1984 Topps

I went to a card show last weekend and there was a dearth of packs to buy. On my way out, I decided I absolutely had to buy something to open up, and I settled on 5 packs of 1984 Topps for $5. It was kinda like Subway, minus the annoying commercials and the mediocre sandwiches. Well, there is the 24-year old piece of gum, but that is more of a chemistry experiment at this point.

183 - Al Williams (Classic set here. Team name down the side, inset photo of the player's head and photography that is, at least, a step up from the 70s and early 80s.)
265 - Donnie Hill (Split time between AAA Tacoma and Oakland in his first major league season. I suppose that would make this his rookie card. Is anyone in the market for a Donnie Hill RC?)
424 - Dann Bilardello (I don't understand people that are named Dann, with two Ns. Other famous Dann's: Dann Florek of Law & Order fame, who also played Mr. Slate in the Flintstone's movie... seriously! Well, okay, he's the only famous Dann.)

91 - Dan Spillner (Just a plain old Dan here. Spillner was coming off a 2-9 1983 season where he posted a 5.07 ERA. Man, is this pack crappy or what?)

696 - Pirates Batting & Pitching Leaders / Team Checklist (Finally, actual good players. Kind of.)
374 - Don Money (Don Money had a name for another line of work.)
441 - Bob Lillis (The Astros manager of the time. I liked these manager cards because they listed their major & minor league playing stats on the back. I learned that Bob Lillis played for the Cardinals in 1961 before moving onto the Colt .45's where he'd finish his career.)
142 - Rich Gale (complete with wax stain)

- Topps All-Star Baseball Game Sweepstakes Card (Whew. It's nice to take a break from all the awful baseball players. I'm well on my way to collecting 25 runs and going to the 1985 World Series. Wait... NOOOOOOOOOOO! Curse you, Don Denkinger!!! You make small, impressionable children cry and question everything in life.)
145 - Gary Lavelle (Actually, this guy was a great lefty reliever in looking at his stats on this card. 7 sub-3.00 ERA postings in 10 seasons and a career-to-date 2.82 mark looks really good.)
46 - Ray Smith (Ugh, another part-time player. This pack obviously contained 12 Mattingly rookies and was resealed.)

538 - Kevin Bass (I'm not sure why, but the Astros team name was a bit purple which doesn't really fit with their color scheme. I played for a little league team that was the Astros and liberally used their team's uniform design, so I have always had an appreciation for the 80's Astros unis. This runs contrary to my feelings about all things Houston these days, however.)

749 - Doug Flynn (Doug Flynn was an Expo, and had 452 at-bats in 1983, so he gets an image of his card here. This is the closest I've gotten to a legitimate full-time position player in this pack, so don't question me! Don't mention the fact that was a career .238 hitter, either. I mean, he played with Joe Morgan, right? So he obviously knew the game.)
642 - Tom Underwood ("Tom pitched 6 innings to record Victory, 6-28-83." Why is "Victory" capitalized? No idea. Why is this remarkable? No idea, either. The line on the back of the card could have easily read "Tom is a spot starter who was born in Kokomo, Indiana." and we would all be satisfied.)

757 - Larry Bowa (When Larry Bowa is the "hit" of the pack, you know things aren't so good.)
275 - Len Matuszek (complete with gum stain)

Alright, I've done enough damage here, so I'll leave you all alone. I was planning on opening the rest of the packs on my blog, but I'm a little apprehensive about it after seeing what happened with this one. Well, they don't call this place A Good Pack A Day, do they?

1984 Topps Wax Pack

Here's the before...



...and now the after.

Upon ripping, I am greeted by a very old piece of gum, though gladly not stuck to any cards.

In order we have:

612 Harry Spilman
731 Lynn Jones
285 Darrell Porter
535 Bo Diaz - wow two dead catchers in a row.
196 Don Slaught - third straight catcher, but he's still alive. Damn it!
82 Doug Bird
76 Alfredo Griffin - there appears to be two guys having buttsecks in the background


521 Pete Falcone
All-Star Baseball Game sweepstakes card



313 Mike Jorgensen
602 John Wathan - our fourth catcher so far
714 Active AL Career Stolen Base Leaders - Bert Campaneris, Dave Lopes, and Omar Moreno


482 Enos Cabell
155 Frank White



228 John Rabb - fifth catcher!



195 Jack Morris



Not a wonderful pack but not terrible. Seems like Jack Morris is always in these older packs, a ridiculous idea I know. Five catchers in 15 cards is quite a high ratio. Frank White was a solid major-leaguer, overrated by Royals fans but underrated by the rest of the world.

1984 Fleer

I picked up this pack cheap online recently in a fit of Fleer nostalgia. I didn't buy a lot of Fleer in '84 as I was in the middle of my coin collecting period, but I later bought almost a full box of the stuff from a friend who got bored with collecting. No Mattingly of course. It seems like I couldn't possibly have gotten through '84 without opening at least a pack of this stuff, but I didn't open much.

A note on the wrapper before I get to the cards - This is the most difficult to open pack I've ever seen. With vintage packs I try to be gentle when opening them so I can keep the wrapper mostly in one piece, but this one was practically superglued together. Needless to say, the wrapper is no longer mint.

Braves sticker - off to a good start!
421 Odell Jones - Odell has the old logo on the jersey and the new one on the card. I always liked the old one better.
32 Kevin Gross - Good lord, the Vet was literally held together by Duct Tape. The cables hanging everywhere in the background don't look OSHA approved either.
340 Dave Von Ohlen - Um, Dave... if you're gonna chaw down on some Skoal, it's best to take it out of the can first.
91 Alan Trammell - Yay! A star! '84 was a good year for Alan.
481 Gary Redus looks sad. :(
640 Bench and Yaz - Nothing needs to be said about this card. Just enjoy.
315 Mark Thurmond looks like some dude in a fantasy camp. That can't be a real jersey.
36 Charles Hudson - More cables just hanging down off the ceiling. That place was a deathtrap!
359 Don Slaught - I like the seats in the background. You don't often get the underneath view of stadium seats.
282 Bobby Ramos - There's no way that's a real stadium behind Bobby. It has to be an Olan Mills backdrop or something.
155 Jim Gott is in possession of the only baseball seen in this pack.
361 U.L. Washington - You can't see the toothpick, but you know it's there.
512 Bobby Clark - I have to scan the back of this card. Bobby has a bigger wad of chew than Dave Van Ohlen.
322 Bob Forsch - Cardinal workhorse.
128 Jay Howell - Ever since I get his autograph at Fanfest, I've been pulling his cards right and left. I've had enough to be honest.

Not too bad a pack, I got a couple of stars and three cards I needed for the set. Here's that picture of Bobby with a face full of tobacco I promised you.

Yummy!

1984 Topps Baseball

Here it is, delivered as promised. This is probably the oldest pack I have ever opened, but there are more in store older than this one.

Let's tear in.

Top to Bottom:
437 Mike Proly (Probably a misspelling of "probably".)
403 Lloyd Moseby All Star

273 Charlie Puelo (Judging from the picture, this man was definitely one of those unapprehended serial killers from the late '70s/early '80s, most likely the Zodiac Killer.)
547 Mike Moore
217 Alan Ashby
42 Johnny Grubb (Rockin' the glasses...hard.)
246 Mets Leaders -- Mookie Wilson and Tom Seaver

Topps All-Star Baseball Game Card (With 4 runs.)
425 Steve Howe (Corrected version.)

93 Bob Knepper (With completely uncreative inset picture.)
52 Paul Splittorff
302 Barry Bonnell
543 Craig McMurtry
745 Dennis Eckersley (Still rocking the pretty hair, but nothing at all the caliber of his 1981 style. For more on this, check out the 1981 Topps Showdown at Thorzul Will Rule.)

157 Gary Gaetti (Beautiful photography that showcases The Man, The Twin, The Myth, The Gaetti. Big props to Topps for getting shaven and unshaven shots.)
494 Chili Davis

Grade: C
It's quite telling that I received no card with a number ending in 0. No stars make for a pretty shady pack. The highlight for me is the Moseby All Star, not for the player himself, but the copy on the back. It reads: "Began as a catcher in Little League and was cut from the team." I find this hard to believe. If Little League gets your money, you're on the team no matter what. I thought a little harder about this and came to the hypothesis that Moseby was not cut because he sucked, but because a teammate tried to stand too far back in the batter's box during BP and he beat the young fellow within an inch of his life. That, or he failed to sell enough candy bars.

Oh, and the Steve Howe above might be the corrected version. A few early cases of Topps came with the original printing of the card, now known as the "Noriega Version", which depicts Howe with a mysterious white residue above his upper lip. It's always nice to envision your favorite pitcher hurling the ball from 60 feet, 6 inches away high atop a mound of pure cocaine.

Hope this lived up to the hype.

Pack Tease

Crap. I just wrote a post about 2004 Donruss Studio. A new low. However, my computer did an emergency shutdown before I could move it from Word onto the blog. The only thing that could have perked me up was a pack of 1984 Topps. Lo and behold, there's one I acquired a couple of weeks ago that I have been saving for just such an occasion. Oh...and mine didn't cost me five bucks either.

The back of this pack is also important, judging from the other semi-vintage packs that have appeared in this space. The seal is tight, like that of a good dishwasher.

Right now, I still haven't opened it. I'm hoping for better than the usual crum-bums. Readers, you will have to wait for tomorrow night to see the contents within. Get yourself a few cold ones, gather 'round A Pack A Day, and meet me for the unveiling. It will be a treat.

1984 Topps Wax Pack

This is the 100th post on the A Pack A Day blog; but unfortunately, this pack is a complete dud. In my opinion, 1984 Topps is a very classic set. The layout is spot on with 2 photos on the front and the team name down the side; all without the overly ornate stripes and facsimile autographs from 1982. And the square head shot makes this set look a little bit more classic than the rounded shots of 1983-- all great sets in my opinion; I just think the layout on the '84 set is superior.
What a drag it is that Champ Summers didn't become a star-- he sure had the name (and look) of one.

#774 Tom Gorman
#319 Al Bumbry
#564 Al Holland
#175 Graig Nettles
#86 John Shelby
#88 Rob Picciolo
#770 Ken Griffey
#558 Mike Davis
Topps All-Star Baseball Game
#178 Bill Krueger, RC
#274 Rick Monday
#643 Mike Brown
#768 Champ Summers
#626 Bob Clark
#734 Odell Jones
#356 Glenn Abott

1984 Donruss

I stumbled across this pack last weekend and pretty much had to get it. I've only opened one other pack of '84 Donruss in my life. I bought that one twenty years ago at a card shop the same time I bought my box of '87 Donruss. Oddly enough, I paid the same price for that pack as I did for this one, a crisp five dollar bill. It was a rip off then and it's a rip off now, but what the heck, I can afford to splurge for one of these packs every twenty years.

Duke Snider puzzle piece 7, 8, 9
38 Doug Frobel Rated Rookie
644 Bob Stanley
5 Leon Durham Diamond King
258 Harry Spillman
471 Milt Wilcox
480 Joel Youngblood
591 George Frazier
92 Juan Espino
202 Tim Flannery
313 Spike Owen
423 Brian Downing
21 Larry Parrish Diamond King
Checklist #4
643 Jose Oquendo
147 Mickey Hatcher

I want to start off by saying that I knew when I bought it that this pack was going to suck. No, I don't have some sort of Johnny Smith "Dead Zone" power where I can tell the suckiness of a pack just by touching it, it was the fact that this pack (and every other one in the box) was open. And I mean blatantly opened, one whole side of the wrapper was just flapping in the breeze. But opened just neatly enough to slide the cards out and back in again. ON EVERY PACK IN THE BOX. I mean, come on. I'm not naive enough to think that pack searching doesn't happen, but at least have the decency to reseal the damn things. On the other hand, at least my Mike Hatcher card is fairly wax-free and I have a pretty pristine wrapper out of the deal. You have to respect the colossal brass balls it takes to proudly display "Searched Packs: Five Dollars" right at the front of your business establishment.

Now, about the cards. They suck. They suck bad. The tone is set by the first card pulled. Poor Doug Frobel has a look that says, "dude, I'm so sorry. This pack really really sucks". Yes Doug, I know. The lowlights (no highlights in this pack) include: Bob Stanley, who thanks his lucky stars every night that Bucker made a more boneheaded play than he did. Joel Youngblood, who got a hit for two teams in the same day when he was traded to the Expos because he sucked. Juan Espino sucked so bad he wasn't even in the majors in 1984. Brian Downing wasn't a bad player I guess. My favorite card in the pack is the Leon Durham Diamond King, but even that one is tarnished. A few cards later in the pack is Tim Flannery, the man who hit the grounder in Leon's famous "Gatorade Glove" play in the '84 NLCS. The Diamond Kings are the more common Perez-Steel error version, which sucks because I have all of those. It's not all bad though. Like I said, the wrapper is practically mint. I'm only 20 cards away from a Duke Snider Puzzle. And since I have so little of this set to begin with, only the Diamond Kings and the Flannery cards are doubles. No big deal. I didn't buy the pack for the cards, I paid for the experience of being the second person to open this pack. To be honest I don't even really like the '84 set, it's got a bad design and worse photography. Just take this as a warning all you pack busters out there: Don't buy open packs unless you're the one that did the opening.