1981 Topps Stickers

I know I've been slacking lately, so thanks to everybody who sent emails asking where I've been. I was kind of squatting here and there for a bit before heading out west the last week to follow the Tigers in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Seattle. I'm back home now and have a permanent residence, so things should be picking back up here at DTCAS.

I've been out of the card loop for a few months, but quick checks in Target and Meijer this past weekend show that I haven't missed anything. While unpacking boxes this weekend I found a few things that I picked up recently and hadn't had a chance to blog about, so I'll start with these.

A couple of months ago I found an entire set of 1981 Topps Stickers on ebay for around $10. I'm sure if you do the math for inflation I got the set for less than what a handful of packs cost back then (20¢ if memory serves me well, maybe 15¢). They have held up well (the look like little minis of the SSPC sets of the 70's) and the set is chock full of HOF.


The list of Tigers featured is interesting. The absence of Lou Whitaker is glaring given he had just won ROY two years earlier, but when you look at the stats none of the featured players had worse seasons in 1980. Hell, if anybody has a beef it's Richie Hebner or Tom Brookens, who arguably had better years than Rick Peters or Alan Trammell.

The 1981 Topps Stickers Detroit Tigers:
73 Lance Parrish
74 Steve Kemp
75 Alan Trammell
76 Champ Summers
77 Rick Peters
78 Kirk Gibson
79 Johnny Wockenfuss
80 Jack Morris

I've been on a bit of the sticker binge the last year or two and I have a question for anybody who collects them. How do you display them? I can't find any vinyl pages that come close to fitting the size (they won't stay put in a 9-pocket page). I guess at no more than $10 a set I could just buy the old sticker book and stick them in there, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

Or does it?

Card Show Last Night!

Last night I went to the Sun-Times Card Show in Rosemont. I've been to enough of these things in the last 2+ years that I've gotten to know a handful of dealers who are some good guys, so it's always fun to visit and say hello, and then dive into searching for Tigers cards! Last night was a rousing success!!!


I picked up 21 '60 Topps Tigers cards, bringing me 5 short of finishing the team set. I'm not really familiar with the gray back vs. white back story, but I did notice that some players had both. Does anybody know if there's a checklist out there detailing which ones are which?



I found the last two cards I needed to finish the '69 team set, Dick McAuliffe and and Bill Freehan. At 42 cards, this has to be one of the largest Tiger team sets ever (I'm including the All-Star cards, World Series cards, League Leaders cards, etc.) I'm going to guess that maybe the 2007 Topps set is larger. (Which should not qualify since they made two cards of Gary Sheffield and Mike Rabelo.....)



I found 12 of the '70 cards, including nice ones of Willie Horton, Norm Cash, and Mickey Stanley. I'm only 6 short of that set now, but one of them is a Kaline high number. I'll be poking around ebay for that one.


I found a few more cards from the 70's that I needed, with the highlight of the night being the '78 Lou Whitaker RC to finish out that set. This was the first year I collected cards so it's pretty cool to finally finish this set with one of my all-time favorite Tigers.



Rounding out the vintage edition of the night were a handful of early 80's cards including '81 Topps and '82 Topps of Jack Morris and a bunch of '83 Fleer including a Howard Johnson RC. I collected a ton of '83 Fleer when I was a kid and I'm amazed that I'm missing so many of these. Even after last night I'm still 6 cards short.

That was it for the older cards. By my count I'm only about 50 cards away from finishing all my 70's Tigers sets, with the bulk being '71 and '72. Oh well, that'll give me something to shoot for next time!

1981 Donruss

Ok, so these were the red headed step child in 1981. These cards were printed on stock so crappy that you can take a card and fold it from the top to the bottom without creasing the card.

But looking back, these were all right. Starting from 1981, Donruss had the best four year run of anybody. They improved every year from 1981 to 1984, and who does that sound like?

So it's hard to bag on these too much. Their gum was awful though. It is a good thing that they included puzzles instead of gum after this issue. The Babe Ruth puzzle was much tastier than the gum from these.

The 1981 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

5 Alan Trammell

6 Tom Brookens

7 Duffy Dyer

8 Mark Fidrych

9 Dave Rozema

10 Ricky Peters

125 Richie Hebner

126 Mark Wagner

127 Jack Morris

128 Dan Petry

129 Bruce Robbins

130 Champ Summers

245 John Wockenfuss

246 Stan Papi

247 Milt Wilcox

248 Dan Schatzeder

249 Steve Kemp

250 Jim Lentine

365 Lou Whitaker

366 Lance Parrish

367 Tim Corcoran

368 Pat Underwood

369 Al Cowens

370 Sparky Anderson

And with that, I'm calling it a night. All around though, 1981 was a damn fine year for baseball cards. I don't know that there was ever another year where all three companies collectively issued such great cards.

1981 Fleer

This is such a great set. It's too bad that Fleer shot their wad right out of the box. This is without question my favorite set of the 80's. Great design. Great color scheme. Numbering cards by team, instead of just a random scattering across a set. Those huge pieces of gum that would cripple a kid today. This set had it all. They would never make a set this nice again.

I don't want to waste anymore time. Here is the checklist of 1981 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

459 Steve Kemp

460 Sparky Anderson

461 Alan Trammell

462 Mark Fidrych

463 Lou Whitaker

464 Dave Rozema

465 Milt Wilcox

466 Champ Summers

467 Lance Parrish

468 Dan Petry

469 Pat Underwood

470 Rick Peters

471 Al Cowens

472 John Wockenfuss

473 Tom Brookens

474 Richie Hebner

475 Jack Morris

476 Jim Lentine

477 Bruce Robbins

478 Mark Wagner

479 Tim Corcoran

480 Stan Papi

481 Kirk Gibson

482 Dan Schatzeder

652 Team Checklist

Ok, so the checklist card sucks. And they would never get any better. But that's it. 

The rest of this set is gold. 

Two words. Jim Lentine.

Enough said....

1981 Topps

Oh, what a glorious summer. This was the summer that the T-family returned from Spain to live in the good old U.S. of A. June 8th as a matter of fact. In the three years since we'd left the States, young RobbyT became a huge baseball fan. Even made an All-Star team in Little League.

So imagine my excitement to finally return to the States. No more waiting on three day old box scores in the Stars and Stripes. No more waiting on three week old issues of The Sporting News to show up in the mail. No more waiting on Granny to send me a box of baseball cards that I would only get half of. Nope, this was going to be one awesome summer.

So guess what I got for my 12th birthday that summer? That's right, my birthday, June 12th. Summer of 1981.

You know what I got? Yeah, a @#$%!& strike!!! I got four days of baseball for the next two months. Whoo-hoo....

But the other thing I got on returning was discovering that there were three companies making baseball cards. Whoo-hoo!!!!!!! How was this possible? Why hadn't I been notified? Who cared? I was going to get them all!!!!!!

We went back to my grandparents in Arkansas that summer, and you can bet that I begged like hell to ride along with my mom to Wal-Mart to get whatever cards I could talk her in to buying for me.  Wally World had these rack packs for 85 cents a piece. And despite buying what I thought was approximately 1000 packs that summer, I still don't have the Kirk Gibson rookie card! D'oh!!!

This is another one of those sets that I love without question. I can't explain it. (The 2009 RobbyT cards also borrow a prominent feature of these cards as well) It might very well be the fact that any time you went in any place in 1981 that sold anything, you could find packs of these. I swear I bought a pack at church that summer.

I can't wait either, the 1981 Topps Detroit Tigers:

27 Champ Summers

59 Dan Petry

79 Bruce Robbins

102 Dave Tobik

123 Al Cowens

150 Mark Fidrych

177 Rick Peters

196 Duffy Dyer

217 Richie Hebner

234 Lou Whitaker

251 Tom Brookens

273 Stan Papi

291 Aurelio Lopez

315 Kirk Gibson

337 Lynn Jones

358 Mark Wagner

373 Pat Underwood

392 Lance Parrish

417 Dan Schatzeder

448 Tim Corcoran

468 John Wockenfuss

572 Jack Morris

593 Steve Kemp

614 Dave Rozema

626 Tigers Future Stars Dave Steffen/Jerry Udjer/Roger Weaver

658 Milt Wilcox

666 Detroit Tigers Team Card

709 Alan Trammell

This was also the year of the debut of the Topps Traded set as we would come to know it in the 80's. In 1981, it was more of a novelty than anything, as it really didn't have much more than the first solo card of Fernando Valenzuela, but it would become a staple from Topps in years to come. For the only time they would number it as a continuation of the base set. I guess it had that going for it.

The 1981 Topps Traded Detroit Tigers:

760 Bill Fahey

779 Mick Kelleher

827 Kevin Saucier

Mick, I'd be mad if they got a picture of my coif looking like that too....

Best 80's Albums No One Ever Listened To: Chapter 2

I know what you are thinking and just stop right there. You just think you've heard it. Don't believe me? Ask the person sitting to your left if he/she has heard it. Now the right. Thought so. 

Face it, it you are under 40 you certainly didn't buy this album when it came out. You just remember hearing In The Air Tonight some 84 billion times during the first season of Miami Vice several years after the album was released in February of 1981. And no, it is not a song about Phil Collins watching somebody watching somebody else drown. In fact, it's a song about someone catching their lover cheating on them.

See, Old Phil was going through a d-i-v-o-r-c-e during this time in his life, and channelled that into the lyrics on this album. But despite the dark tone of the album, Phil's debut solo recording blends a vast assortment of musical styles to pop perfection.

Phil takes us on a roller coaster of love and loss, from the sweet sultry ballad This Must Be Love and the bittersweet remorsefulness of If Leaving Me Is Easy to the upbeat funky ditties Behind The Lines and Thunder And Lightning. He had also had minor hits with Misunderstanding and I Missed Again that have held up quite nicely.

So go ahead and treat yourself to an album that still sounds as fresh today as a breezy spring afternoon. Take that leap and dismiss everything you remember about Phil Collins and hear him for the first time before he became a Top 40 hit making machine.