Set Project: 1983 Kellogg's

I have done a few set projects over the years, never anything with an "oddball" set though.  I am not even sure why some of the cereal cards from the 1970s and 1980s are given that classification.  "Oddball" makes it seem like they have second rate photography, poor design, or the logos are airbrushed off of the uniforms.

I have some interest in putting together a bunch of the different Kellogg's sets at some point, but to start out, I am going to go with one of the easier ones to assemble.  Still great looking cards though....

The 1983 set was the last year that Kellogg's put out a baseball card set.  Definitely the end of an era.  There are 60 cards in the set and I already own 9 of these.  Bascially the entire Cardinals team set along with a few players who had some sort of connection with the team, like Jack Clark and Don Baylor. 

I am going to post a checklist of what I need in a bit on the "Projects In Progress" tab at the top of the page.  I am hoping that I can fill most of this checklist with a little bit of time on COMC and maybe some hunting at a card show. 

I am starting out with 15% of the set, hoping to finish this in two months. 

1 Rod Carew 

2 Rollie Fingers 

3 Reggie Jackson 

4 George Brett 

5 Hal McRae 

6 Pete Rose 

7 Fernando Valenzuela 

8 Rickey Henderson 

9 Carl Yastrzemski 

10 Rich Gossage 

11 Eddie Murray 

12 Buddy Bell 

13 Jim Rice 

14 Robin Yount 

15 Dave Winfield 

16 Harold Baines 

17 Garry Templeton 

18 Bill Madlock 

19 Pete Vuckovich 

22 George Foster 

23 Willie Wilson 

24 Johnny Ray 

26 Andre Thornton 

27 Leon Durham 

28 Cecil Cooper 

31 Nolan Ryan 

32 Dan Quisenberry 

33 Len Barker 

34 Neil Allen 

35 Jack Morris 

36 Dave Stieb 

38 Jim Sundberg 

39 Jim Palmer 

40 Lance Parrish 

41 Floyd Bannister 

42 Larry Gura 

43 Britt Burns 

44 Toby Harrah 

45 Steve Carlton 

46 Greg Minton 

47 Gorman Thomas 

51 Fred Lynn 

52 Dale Murphy 

53 Kent Hrbek 

54 Bob Horner 

55 Gary Carter 

56 Carlton Fisk 

57 Dave Concepcion 

58 Mike Schmidt 

59 Bill Buckner 

60 Bob Grich

2018 Set Project #1- 2018 Topps 1983 Baseball Cards

I thought that trying to put together some 1983 style cards would be a good place to start with my efforts to assemble a complete set from the 2018 Topps cards.  At some point back in December I made a post about some different things I wanted to accomplish this year with my collection.  The biggest change is getting away from collecting base sets.

My interest has slowly drifted away from the base sets and it's time for a new direction.  The 1983 set was actually one of the first that I collected, so I am really excited about this project.

These are great looking cards.  The 2018 versions of the 1983 Topps cards are also very nice looking cards.  Topps did a good job of getting a lot of the little details right with the rehashed cards....

This Matt Carpenter card is not actually mine, so I have all 100 cards left to collect.  For the moment I am going with the regular inserts and not the Silver Pack Chrome versions.  If at some point I finish the insert set version, I might go back and pick up the cards from the Silver Packs.  Not now, I am going to be focused....

There are Cardinals and former Durham Bulls players in the autograph parallels, but some are already former players (Aledmys Diaz) and others are on stickers.  Not sure I am going to go after some of these yet.  The two that are on my list for sure are Jacob Faria and Steven Souza.  Both are on-card and I am fairly confident I will actually have these two cards crossed off my list by the end of the night.

Here's what I am looking for:


83-1 Ryne Sandberg - Chicago Cubs
83-2 Hank Aaron - Atlanta Braves
83-3 Andrew McCutchen - Pittsburgh Pirates
83-4 Mookie Betts - Boston Red Sox
83-5 Jacob deGrom - New York Mets
83-6 Noah Syndergaard - New York Mets
83-7 Frank Thomas - Chicago White Sox
83-8 Khris Davis - Oakland Athletics
83-9 Alex Verdugo - Los Angeles Dodgers
83-10 Eric Thames - Milwaukee Brewers
83-11 Matt Carpenter - St. Louis Cardinals
83-12 Carlos Martinez - St. Louis Cardinals
83-13 Mike Trout - Los Angeles Angels
83-14 Rafael Devers - Boston Red Sox
83-15 Ian Happ - Chicago Cubs
83-16 Clayton Kershaw - Los Angeles Dodgers
83-17 Dominic Smith - New York Mets
83-18 Nolan Ryan - Houston Astros
83-19 Nick Williams - Philadelphia Phillies
83-20 Alex Wood - Los Angeles Dodgers
83-21 Jake Arrieta - Chicago Cubs
83-22 Giancarlo Stanton - Miami Marlins
83-23 Kris Bryant - Chicago Cubs
83-24 Aaron Judge - New York Yankees
83-25 Yu Darvish - Los Angeles Dodgers
83-26 Brian Dozier - Minnesota Twins
83-27 Charlie Blackmon - Colorado Rockies
83-28 Luis Severino - New York Yankees
83-29 Harrison Bader - St. Louis Cardinals
83-30 Rhys Hoskins - Philadelphia Phillies
83-31 Jose Altuve - Houston Astros
83-32 Manny Machado - Baltimore Orioles
83-33 Michael Fulmer - Detroit Tigers
83-34 Kyle Seager - Seattle Mariners
83-35 Nelson Cruz - Seattle Mariners
83-36 Stephen Strasburg - Washington Nationals
83-37 Miguel Sano - Minnesota Twins
83-38 Matt Kemp - Atlanta Braves
83-39 Cal Ripken Jr. - Baltimore Orioles
83-40 Ozzie Albies - Atlanta Braves
83-41 Miguel Cabrera - Detroit Tigers
83-42 Yadier Molina - St. Louis Cardinals
83-43 Andrew Benintendi - Boston Red Sox
83-44 Roy Halladay - Philadelphia Phillies
83-45 Josh Donaldson - Toronto Blue Jays
83-46 Dansby Swanson - Atlanta Braves
83-47 Jose Berrios - Minnesota Twins
83-48 Darryl Strawberry - New York Mets
83-49 Freddie Freeman - Atlanta Braves
83-50 Amed Rosario - New York Mets                                                              
83-51 Buster Posey - San Francisco Giants
83-52 Jeff Bagwell - Houston Astros

83-53 Willie Calhoun - Texas Rangers

83-54 Anthony Rizzo - Chicago Cubs

83-55 Justin Upton - Los Angeles Angels

83-56 Don Mattingly - New York Yankees

83-57 Barry Larkin - Cincinnati Reds

83-58 Nolan Arenado - Colorado Rockies

83-59 Yoan Moncada - Chicago White Sox

83-60 Justin Turner - Los Angeles Dodgers

83-61 Felix Hernandez - Seattle Mariners

83-62 Sandy Koufax - Los Angeles Dodgers

83-63 Kenta Maeda - Los Angeles Dodgers

83-64 Robinson Cano - Seattle Mariners

83-65 Edwin Encarnacion - Cleveland Indians

83-66 Daniel Murphy - Washington Nationals

83-67 Ichiro - Miami Marlins

83-68 Derek Jeter - New York Yankees

83-69 Tom Glavine - Atlanta Braves

83-70 Clint Frazier - New York Yankees

83-71 Craig Kimbrel - Boston Red Sox

83-72 Didi Gregorius - New York Yankees

83-73 Adam Jones - Baltimore Orioles

83-74 Gary Sanchez - New York Yankees

83-75 Max Scherzer - Washington Nationals

83-76 Ryan McMahon - Colorado Rockies

83-77 Byron Buxton - Minnesota Twins

83-78 Masahiro Tanaka - New York Yankees

83-79 Jose Canseco - Oakland Athletics

83-80 George Springer - Houston Astros

83-81 Kyle Schwarber - Chicago Cubs

83-82 Trea Turner - Washington Nationals

83-83 Paul Goldschmidt - Arizona Diamondbacks

83-84 Bryce Harper - Washington Nationals

83-85 Victor Robles - Washington Nationals

83-86 Javier Baez - Chicago Cubs

83-87 Cody Bellinger - Los Angeles Dodgers

83-88 John Smoltz - Atlanta Braves

83-89 Bo Jackson - Kansas City Royals

83-90 J.P. Crawford - Philadelphia Phillies

83-91 Eric Hosmer - Kansas City Royals

83-92 Carlos Correa - Houston Astros

83-93 Chris Sale - Boston Red Sox

83-94 Wil Myers - San Diego Padres

83-95 Francisco Lindor - Cleveland Indians

83-96 Alex Bregman - Houston Astros

83-97 Corey Seager - Los Angeles Dodgers

83-98 Justin Verlander - Houston Astros

83-99 Addison Russell - Chicago Cubs

83-100 Wade Boggs - Boston Red Sox

Set Project #5

I recently did a post on a Mark McGwire card from the 1999 Topps Gallery set.  Topps has produced a ton of rehash sets over the last decade, but the Topps Gallery Heritage set was one of the first to make those types of rehash products popular.  As I recall, they were roughly one per box and very popular at the time of the sets release.  I know that I have a bunch of them lingering around my collection, but I also know that I do not have the complete set.

Here is the McGwire card from the other week.....

Again, I know that these sorts of cards have now become commonplace, but these Gallery Heritage cards have are pretty special to me.  They really were the first insert set that I tried to fully assemble.  While I know I did not succeed, I plan on fixing that 17 years later.  In fact, I started last week by picking up a copy of the Ken Griffey Jr. card.  

I know I did not have this card......

the backs are also the same as the 1953 Topps cards.....

Very nice card.  So, here is my biggest problem with these cards at the moment.  I know that I am missing a bunch of the cards in this set, but as I have been looking through my boxes of cards the Gallery Heritage cards are not in with the rest of what I have out of the 1999 Topps Gallery set.  I do have a big box of insert cards from the 1990s and early 2000s that they are undoubtedly in.  So for the moment I am going to post the entire checklist down here at the bottom of the post, but I know that many of these will be checked off in the coming days as I sort through a few boxes of cards.....

TH1- Hank Aaron 

TH2- Ben Grieve 

TH3- Nomar Garciaparra 

TH4- Roger Clemens 

TH5- Travis Lee

TH6- Tony Gwynn

TH7- Alex Rodriguez 

TH9- Derek Jeter 

TH10- Sammy Sosa

TH11- Scott Rolen 

TH12- Chipper Jones

TH13- Cal Ripken Jr. 

TH14- Kerry Wood 

TH15-Barry Bonds

TH16- Juan Gonzalez 

TH17- Mike Piazza

TH18- Greg Maddux 

TH19- Frank Thomas 

The Griffey and McGwire cards are the 8 and 20 spots.  Off the top of my head looking at the pictures of on Ebay and COMC, I think I also have Garciaparra, Lee, ARod, Jeter, Sosa, Rolen, Ripken, Piazza, and Thomas.  I might have more, either way I am figuring I will need about 10 or so cards to finish the set.  

I will update the cards I need in a few days, but for now I have placed the entire checklist under the set projects tab at the top of the blog.....

Set Project Number 3: 1999 Skybox Century E-X Quisite

Since the first project is finished up and posted under my Completed Projects tab at the top of the page, it's time to go ahead and start on another set.  I am going to choose an insert set this time, but it's one from one of my favorite 1990s.  I should probably do something with the 1998 Skybox E-X inserts, I think I already have to copies of the set, but I am going to start off with an insert from the 1999 Skybox E-X set instead.

I plan on doing a lot of these set projects.  Plenty of time to work on the 1998 inserts.

Here is a look at the insert set I am going to be working on.....

 
I really like the look of these E-X-Quisite cards.  The fronts have a nice look with the black background, smoke or a cloud, and the player standing in front.  The backs look pretty nice too, but this was also a somewhat of a bad phase for Skybox card backs......

I like how the design is sort of a silhouette of the front of the card, the cheesy little write ups on these cards are horrendous.  Skybox used these on a lot of their sets around this time.  I mean, they could have just written up a little snippet on J.D. Drew being a promising young player at the time this card was produced, but nope.

I suppose they could have come up with a good writer to make up these card backs, but they seem more like something that Shaq made while he was trying to rap instead of playing basketball.

There are fifteen cards in the set, I have eight of them, so I am looking for a little more than half of the set.  Eight cards is not too challenging, hopefully I can knock this one out fast.

Things I Am Sorting Part 6

At some point back in April I made a post about finishing up my 1999 Skybox Molten Metal set.  I have made a bunch of posts about the set over the past few months showing my progress towards completing the project.  That project is going really well, but I had actually posted a pair of projects up at the top of my blog under the Projects In Projects tab.

Well, this is a little awkward.  I did not make a single post about my progress in finishing my 2001 Topps Archives set, but I am sitting here with all of the cards needed to finish the set sitting here on my desk ready to put into a box to make up the finished set.  How did I get there?  A few trades, a seller who knocked a bunch of cards down to basically nothing on COMC, and then a few singles off of the Burbank Cards Ebay store and this set is ready to move over and become the first one over on the Completed Sets tab.

Here's a quick run down on the set......

The set came out during the summer of 2001 as a part of the 50th Anniversary of Topps.  Archives came out in two series with which each featuring a group of players, a few managers, and some other assorted postseason highlights cards and the whatnot that were all reprints.  The players in the set all had two cards: their first and their last.  It created a fairly good mixture of older cards and newer cards.  Basically anything from the 1950s through the late 1990s.

Topps did a really good job of mixing in the no brainer, Hall of Fame, uber popular players with collectors and others who were very good players, not Hall of Famers, but still loved by some fan base.  There is a little something for everyone in here.

Two bigs knocks on the set.

First, Topps did some mangling of players rookie cards.  Especially those who appeared on prospect cards with multiple players.  Even when there were multiple worth while names on the card.  Case in point....

The Cecil Cooper rookie card in the set appears as a stand alone card.  In reality, the original card featured two other Red Sox rookies including a fairly talented catcher named Carlton Fisk.

Kind of a classic card from the early 1970s.  It's sort of a shame that Topps did not just put this card into the set as is.  Heck, even Mike Garman was an average player who stuck around for 9 years in the Majors and pitched more than 300 games.

The second knock on the set is the card numbering.  Since the cards in this set were reprinted, Topps left the original number at the top of the card.  The numbering for the set is actually microscopically printed on the back of the card in different places.  I guess they really tried to make it as close to the original as possible, which meant squeezing card numbers into whatever space was around.

The card number on this 1987 Vida Blue reprint is above the bio line at the bottom of the card and his high school football factoid.  This is one of the easier ones to read.  Cards with dark backs, like the 1976 Topps cards, can come close to causing blindness.

In all, I added 81 cards from this set since I started working towards its completion in April.  The stack looks a little something like this.....

I pulled out my box with the partial set.  It appears that I probably should have used a bigger box for this set.  Looks like I am going to sort these into a completed set and then rebox the cards....

My tab on the completed set project will be updated and another project will be posted later in the week.  

Set Project Number 1: 1999 Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion

In sorting out of all different types of cards the past few months off away from writing I had all kinds of options to place here for my first set to work on completing.  I am actually listing a second one on the Projects In Progress tab at the top, but not dedicating a post towards the completion of the 2001 Topps Archives set.  The pile of cards that struck my interest the most was a stack of 1999 Molten Metal Xplosion cards.  I had actually started working on completing this set about two and half years ago and gave my last update roughly two years ago.  

At the time of my last update the work on the set felt long lost, so I am not quite sure what adjectives I could use to describe a project that has sat for years.  I am not going to worry about, but rather set out to do something about it.  Currently I have 82 out of the 150 cards, shown below in case you don't remember what the cards looked like: 

I still need a total of 68 cards, or 45%, of the cards in this set to complete it.  The cards are not too difficult to find and there is not any one card which stands out as something that would difficult to find.  I have one or two trades lined up for a few of these cards as we speak and I have found a few others on COMC and SportsLots.  I am going to put my time frame on this set at two and half months.  In other words, I am going to try to finish it off by the end of June.  The cards I still need to add are listed below:  

1 Larry Walker

2 Jose Canseco

3 Brian Jordan

4 Rafael Palmeiro

6 Dante Bichette

11 Miguel Tejada

13 David Cone

15 Ruben Rivera

20 Pedro Martinez

22 Randy Johnson

23 Matt Williams

24 Sean Casey

26 Ryan Klesko

28 Geoff Jenkins

29 Bob Abreu

30 Vinny Castilla

31 Will Clark

34 Richie Sexson

35 Derrick Gibson

37 Greg Vaughn

39 Steve Finley

40 Chuck Knoblauch

41 Ricky Ledee

42 John Smoltz

44 Jim Edmonds

46 Javy Lopez

47 Jim Thome

50 Andy Pettitte

51 Juan Encarnacion

52 Travis Fryman

55 Brady Anderson

57 Edgar Martinez

58 Garret Anderson

62 Tom Glavine

66 Fernando Tatis

67 Carlos Beltran

68 Charles Johnson

69 Raul Mondesi

71 Barry Larkin

77 Mariano Rivera

78 Livan Hernandez

79 A.J. Hinch

81 Rusty Greer

84 Kevin Brown

85 Chan Ho Park

86 John Olerud

91 Mike Cameron

93 Rickey Henderson

95 Omar Vizquel

96 Craig Biggio

99 Mike Mussina

101 Andruw Jones

102 Pat Burrell RC

104 Darin Erstad

105 Roberto Alomar

113 Troy Glaus

114 A.J. Burnett RC

115 Dave Justice

121 Manny Ramirez

122 Barry Bonds

126 Jeremy Giambi

130 Mo Vaughn

138 Alex Rodriguez

140 Juan Gonzalez

141 Tony Gwynn

144 Scott Rolen

147 Roger Clemens

149 Vladimir Guerrero