1985 Fleer Update

I am "working from home" today, still reeling from last night's bitter defeat to the White Sox, so what better way for me to cheer up than to blog about one of my favorite card designs of the 80's. I have always been a big fan of the '85 Fleer cards. Nice clean photos, trimmed with team colors, and a prominently placed team logo make this a fresh looking set still today.

I picked up a couple of these at The National for $2 apiece. For the price of two packs of Topps Opening Day, I think these are quite a steal. I can't even begin to imagine how many of these Fleer must have produced for this set of 132 cards to sell for that cheap.

I guess the "big card" would be the Ozzie Guillen rookie card. (I take small solace in the fact that he was serving game one of his two game suspension last night during the Tigers 14th inning, 10-8 loss...) Yo Ozzie, hit THIS!!!

There are four HOFers in this set. (Yes, I am counting Rickey. Because, you know, Rickey already be counting Rickey.) Hell, I'd forgotten that Don Sutton once played for the A's. I'll bet most Braves fans would like to forget that Bruce Sutter once played for the Braves. I'm sure many Mets fans would have already forgotten that Gary Carter once played for the Mets, if only Gary would let them.

There are four Tigers in the set, including another Sparky Anderson overhyped phenom, Chris Pittaro. Sparky once contemplated moving Lou Whitaker to third before placing Pittaro there out of spring training in 1985. Pittaro, replacing Howard Johnson, who was traded for Walt Terrell, played all of 28 games for the Tigers that year. He and Alex Sanchez the First were later traded to the Twins for Dave Engle. 

87U-Chris Pittaro

98U-Alex Sanchez

103U-Nelson Simmons

118U-Walt Terrell

I don't have anything on Nelson Simmons. For that I apologize.

I can reiterate enough how much I like the '85 Fleer stickers. I'm going to get a full set of these one way or another.

I have no clue who this guy is. Wasn't he the governor of Alabama or Oklahoma in the 70's?

1987 Topps Stickers

I don't know what happened between 1983 and 1987, but it's apparent that Topps had given up on its sticker set somewhere along the way. Chalk this up as another listless entry into the Topps pantheon of mediocre products.

Gone are the tributes to the Hall Of Famers. Gone are the cool die-cut All-Stars. Hell, gone are each guy getting his own sticker. 

I'll keep this brief because I really don't feel like spending a lot of time blogging about such a bland product. Also because there really isn't a lot to discuss.

Each team has two players that get full stickers. The rest of the guys are relegated to half-sticker status. 

The only foil stickers are of the All-Stars.

The Tigers in this set:

149-Lance Parrish All-Star

153-Lou Whitaker All-Star

264-??? full-sticker

265-Johnny Grubb half-sticker

266-Jack Morris half-sticker

267-Lou Whitaker half-sticker

268-Chet Lemon half-sticker

269-Lance Parrish half-sticker

270-Alan Trammell half-sticker

271-Darnell Coles half-sticker

272-Willie Hernandez half-sticker

273-Kirk Gibson full-sticker

Ok, so without having the sticker book, IT IS KILLING ME to know who the other Tiger full sticker is. Darrell Evans is the best I can come up with. But is he really full-sticker worthy over ANYBODY else on a half-sticker?

The coolest sticker in the entire set? If a sticker paints a thousand words.....

The worst sticker in the entire set? Cecilio Guante and Tim Hulett. There's not much else to say.....

Oh yeah, Barry Lamar Bonds made his debut in this set. Topps was obviously airbrushing to make him appear this small. Meanwhile, Neil Allen starts the trend of looking the other way.....

By this time Topps was up to its usual collation shenanigans again. There are 313 stickers in this set, but probably half of those are stickers with 2 players on 1 sticker. So there are maybe 200 or so stickers total. Out of a box of 500 stickers, I am still missing something like 11-13 stickers, including one of the single Tiger stickers. 

I have 6 stickers of Roger Clemens right leg, but no Tiger sticker of whoever it is that I cannot figure out. 

I hate Topps.

1987 Fleer Limited Edition

Fresh off one of the ugliest sets ever, comes another. The highlight is the pre-juice card of Roger Clemens.

Mike Krukow? He sucked....

The stickers suck too.

The Tigers:

17-Kirk Gibson

28-Jack Morris

I don't know what else to add about this set, other than I paid $2 for it. 

It sucks.

1986 Fleer Limited Edition

Year two of the Limited Edition sets, and as ugly as they are, not even close to the worst it would get. But pretty bad nonetheless.

At least the stickers were somewhat cool.

The worst player of the set? Chris Brown, pictured sweating his ass off here at Wrigley while wearing a jacket, unbeknowing that one day he would be a Tiger, who would eventually go on to drive trucks for Haliburton in Iraq and die a few years later in a house fire in Texas. 

RIP

The Tigers:

19-Kirk Gibson

44-Lou Whitaker

Boy was this an ugly set.

1986 Donruss Major League All-Stars

Following along with their Action All-Stars set, in 1986 Donruss actually produced a 3.5" x 5" set of all of actual All-Stars from the 1985 All-Star Game, with a new twist. 

The set contains all 58 participants in the 1985 game, along with a card of the Metrodome and a checklist card.

The first 18 cards are the starting nine from each side, with the rest of the set consisting of the reserves and the managers.

The MVP of the game was newly acquired Padre Lamarr Hoyt.

This was the infamous game where Lou Whitaker lost his uniform in transit and had to buy a Tigers jersey at the game and color his number on the back with a magic marker.

For the first time the oversized set resembled the Donruss base set of the same year.

The worst All-Star of the bunch? Yep, you guessed it. Scott Garrelts, who looks like the offspring of Greg Minton.

Tigers were aplenty this year, and include:

11-Lou Whitaker

18-Jack Morris

42-Dan Petry

43-Willie Hernandez

45-Alan Trammell

58-Sparky Anderson

The new twist I mentioned earlier? The very cool and innovative "pop-up." A die cut card that you could unfold to be a self standing deal. There was one of each starter in the game. Again, kudos to Donruss for collation, as I got a full set of 18 as well as doubles of both Tigers, Morris and Whitaker.

This box also included the box bottom card panel that Donruss started the year before. This box had the following:

1985 Fleer Limited Edition

Ok, so this is not a set I picked up at the National. But this was the debut of what would become a Fleer trademark in the 1980's, the Limited Edition box set. And since I picked up a couple at the show, let me start at the beginning of it all.

Easily the most attractive design of all the box sets they would produce over a 6 year period from 1985-1989, this one is chock full of HOFers. 16 so far, not counting Andre Dawson, Jim Rice, and Pete Rose.

Each box came with 44 cards, and 6 stickers. The 1985 stickers were also the best Fleer ever produced. These sets could be found anywhere for $3 in 1985. The same holds true today.

It's as much fun for me to see who in the sets never panned out and would arguably be the worst player included. Ron Kittle narrowly edges out Tony Peña in this set.

There were two Tigers included.

21-Jack Morris

40-Alan Trammell

Great looking set indeed.

1984 Donruss Grand Champions

Here is yet another underrated 80's set. Following on the heels of their 3.5" x 5" 1983 Action All-Stars, Donruss released the Grand Champions set in 1984. This time they mixed in several Dick Perez paintings of all-time greats along side the superstars of the game. They combined a great player selection that leans on the veteran side with an uncluttered card design to produce one of the nicest looking sets in Donruss history.

Sadly, the Ty Cobb card is the only Tiger in the set, but it is veteran heavy, and the Tigers team that would capture the World Series that year had yet to make their names in the baseball card world.

This is another unopened box that I picked up at the National for $5. True to Donruss form of the 80's, the collation was superb. Out of this box I got a complete 60 card set and an entire Duke Snider puzzle, with probably 100 doubles to boot. I ended up pulling 3-4 cards each of Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Hank Aaron. Not too shabby.