Redundant Sets - 1983 Kellogg's

Since 1970, Kellogg's breakfast cereals had given out 3-D baseball cards in packages of cereal. 1983 was the last year Kellogg's would produce these 3-D cards.

This set is not helpful in 1983 for filling out the ultimate set checklist, although in other years they would've been helpful (pre-1981). For example the 1971 Kellogg's set had the only card of one of the odder stories in baseball history in Tony Horton. Horton had retired after the 1970 season. In 1983, all of the players in this checklist appear in the regular 1983 Topps set.

To demonstrate how different the marketing for MLB was in the mid-1980s, the Cardinals, Brewers, and Royals all had the most cards in this set with 5 cards each. Every team had at least one player represented, including the two Canadian teams. This set is full of hall-of-famers, with 18 of the 60 cards featuring players that are now in the hall-of-fame.

Kellogg's would return in 1991 and 1992 with these 3-D cards, but they were more like Sportflics 3-D technology and only represented the all-time greats.

1983 Milwaukee Brewers

Much like the team that made it to the 1982 World Series, very good offensive team. Unfortunately the pitching took many steps back and ended up in 5th place in the AL East in 1983. Considering how strong the AL East was in 1983, that still meant they ended up with a respectable 87 wins.

Best Player: Cecil Cooper

Best Pitcher: Moose Haas

All-Stars: Cecil Cooper, Ben Oglivie, Ted Simmons, Robin Yount

Hall-of-Famers: Paul Molitor, Don Sutton, Robin Yount

Rookie Card of the Year: Pete Ladd (first solo card)...Pete Ladd appeared on the Astros prospects card in the 1980 Topps set

Other rookie cards: Dwight Bernard (listed under retired players), Tom Tellman (first solo card)...Tellman's true rookie card was on the Padres prospects card in the 1981 Topps set...both Ladd and Tellman were out of the majors after 1986, I gave Ladd the rookie card of the year because he was the closer for the Brewers in 1983 while Rollie Fingers sat out the year with injuries (which is why he is listed in the minors in the checklist below).

First Brewer card: Jamie Easterly, Rick Manning, Doc Medich (listed under retired players), Don Sutton, Rick Waits...all of these players except Medich and Sutton came to the Brewers in a June 6, 1983 trade for fan favorite Gorman Thomas, who was sent to the Indians. This is the latest trade I've come across so far to be included in the traded set....Typical of most teams coming off success the previous season, few transactions were made. The Gorman Thomas trade was made to shore up the outfield defense, but probably just negated some of the offense. Sutton and Medich both came over during the stretch drive in 1982 and their first cards as Brewers show up in the regular 1983 sets.

Most interesting non-Topps card: the above mentioned Pete Ladd is the only card that isn't from a Topps set.

Other notes: Topps produced a regional set for Gardner's Bakery. The set consisted of 22 Brewers players, but is a redundant set because all of the players appear in the regular 1983 Topps set. A sample of the card is shown above (Robin Yount), but I pulled this off of ebay and it looks like something was cut off in the picture.

Starters

__	TO	450	C	Ted Simmons	MIL
__	TO	190	1B	Cecil Cooper	MIL
__	TO	88	2B	Jim Gantner	MIL
__	TO	350	SS	Robin Yount	MIL
__	TO	630	3B	Paul Molitor	MIL
__	TO	750	LF	Ben Oglivie	MIL
__	TT	65	CF	Rick Manning	MIL
__	TO	659	RF	Charlie Moore	MIL
__	TO	218	DH	Roy Howell	MIL

Starting Pitchers

__	TO	145	SP	Don Sutton	MIL
__	TO	142	SP	Mike Caldwell	MIL
__	TO	503	SP	Moose Haas	MIL
__	TO	62	SP	Bob McClure	MIL
__			SP	Chuck Porter

Relief Pitchers

__	FL	37	CL	Pete Ladd	MIL
__	TT	109	RP	Tom Tellmann	MIL
__	TO	114	RP	Jim Slaton	MIL
__			RP	Bob Gibson
__			SP	Tom Candiotti
__	TO	424	RP	Jerry Augustine	MIL

Other Players

__	TO	297	C	Ned Yost	MIL
__	TO	167	LF	Mark Brouhard	MIL
__	TO	10	CF	Gorman Thomas	MIL
__	TO	271	UT	Ed Romero	MIL
__	TO	608	DH	Don Money	MIL
__	TO	582	UT	Marshall Edwards	MIL
__			C	Bill Schroeder
__			UT	Randy Ready
__	TO	476	UT	Rob Picciolo	MIL
__			UT	Bob Skube
__			UT	Dion James
__	TT	123	RP	Rick Waits	MIL
__			SP	Jaime Cocanower
__	TO	375	SP	Pete Vuckovich	MIL
__	TO	528	RP	Jamie Easterly	MIL
__			RP	Andy Beene

Minors

__

TO

35

MN

Rollie Fingers

MIL

Manager

__

TO

726

MG

Harvey Kuenn

MIL

Sunday Extra - 1983 Topps Glossy Send Ins

In 1983, Topps started creating a set of glossy all-star cards. They were very simple cards with no statistics and clean glossy fronts with nothing more than the players picture and their name in very small script below a colored frame. In order to obtain these cards, a collector had to send in wrappers and money to get 10 of the cards. They put out a set of these every year from 1983 until 1990. For the 1983 through 1985 sets, there were 40 cards in each set, and then from 1986-1990, there were 60 cards per set. As is typical with most sets of this type, there was at least one card for each team. Unfortunately for our project, these are redundant cards, as each of the players is also in the regular Topps set for 1983.

A checklist for the 1983 set can be found here.

Sunday Extra - 1982 Brigham's - Coca Cola Boston Red Sox

I found out about this set listed on the wikipedia page for 1982 Topps. From what I can tell, it was a set sponsored by both Coca-Cola and Brigham's Ice Cream. Since I am from the midwest, I never heard of that brand of ice cream and apparently it is a New England brand. I have no idea how these cards were distributed. It appears very similar to the 1982 Topps set, except it has logos of the two companies on the card. Also, since I own none of these cards, I can't verify this, but looking at ebay auctions, it appears these cards are brighter than the regular 1982 Topps cards, perhaps they were printed on different card stock. Perhaps a Red Sox fan can fill in the blanks about this set.

I thought this may help my checklist for the 1982 Boston Red Sox, which I actually already posted. Although it is nice 22 card regional set, it is no use for this project. It actually has the same checklist for the Boston Red Sox as the regular Topps set, except there is no cards for Bill Campbell, Joe Rudi, or Frank Tanana in addition to the team leader card and future stars card. The reason for those three not appearing in the set? They were the only 3 Red Sox in the regular Topps set who didn't play for the Red Sox in 1982, so this set must've came out sometime during the 1982 season. There are also no cards for Red Sox players who appeared in the traded set, so it must've came out before the traded set.

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.