1983 Topps

I don't really know where to begin, so I'll just start yammering until I figure something out. 

This may be my favorite card set ever.

Ok, I'll start with that. This is hands down one of the best sets Topps ever produced. Hell, that anybody ever produced. The design pays homage to the '63 cards, yet improves upon it. Pretty much the entire set is made up of action shots. There's the nice little still shot in the bottom corner. The cards just radiate with color. 

There is also a great deal of sentimental value with these cards. This was the summer that my family moved to Michigan when I was a kid, and not long after became a Tiger fan for life. For the first time ever I lived somewhere that had a baseball team that I could go see and read about everyday. For this 14 year old kid, that was pretty much heaven. 

One of the all-time greats, the 1983 Detroit Tigers:

4 Record Breaker Lance Parrish

13 Larry Herndon

41 Jerry Turner

65 Jack Morris

95 Alan Trammell

119 Tom Brookens

147 Rick Leach

174 Jerry Udjur

196 Bill Fahey

225 Enos Cabell

261 Detroit Tigers Team Card

285 Lance Parrish

304 Dave Rucker

332 Glenn Wilson

373 Kevin Saucier

430 Kirk Gibson

457 Milt Wilcox

483 Lynn Jones

509 Lou Whitaker

536 Johnny Wockenfuss

562 Dave Rozema

588 Pat Underwood

613 Mike Ivie

636 Dan Petry

666 Sparky Anderson

691 Dave Tobik

727 Chet Lemon

753 Elias Sosa

My only disappointment with this set, and I understand why it's that way, is the omission of any Tigers from the cool Super Veteran subset. A neat subset featuring the greats of the game containing two pictures. The first was a sepia toned photo from very early in that players career and the second was a current photo depicting that player on his '83 team. 

As Milt Wilcox was pretty much the only veteran on the team, and nowhere near "Super", it's easy to see why no Tigers were included in the set. But it was one of the best subsets Topps would ever make, and it would never be used again. Too bad, because there are a slew of Tigers today that could make it a cool set. Hmmmm......

Topps added a new twist to the Traded set in 1983 by printing them on white cardboard stock in stead of the standard gray. (One day I'll get an answer as to why it took them nine more years to actually do this for the base set, especially when O-Pee-Chee was already doing it, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.) The set inlcudes three key guys from the '84 team, so it's got that going for it too.

Another interesting thing of note is the inclusion of Aurelio Lopez in the set. Señor Smoke was acquired by the Tigers in a trade all right. December 4, 1978. It looks like Topps didn't include him in the base set because of his injury plagued '82, but when he came back strong in '83 they decided to add him to the "Traded" set. Hey, it's Topps. They don't need any excuses to do the stupid shit they do.....

1983 Topps Traded:

5T Doug Bair

38T Johnny Grubb

63T Aurelio Lopez

So why did I post a card of Johnny Grubb and not Lopez? Because Johnny makes the RobbyT all-time scrubs team, that's why.