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?

1983 Topps Stickers

Let me just start by saying that if this set came out today, it would be a huge hit among collectors. The 330 stickers are composed of a great collection of reverent, neat looking, and innovative subsets as well as a crisp, colorful, and orderly selection of players from 1983. Not too big, not too small, but just right. Whoever Topps put in charge of this set must have been fired not long after its release, because there are too many good things going on with this set.

Part of the fun of this is going to be trying to figure out what some of the subsets are without having the sticker book they go in. Some are easier than others, and I think I've got them all figured out, but why some are done one way and others another way is a mystery to me. But on we go!

This was one of the boxes I picked up at the National for $5. Each box has 100 packs containing 6 stickers each. That's 600 stickers for less than a penny apiece. As you can see from the wrapper, this product held no value whatsoever from it's original price of 25 cents a pack ($25 a box, in 1983 dollars). I like that already.

The set starts off with gold foil stickers of the top four all-time HR leaders. The real ones. The gold foil sets these apart, while at the same time honoring the greats of the past. Given the success today of archives sets, I've never understood why Topps or Upper Deck doesn't do more things like this in their base sets.

That's followed by a group of players that I have no idea what the correlation is. It looks to be some of the game's older, active players, such as HOFer's Reggie, Yaz, Bench, and Tony Perez, but also includes Dave Kingman, Reggie Smith, and Graig Nettles.

Then come stickers of the A.L. stat leaders of 1982 followed by the A.L. players. These are sorted by team in alphabetical order, starting with Baltimore and ending with Toronto. There are gold foil stickers scattered throughout of a top player on each team.

Now we are at what I think is the coolest part of the set. The split stickers. Anywhere from two to six stickers that combine to make one image. These commemorate the highlights, records, All-Stars, and postseason heroes of 1982.

These are awesome, especially the 6 sticker Rickey Henderson set.

How cool is it that the All-Star stickers fit side by side and form an actual star?

Those are followed by the N.L. stat leaders and players in the same manner as the A.L. earlier.

Then the set finishes with stickers of rising stars that includes Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken, and Ryne Sandberg.

The Tigers in the set are as follows:

63-Lance Parrish gold foil

64-John Wockenfuss

65-Lou Whitaker

66-Alan Trammell

67-Kirk Gibson

68-Larry Herndon

69-Jack Morris

70-Dan Petry

193 & 194-Lance Parrish Record Breaker

318-Glenn Wilson

This is just a beautiful set. It's too bad the card companies today don't look back to something like this as a way to make fun and interesting sets without resorting to contrived crap like errors and parallels to drive sales. But, in true Topps fashion, I came up two stickers short of a full set from a box that had almost enough stickers to make two sets.

Now if I can just get my hands on one of those sticker books....