Set Update. Shall We?

Roughly a month ago, I posted a project that I was going to work on into the beginning of 2019 that was actually several different small sets, rather than one larger set.  The cards all come from the Topps Glossy Send Ins from the 1980s.  Although, the 1990 set is also included.  Most of the sets are more than 50% done.  Two are over 90%, which will be easy to finish.  However, they are not the first sets to get crossed off my list.

All forty cards from the 1983 set are sitting here on my desk.  I had to find 9 cards to finish this part of the project.  Shall we look at some cards?  Some are a little crooked, but I am tired after spending the day out with the little guy.  A little something about my favorite card in each of the groups of cards....

You'd think I would go with the Cardinals player, but I am going to go with Mookie Wilson.  He was one of the players missing when I started last month, I was honestly surprised that he was in set.  Mookie was always a good supporting player on the 1980s Mets teams, but never the star.  He was never an All-Star, little really stands out from the early years of his career outside of the fact that he stole 50 bases in both 1982 and 1983.

Plus, there really is a Cardinals connection here.

One of these people won a World Series with the Cardinals.  Mookie never played for the Cardinals.  

I like the Terry Kennedy card strictly based on the fact that there is a yellow and brown Padres uniform.  The other three players in this grouping are pretty big stars from this era.  The Schmidt card feels distorted to me.   Winfield and Young, do not have a ton of interest in my world.  Let's talk about Terry Kennedy.

Terry Kennedy was on the Cardinals for a very short time at the beginning of his career and was traded the Padres in exchange for Rollie Fingers and Gene Tenace.  Rollie Fingers never played a game for the Cardinals though.  Kennedy had a pretty solid career.

Love the card with Fernando Valenzuela wearing the batting helmet.  He seems like the kind of pitcher who would have a batting average under .100.  He had that screwball that gave people fits, but I would not classify him as an athletic type.   However, I learned something in making this post.  Fernando could actually hit.  During his career he won two Silver Slugger Awards and had a total of 10 career home runs.  Surprised, but good for Fernando.

Uh.  Pete Rose.  Not his best day.  This is supposed to be a Phillies card, but so much about this card looks like those Leaf cards that came out about five or six years ago where all of the logos were all blanked out.  He had been a Phillies a few years at this point, you would think that Topps could do better than a generic looking baseball equipment windbreaker.  

The end of Pete Rose's career was not really all that pretty.  Bad commercials.  He had a .286 slugging percentage in 1983, so there is that too.  Ivan DeJesus was the next lowest slugging percentage on the 1983 Phillies, but it was 50 points higher than Pete.  

I miss having Expos cards.  The Nationals are not quite the same.  Truth be told, I am not a huge fan of the players in this group, so that is about all I am typing for these four players.  I guess Carlton Fisk was alright as a White Sox.  

My most memorable Ray Knight moments all came while he was on the Mets.  He was somehow one of the "good guys" on those teams, which developed a bad reputation around players like Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, and Strawberry.  

Ray Knight was a punk.  

None of those "bad" Mets players ever tried the garbage that Ray Knight pulled in the above video.

  

I like the Richie Zisk card in the group.  Not a Hall of Famer, but he had some great years for the Pirates, Rangers, and Mariners.  His last season as a Major Leaguer was in 1983.  He was only 34 at the time, but it was one of the few really below average years he had as a Major Leaguer.  Not sure what happened to him at the end of his career.  Maybe he was hurt, or maybe he just ran out of gas.  I like the Mariners uniform in this picture.  Good still shot of him at Yankee Stadium.  

Love the Dave Stieb card with the powder blue jersey.  Serious thought, now that the Hall of Fame bar has been drastically lowered by letting Jack Morris into the Hall of Fame, how long will it be until we get Dave Stieb into Cooperstown?  His numbers are better than Jack Morris, except he did not pitch in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series.  Dave Stieb also did not sexually harass a reporter.  

Bill Madlock won 4 batting titles by the way.  That's half the number of times that Nolan Ryan led the league in walks.  

Jack Clark.  Quite a look there.  The hat has sort of a wave going across the front of the brim and he has obviously never asked his barber to touch up his eyebrows.  He was on the Cardinals for a few years in the mid 1980s and had some great years.  

Love the Rickey Henderson picture in this group of cards.  He was always a great base stealer, but this was a period during his career where he was putting up huge numbers.  In 1982 he had set the single season record with 130 steals, and followed that up with 108 in 1983.  Highest two year stolen base total in the history of the game.  He still had a few more stolen base titles left in his legs at this point, but 1983 was the last season he cross 100 in his career.  

This is the last group of cards in this set and is a fabulous cross section of early 1980s coolness.  Rupert Jones with the yellow, brown and orange Padres jersey.  Eddie Murray is wearing a jacket underneath his uniform.  Bruce Sutter is wearing a powder blue road uniform with a rather unkempt looking beard.  Reggie Jackson is wearing metal rim sunglasses, not some fancy Oakley plastic types. 

This look would eventually land Reggie a memorable movie role next to Leslie Nielson and Ricardo Montalban.  

We have reached the end of this glossy set, but hopefully I can knock a few more of these Topps Glossy Send In sets out before the end of the year.  I will even try to make the scans a lot straighter.  

and finally....here's Gypsy Queen (Part 1)

When did Gypsy Queen come out again?  It was several weeks ago, but I am just writing a post about the two boxes I opened up now.  What happened to cause this delay?  The statistics of page views do not support what I am about to say, so I will first thank you for continuing to visit my page in spite of the fact that I did not post as regularly as a normally do in terms of both quantity and quality.  The beginning of April started with a vacation.  By the time the vacation ended and returned to work my schedule of writing and posting cards and the whatnot was completely in taters.  I managed to get to the end of April and have worked my way back into shape in terms of posts. 

So, to actually answer the question at the top of the post the product arrived on April 15th.  I attended the Durham Bulls home opener that evening and left my boxes of Gypsy Queen in my car.  The next day, after work, I opened them live on Periscope.  Something I am playing with, but I need to use an Ipad instead of my phone.  I also need to have the camera set up so that it is somewhat still.  If you are on Periscope my user is the Snorting Bull. 

After the Periscope broadcast these cards just sat on my desk.  So, between a post this evening and tomorrow I am planning on catching everyone up on my Gypsy Queen cards including my two cents on the set and design this year. 

Lets start off with the good stuff.....


Autographs 

I opened two boxes of Gypsy Queen so I was supposed to receive a total of four autographs.  I kind of made it there.  I have not run into a redemption this year, but after last year I have decided to sell/trade all of my code cards this year.  Probably next year and the year after that too...... Yes, I got three autographs and a redemption card.

Obviously I really like the Matt Adams autograph.  It's always cool to pull an autograph from your favorite team out of a box that you open.  Adams is not my favorite Cardinal, but I probably would have ended up with this card at some point, so it's all good.  Someone asked me on Twitter whether Pompey was one of those guys I liked because I saw him in Triple A, but he actually was never in Buffalo before the Jays sent him down there this season.  Gausman and Johnson are nice autographs too.  I will let you know what the Gausman brings me when it is traded/sold. 

Relics 

Last year I did really well with the relics in this product pulling a button card from Greinke.  I was hoping for a similar card this year, but I guess that would have been beating some pretty long odds.  Here's what I did ended up landing......

Gypsy Queen can have some rather ordinary relics, so I was happy to draw out the Kolten Wong, again a Cardinal, and the low print run Miggy with the nice frame border.  Honestly, as much as I was hoping for something cool, like a button card, I also feared drawing four relic cards with names like Adrian Gonzalez.  Nothing against Adrian, but he's not my favorite player and that's a rather ordinary looking relic.  Back me up Dodgers people....

Plates-

and here is where my box was made.  I have heard different collectors say that there seemed to be a lot of plates being pulled out of Gypsy Queen this year and I have to agree.  I have seen numerous box breaks and different collectors on social media open boxes/cases and post their hits.  Lots of plates.  My two were pretty nice, so I cannot complain. 

This one was kind of a surprise to me.  I am not a huge plate person and I do not actively seek them out to buy or trade.  If one happens into my collection at the right price, so be it.  I am not sure how many of these I have pulled over the years, but I do not think that I have ever landed a printing plate of an insert card.  This seems to be a first as far as I can remember.  It's a nice card. 

Lastly, a Liriano plate.  I like the frame around the plate.  Really nice card and made for a nice finishing touch for my two boxes of Gypsy Queen.