Dairy," and we spent many hours and many dollars buying Swedish Fish, Bottle Caps, and Topps baseball cards.

My friends and I were not so sophisticated (as I may have mentioned in previous posts) as other collectors might have been. We did not call these cards the "1978 Topps Regular Issue." No, no. These were "The Written Kind" because of the cursive writing used on the team names. So, when trading, we would eventually trade our "written kind" cards for "the baseball kind (1981 Fleer)," the "Flag Kind (1980 Topps), or the "Hat Kind" (1981 Topps).

I took a chance and bought this pack of 1978 Topps cards on eBay. I don't remember the winning bid price, but the memories alone were worth the money spent. Especially the THIRTY year-old piece of gum:

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The pack itself is very simple: a non-specific catcher (though he appears to be wearing Pirates colors), an old-school Topps logo, "Major League Baseball Picture Cards" and the classic "1 stick bubble gum." The first two players out the pack are Francisco Barrios (White Sox), and Jose Baez (Mariners). I did not remember either of these guys, but that makes sense for the time frame: I was nine living in Pittsburgh - it was all about the Bucs and the Tribe for me in those days (heh-heh, not much has changed in 30 years...).

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Next up, Phil Garner (Pirates!), Joe Sambito (Astros "Hey, here's the strike zone!" shirts), and Darrell Johnson (Mariners manager). That's two Mariners so far in this pack...

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The next three players are Mike Garman (Dodgers), Lamar Johnson (White Sox - two White Sox in this pack. Would have been a good 'Sox or No Sox'), and Charlie Williams (Giants). Williams' card has the rules for the "Play Ball (played by two)" game that appeared on the backs of cards. Many cards featured an actual play (Garner has a "Home Run" on his) and two people would take a stack of 50 cards and play out a game of baseball with the stack. What kids did before Pokemon, Magic, and Yugioh...

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The next card is a Rookie Pitchers card. It features a Mariner (Of course) in Steve Burke, Matt Keough (A's), Lance Rautzhan (Dodgers), and Dan Schatzeder (Expos). After that, I pull a TRIBER! WAHOO! Fred Kendall in his second year as a Tribe catcher. Unfortunately, his card is a "Fly Out." And third, Roric Harrison (Tigers) rounds out this trio of cards.

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Finally, we have Tim Blackwell (Expos), Charlie Moore (Brewers), and the Seattle Mariners Team Card. It's a good thing we got the team card, considering how many Mariners we pulled in one pack! :-)

When I was kid, I loved taking my No. 2 pencil and filling in the squares beside the names of the players I had in my collection. I used a pencil because when I traded away one of those players, I would go back and erase the mark. As you can imagine, my checklist cards had Tipton written all over them....

1978 Fleer Hi-Gloss Grand Slam Baseball Stickers

(Update: After reading through an updated post on Fler Sticker Project, I realized I had the 1978 version, not the '77. Dates have been changed in this post to reflect the correct year)

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I saw a post about these (here) on the Fleer Sticker Project blog, and knew I had to snag some of these stickers. A quick search on theBay, and I found two packs that I quickly snagged up. The pack is yellow with blue and red lettering with white "highlights" on it. There are "examples" of the Royals and Yankees stickers, plus the MLB logo. In the lower right corner, the pack proudly proclaims that there is "1 Stick Gum." (Evidently, the writers back then spent a lot of time watching The Lone Ranger...)

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Upon opening the pack, we find a THIRTY year old piece of gum that had attached itself to the sticker behind it. The gum is weirdly semi-moist and not in the least dried out that I can tell. After airing out a few moments, though, it's dry, yet surprisingly bendable. Or, well, it was... It bent pretty well before finally cracking, though never crumbling....

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Ah, the gum was attached to the Philadelphia Phillies sticker! I believe I could let the card air out and then use my thumbnail to scrape off the residue. The card contains the logo of the time for the Phillie taking up most of the real estate (2/3's or so), then the classic Phillies "script" occupies the lower third of the card. There are instructions as to where to peel the sticker (evidently, those of us that were kids when these were made were not the brightest lights in the sockets). There is also the Fleer "crown" logo. The back contains a puzzle piece. On this particular card, the piece is obviously a corner because the red and blue stripes make a 90-degree turn. There is a patch of Green with what appears to be light dirt in one corner of the piece. I am not going to describe the backs of all the stickers, just this one, so you can get an idea of what we have on each item.

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The Cincy sticker is different that the Phillies, and if you take a trip over to the Fleer Sticker Project, you will get the low-down on all the variations that were made of these things. This one has that classic 70's red, orange, yellow "rainbow" effect seen often on sports shows (or the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family or Match Game or the Michael Douglas Show, etc etc). Attached to that is the Reds logo. Once again, Fleer helps us idiots by showing us how to remove the sticker. Notice this sticker also says "Grand Slam Hi-Gloss Stickers" on it. Guess you have to fill up the space with SOMETHING...

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Next, we have the LOWERCASE "A" of the 70's Braves. Perhaps Dayf can provide for us the year when they changed over to the capital version of the letter... In any case, the 'scripted' text is done in Braves blue with red borders.

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The Cardinals sticker follows the pattern of the Phillies (and I suppose technically the Braves), though it appears the logo with the birds has been set crooked, or something... I don't quite get the canted look. It's not really 'off-center' like a printing mistake, but more like they weren't sure how to fit the logo in the allotted space. Strange.

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Finally, we have a Twins sticker. They opted to use a barely visible pink that graduates up to a magenta. I can't help but wonder if this card was originally RED. The Minnesota hand-shake logo takes up the bottom portion of the sticker. On the left, we're told there is a "World Series Photo Puzzle on back." Sure enough, I even got "Worl" and the top portion of the what I think is the word "Cham" - hmm, maybe we were idiots back then... :-)

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Being as I ordered two of these packs, I'll post the 2nd pack another time...

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1978 O-Pee-Chee Baseball

1978 O-Pee-Chee Short history – O-Pee-Chee was a candy company founded in 1911 by Canadian brothers. They first tried their hand at trading cards in 1933. From 1965 through 1994 they were a licensee for Topps baseball cards. For many of the years the Topps and O-Pee-Chee cards were very similar. The company was purchased by Nestle in 1996 and Upper Deck started using the name for some of their trading cards in 2006.

Ruppert Jones played from 1976 to 1987.

Sal bando played from 1966 to 1981 and his brother Chris played for the Indians.

Sixto Lezcano played from 1974 – 1985.

Steve Rogers played from 1973 – 1985 for Montreal, and was born in Missouri.

Willie McCovey, a HOF player, played from 1959 to 1980.

Dennis Eckersley, a HOF player, played from 1975 to 1998

Enos Cabell played from 1972 to 1986 and he and six others got in trouble because of the Pittburgh drug trials.

Ivan Dejesus played from 1974 – 1988 for 7 different teams, his son Ivan Jr. plays in the Minors.

Milt May played from 1970 to 1984 and his father, Merrill played for the Phillies.

Milt may (a double in a pack of 10 cards, yikes)

Card condition and layout – The centering is good and the corners are in great shape (for 30 year old cards). Except for the O-Pee-Chee copyright on back and some of the text being in French you could easily mistake this for a Topps card. It was nice that the card back that had contact with the adhesive was not damaged. Also you can’t beat the 15 cent sticker price. On the back of the wrapper it says if you send in 5 wrappers and 65 cents you will receive a pennant of your favorite team. The back of the card also has the “Play Ball” game that a couple of the bloggers have been talking about.

1978 O-Pee-Chee Baseball

Too pretty for video pack breaks? Perhaps...
I'll attempt to pick up the slack here by posting the oldest pack this blog has seen to date.

While questing for Robin Yount items elusive enough to have avoided my grasp, I stumbled across this pack with under an hour left in the bidding and a very low price tag, lower than any single 2007 or 2008 packs I've opened recently. The Yount was visible through the rear of the wrapper, and I already have it, but I decided to take the plunge, all the way back to the year in which I was born.

Let's tear in.

Top to Bottom:
29 Robin Yount

231 Mike Flanagan
220 Dave Concepcion NL All Star

204 Lou Brock (Man, does he look cool on this card or what. I can imagine a night on the town in 1978 with Lou Brock, Lou Rawls, and Lew Alcindor. Fun times.)

118 Ted Sizemore
6 1977 Strikeout Leaders - Phil Niekro/Nolan Ryan

47 Lee May
121 Luis Gomez
81 Will McEnaney
168 John Mayberry

Grade: A
I think it's pretty hard to top a ten-card pack with four Hall of Famers. And let's talk about Dave Concepcion for a while here. My sources indicate nine All Star Game appearances, one All Star Game MVP, five Gold Gloves, and four World Series appearances. How is he not in the Hall? Every article I found calls Concepcion the best shortstop of the 1970s. Nine All Star games on the decade's dominant team? It's not like he snuck in as the sole mandatory representative of a basement-dwelling team. On behalf of all Reds fans (which I am not), I demand his placement in the HoF.

That was a lot of fun to open. I'm sure I'll be topped within the space of a week, but I'm enjoying my brief tenure of the title "Blog's Oldest Pack."

Oh, and the 29-year-old gomme balloune? It will not be entering my mouth. You had me at '81 Fleer.

One more thing. For any of you weights and measures nuts, this emmer effer weighs 4 grams.
Blame Canada.

12 Vintage Cards from Tribe Cards

Hey guys, I'm doing something a little different today. About a week ago, I received a belated Christmas present in the mail from David at Indians Baseball Cards. Always. I had sent him a request as part of his 12 Days of Christmas giveaway, which was an awesome idea and must have taken longer to accomplish than I care to imagine. He sent me an awesome batch of 78 cards, gift-wrapped in two bricks. I had requested Orioles, Ravens, and pre-1980s Topps. Since I didn't know exactly what I was getting, and since we don't get to do much vintage ripping around here, I thought I'd blog the 12 Vintage Topps I received...starting...now!

1971 #572 Jerry Kenney

A Yankee third baseman with a .193 batting average. He must have been Drew Henson's childhood idol. Zing!

1971 #518 Joe Grzenda

An old Senators pitcher with a classic "arms overhead" pitching pose.

1976 #647 Ramon Hernandez

Not the roly-poly Orioles catcher of today, but the mustachoied Pirates reliever of yesteryear. Pretty good one, too: 3.03 career ERA.

1977 #72 Mike Anderson

A one-time Orioles outfielder and all-time member of Team Ugly.

1967 #47 Ken McMullen
This is my first 1967 Topps card, and it's pretty sharp-looking. Ken had some pop, swatting double-digit homers for seven straight years.

1976 #333 Bob Coluccio

Bob is wearing classic aviator glasses, as well as three or four mustaches. There's no way that one man could grow that much mustache. Especially considering his previous clean-shaven look.

1976 #519 Steve Brye

Steve is one of the subjects of an excellent post by Josh Wilker at Cardboard Gods. His claim to fame was misplaying the ball that gave George Brett the batting title over Hal McRae in 1976.

1979 #690 Buddy Bell

True story: I only own a few dozen cards from the mid-to-late 1970s, but I now have four Buddy Bell cards from that era (1976 Father and Son, 1976 base, 1978, 1979). He's ubiquitous!

1978 #122 Dennis Eckersley
Sweet! I didn't have any cards from Eck's early days with the Tribe. Having received this one from David, I feel like I've gotten it straight from the source.

1976 #555 Dyar Miller

I believe Dyar Miller is the only Dyar ever to pitch in the major leagues. The Orioles once traded him for Dick Drago, which is interesting only because Miller had been wearing #37 prior to the trade. Drago joined the O's and was also given #37. It's interesting to me, anyway.

1971 #417 Dick Hall
Another Oriole pitcher! Dick actually came to the bigs in 1952 as an outfielder, but his hitting was...well, lacking. He converted to the mound, and was a valuable reliever for the O's for many years. He never walked more than 30 batters in his Baltimore career.

1971 #453 Terry Crowley

One more Oriole to wrap things up. "The Crow" is still wearing orange and black; he's been the team's hitting coach for the past decade.

Overall, this was a great gift. I got my first 1967 card, a handful of cards from years that I've been leisurely compiling (1971, 1976, and 1978), and a few more Orioles for my team collection. Big thanks to David!