Everyone else is posting nifty obscure old Topps oddball packs and I'm feeling left out. Luckily there's a card store near me with a massive inventory of old packs, plus they never discount anything so there's a lot of stuff from the past 10-15 years there that other places blew out of their inventory years ago. There's one lone pack of T206 left that I'm seriously considering getting just so I can open it here. I decided to instead snag a pack of '85 Topps Photo Rub-Downs out of the dollar box since I'm not quite ready to invest 8 bucks in a pack full of likely doubles just for a post.
Rub-Downs are little decals of players and various baseball themed pictures that can be transferred to a piece of paper by rubbing on the sheet with a pencil or coin. Topps put out two sets of 32 sheets featuring 112 players in 1984 and 85. Each pack has 2 sheets of rub-downs, 1 checklist card and a stick of the bubbleblowingest gum around. The back of this pack has an awesome Bazooka advertisement. Bazooka has it all! I'm going to have to appropriate the clip art of the little kid with a paw full of gum the next time I redesign my blog's logo.
Eddie Murray, Tom Seaver, Terry Kennedy and Ozzie Smith
Willie Hernandez, Steve Sax and Leon Durham
Instructions/Check list card
1 broken stick of 22 year old gum that can probably be used as a fine grit sandpaper
Three Hall of Famers on one sheet. Very nice. Eddie Murray should have two decals, one swinging from the left side and one from the right. Ozzie's got a great pose on this card. That's a pretty strange follow through on a swing, I wonder if the Wizard of Oz is actually demonstrating for the ladies the size of his Magic Wand. The portraits allow Topps to stick more players on a card. If I were to put Tom Terrific on the cover of a notebook, I'd want him to be pitching, not just a lousy head shot. The portraits would be pretty good for making your own '38 Goudey cards though. Just draw a body and rub down their heads on top.
Only three players on the second card, but they are all action shots. Willie somehow won the Cy Young
and MVP in 1984. Ok, he had a good year, but jeez. Steve Sax's pose shows him doing what he does best, look clueless in the field. Leon Durham's one of my favorites from the 80s. he was a feared slugger back in the day, but in today's game his production is that of a utility infielder and that makes me sad.
This card is necessary for the structural integrity of the pack as much as anything else. The instructions are fairly important though. I'm sure many rub downs were wasted by forgetting to peel off the backing on the sheet before rubbing. I was a pencil scribbler rather than a coin rubber when I was a kid, although I must admit even my 12 year old self would never have transferred the decal off of a baseball card.
It's kind of fascinating looking at the oh-so easy to read red on greenish yellow checklist for player selection. The A's and Indians get screwed with only 2 decals apiece. Some of the player selection is bizarre. George Wright? Bruce Benedict? Alan Wiggins? I'll never know how Topps deemed these guys indispensable over a Roger Clemens rookie decal.
I've already opened the first two sections of this pack here and here. You guys get the third section. Don't you feel special?? Maybe not if you're reading baseball card blogs on a Friday night. Ok, now I've made you all feel awkward. At least you're not POSTING to a baseball card blog on a Friday night. Now I feel awkward! Onward!
I didn't get a Clemens or Kirby out of this pack, but I got a hell of a lot of damn good Major Leaguers. Davey Lopes, Jack Morris, Phil Garner, George Foster, Kirk Gibson, those are some real players right there. The Lopes card just looks wrong though. The Cubs hat, the shadows, the terrible color on the card, it looks... wrong. I need to go look at one of Lopes cards in a Dodger uni to recover from that. The exact opposite of that card is the Sandberg Diamond King. That is an incredible looking card. The Lou Gehrig Puzzle is pretty sweet too, it's nice to see the puzzle completed without the inevitable misalignments you get when you punch out all the pieces and they don't fit together right. You all punched out your puzzles and put them together, right? Right?? Wow, more awkward. This was a good pack. I'm going to have to pick up a couple more the next time I buy a box online.
I found a whole box of this stuff for only five bucks. Fortuitous for me, since I have a box of '84 and '86 I ripped decades ago but none of the '85 version. This is basically a big sized version of the base '85 Topps cards. The set is distilled down to 60 cards and hits most of the major stars of the era. The set has the iconic Doc Gooden Rookie card blown up into huge proportions but sadly left out the RC's of Kirby and Clemens. No Olympic cards either, so we're also sadly missing the key to the whole set. That's right no Cory Snyder rookie card. Ah well. I ripped a few packs (saving the full box rip for later) and here's the best one.
First card in the set is a pretty good one. Not the best photo though... I much prefer his 1986 card. I guess he's looking at Superman or something. It's a bird... It's a plane... Even with the large size of the card it's still almost impossible to tell who that dude in the background it. Ron Cey maybe? The face is too blurry. 
I scanned this one atop a 2008 Allen & Ginter cabinet card so you can compare the size. Many of you have never seen a 2008 Allen & Ginter cabinet card so for you it's all a bit useless. They're big. I'll get to that next. I used to be a big fan of Herbie, mainly because I had all his rookie cards. I got a couple of them at a card shop one time in the mid '80s out of a 5 cent box. Actually I don't think it was supposed to be a 5 cent box, because the next time I went back to that store I got some really nasty looks from the owner. I didn't care because I got several pricey rookie cards and a pile of 1971 Topps for a nickel each already. I have come to realize I was a real pain in the ass as a kid.
Whoa! A negative reality inversion! Don't worry folks, I caught it in time before it hit critical mass. I think the cat got sent back to Edwardian England, but she'll turn up. She always does.
133 - Ray Boone / Bob Boone Father - Son (a fine baseball family that would go on to include Bret and Aaron)
-Instant Win insert (woo! 4 runs!)
40 - Phil Niekro (here's where the gettin's finally good. a Knuckle Brother!)
611 - Ozzie Virgil (the requisite vintage gum stain)
It's kind of fascinating looking at the oh-so easy to read red on greenish yellow checklist for player selection. The A's and Indians get screwed with only 2 decals apiece. Some of the player selection is bizarre. George Wright? Bruce Benedict? Alan Wiggins? I'll never know how Topps deemed these guys indispensable over a Roger Clemens rookie decal.
