Sunday Extra - 1981 Drake's

Another set I only know about because of a wikipedia entry. I have collected cards for nearly 30 years off and on, and I have never bought a Beckett or a larger price guide book. I have thumbed through them in book stores and that is about it. I have never been that interested in the value of my cards. The downside of that is that there are tons of sets like this I know nothing about. That is why I really like the blogs and other info I can find on the internet, as it helps me fill in the blanks.

Anyway, I came across this set under the 1981 Topps entry on wikipedia. Here is what the entry said...

Drake's Big Hitters

Topps produced for Northeastern regional bakery Drake's a promotional set of 33 cards. The cards were issued in boxes of Drake's Cakes and featured position players and no pitchers. The front of the cards have a design that differs from the Topps set while the backs resemble the Topps cards.

I thought aha, since this is a regional set, I may be able to find some rare players to fill in the blanks for my checklist. Nope this was another of those 33 card all-star sets issued with a consumable product. I have no cards in this set as they didn't sell these snack cakes in the region of the country I grew up in. I knew there were 33 players after looking on ebay, as the top front of the card has a line that says Card x in a series of 33. After searching through ebay and finding pictures of each card in the set, I found that this set has at least one player for each team, including the Blue Jays, which were shut out of the Squirt and Fleer Sticker sets I reviewed earlier with a card of John Mayberry. The set has multiple cards for the Angels, Yankees, Mets, Orioles, Phillies and Red Sox. The extra Angel was Fred Lynn who was just traded from the Red Sox, so having multiple players on all the teams in the northeastern region of the country is probably what makes it regional. A complete checklist of this set can be found here.

These cards must've been issued during spring training because we come across Dave Winfield on the Yankees and Jerry Mumphrey again being the token Padre, but as I've noted before, he was traded to the Yankees late in spring training of 1981.

So again, this is another set that will not help me with this project.

Adding after the original post..here is a link to a Night Owl cards blog entry that shows the photo variations between the regular Topps cards and the Drakes set. Also has more information, such as you were able to get this set by ordering it through the mail. I do know for a 29 year old set I thought was rare, there are a lot of these cards up for sale on ebay right now. I am also adding a link to Night Owl Cards on the side.

Sunday Extra - 1981 Fleer Star Stickers

While going through my 1981 cards for this project I came across the Ken Landreaux card shown above. I have no idea why I have it as I am not a Twins fan and was never a Ken Landreaux fan. I remember him as a Dodger outfielder, but really know very little about him as a player. I really don't remember where I picked this card up from.

It is from a 1981 set issued from Fleer. They are stickers, but the cardboard back and the stats on the back make it just like a baseball card if the sticker is left unpeeled. In fact the backs are identical to the regular 1981 Fleer set. I am not going to use stickers for this project, but I will make an exception in this case since these actually seem more like cards than stickers. They don't hide the fact that they are stickers, based on the tabs to let you peel the stickers away shown on each of the four corners of the card.

I didn't know much about this set at all, considering I had only 1 card, so I did some digging around on the internet. I came across an entry on a blog called The Fleer Sticker Project, which has all the information one would seem to need regarding this set, including a picture of each card. The only thing I would add is that this issue most likely came out at the same time as the regular baseball cards, as several of the players, including Landreaux and Dave Winfield shown above, played on different teams in 1981 than what they are pictured with on their stickers. Also every team, except the Toronto Blue Jays, has at least one player in the set.

After being able to see the pictures of every card, this is again another set that will not help me with the overall project as there are no players who don't have cards in any of the other sets, but it is an interesting issue from a company able to issue cards of current players for the first time in 1981.

1981 Topps Squirt

When I was researching the Coke cards, on the wikipedia page for 1981 Topps, it also mentioned that they made a set for another soft drink called Squirt. So I did some digging around to get a checklist and it turns out this is one of those 33 card sets that are quite commonly used to promote a consumable product. Typically these sets have at least one player per team in order to take advantage of the marketability of each team. This set is exactly that. These types of sets are probably useless for the project that I am doing here as the main sets already have the star players, but the checklists are interesting because you can see who was considered the star (or at least marketable) players in any given year.

This set is interesting because after looking on ebay for samples, I saw a pattern to how these were distributed. They were issued in two cards panels that attached to a 2 liter bottle (I am assuming here, I suppose they could've been attached to a regular pop bottle). There were really 22 different panels of 33 cards. This means that 11 of the players were double printed.

So the checklist, which I can't tell if it is numbered or not, from what I could put together looking at ebay auctions is as follows:
Mike Schmidt (paired with Dave Winfield or Cecil Cooper)
Pete Rose (paired with Al Oliver or Chet Lemon)
George Brett (paired with Garry Templeton or Jerry Mumphrey)
Rod Carew (paired with Johnny Bench or Bruce Bochte)
Reggie Jackson (paired with Steve Kemp or Don Sutton)
Dave Parker (paired with Joe Charboneau or Lee Mazzilli)
Jim Rice (paried with Jack Clark or John Castino)
Steve Garvey (paired with Ron LeFlore or Eddie Murray)
Ben Oglivie (paired with Fred Lynn or Dave Kingman)
George Foster (paired with Tony Armas or Rick Burleson)
Bill Buckner (paired with Dusty Baker or Rickey Henderson)

They look like they have more in common with the 1978 Topps set, as the cursive writing is similar and the positions are shown in a similar baseball. There are no players representing Canadian teams or the Atlanta Braves in this set. In 1981, the Braves were the only team in the southeastern region of the country, so maybe this shows Squirt wasn't sold in that area of the country. Also interesting is that the only pitcher in the set is Don Sutton.

These must have been released sometime during spring training because Dave Winfield, Fred Lynn, Don Sutton and Ron LeFlore all switched teams during the offseason and are shown with their new teams for 1981. But Jerry Mumphrey is still shown with the Padres. He was traded to the Yankees on March 31st for Ruppert Jones and a bunch of pitchers. Mumphrey does appear in the Topps Traded set as a New York Yankee.

As I stated above, this is a useless set for my project.

1981 Topps Coke Team Sets

A Detour from the Checklist

To the best of my research, Topps created 11 team sets of 11 cards each of cards with a similar design to their regular set, but with a Coke logo on the front. I became aware of these because I have the Detroit Tigers complete set. I have no recollection of how I received these. They were sitting in a box with a checklist card in a plastic case, so I must've bought these as a complete set at some point. I really have no idea if these were distributed at games or in packages of Coke, or if they were some kind of redemption prize. This appears to be a complete checklist of the cards listed here. It seems this promotion must've been on the east coast and midwest based on the teams they made sets for.

Since I have a complete Tigers set in front of me, it is interesting to note that all cards are identical except the photo on the Aurelio Lopez card is different. Shown above the card with the moustache is from the regular Topps set. Who knows why this was changed. After searching around the internet, I came across this blog devoted to Cincinnati Reds cards that had photos of the complete Reds set. It appears the only change was the elimination of the All-Star banner on Johnny Bench's card leading to a slightly different cropping of the same photo on the card.

I also came across one more interesting change after searching around ebay for examples. The Bruce Sutter card in the St. Louis Cardinals set is definetly airbrushed, but the card in the 1981 Topps Traded set showing him in a Cardinals uniform is definitely a photograph (this was his first year in St. Louis). Also, the last transaction that shows up in the regular Topps traded set is the June 12, 1981 trade that sent Rick Reushel to the Yankees from the Cubs for Doug Bird, so the traded set had to be released after that date. I can't find any transaction after the offseason between 1980-1981 that shows up in the Coke cards. So these sets seemed to have came out in between the regular set and the traded set.

But I suspect they didn't all come out at the same time. After searching the checklists, I suspect the Phillies and Pirates sets came out before the others, as Greg Luzinski is shown in the Phillies set and Ed Ott is shown in the Pirates set. Neither one played for these teams in 1981, Luzinski played on the White Sox and Ed Ott was a California Angel. They are both shown in the traded set in their new uniforms. There are no players on either of the Phillies or Pirates Coke sets that show up in the traded set. Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers, and Kansas City Royals set also have no players that show up in the regular traded set, although this may be because none of these teams acquired anyone of significance. Every other team has at least one player that appears in the Topps traded set and no one who didn't play for that team in 1981.

In the end, this is a useless set for my project, as it doesn't allow me to fill in the blanks of our checklist not already filled by the 4 major sets out in 1981.