Blue DonRuss

Have you ever bought a complete set just to get one card? A couple of months ago, I did.

The 1990 set by DonRuss is one of those incredibly common junk wax sets that I quite like. I think it's the red borders. I have a few cards from it (which I blogged about in the very early days of this blog) but I hadn't seen blue versions of the cards before (even though Fuji had mentioned them in a comment on that post from the early days of this blog!) Some junk wax is harder to find, especially here in Wales.

But then this sealed factory set of the 'Best of the National League' turned up in the UK collectors group on Facebook. Adrian, the seller, had three of them. I had a think about it and then decided to take one off his hands. Mainly because when the player you collect is listed on the back, you kind of have to, right?

Opening up the box, there was an inner tray with three blocks of shrink-wrapped cards.

The 'puzzles' that are mentioned on the outside of the box were underneath the blocks of cards. Does anyone care about puzzles?

Anyway, I had to open all three shrink-wrapped blocks to find Tony's card, but here it is!

Card Number 1039: DonRuss Best of the National League, 1990; #11

It's not the greatest photo of Tony at the plate, but it's a close up cropped shot rather than the photos that were used on the cards in the regular set released by DonRuss that year. The photo clearly shows the Mimsbandz anti-drugs wristguards that Tony wore.

The back is a bit dull, but the yellow means they look very different to cards from the regular release. 

I have taken this card out of the set and put it in my binders. I have no plans for the rest of the cards. I know a few people who collect other players from that era, so I might send a few cards out. In the unlikely event that any regular readers want one (or more) of these cards, please let me know!

Total: 1039 cards

Store exclusives part 1 - K-Mart

I have a funny story about K-Mart. On our first road trip to America, Cathy and I filled up a trolley with cool stuff in a K-mart and then had our credit card declined. So we had to go back to the hotel to get our traveller's cheques. When we got back to the store the cashier was very surprised to see us and said they were just about to start putting all the stuff back on the shelves! (We had a few problems with our credit card that holiday - I've learned to always let the credit card comapny know that we are going abroad!)

Anyway, K-Mart have had a longstanding relationship with Topps. These days that means exclusive parallels or special inserts in packs of Topps baseball cards sold in K-Mart. But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it meant exclusive small sets sold only in K-Mart stores. I've blogged about a K-Mart card from 1990 previously. 

Card Number 693: K-Mart Memorable Moments, 1988; #12

This isn't the most exciting card front. The photo is of Tony toward the end of his swing. It's hard to make out, but it looks like he has got his eyes closed.

Consdering this set was about 'Memorable Moments of the Eighties', the moment related to Tony was a bit obscure - a player of the month award in 1987. Admittedly, those are impressive monthly stats. Was that one of the most memorable moments of the 80s though?

This does underline how Tony was the master of hitting singles. Only a quarter of his 44 successful contacts in June 1987 were extra-base hits.

Card Number 694: K-Mart Dream Team, 1989; #29

I really like the font they used for the set name. It reminds me of bubblegum.

This photo looks a bit odd. It offers a good view of one of Tony's Mims Bandz though.

Tony earned his place on the Dream Team as the National League's 'Rookie of the 80s'. That's surprising to me, given his trio of batting titles up to this point. 

What I like about this card is the complete minor league record on a separate line. That would have been a really good feature on regular Topps cards, but they didn't do it for some reason.

Total: 694 cards (300 above my original target!)

My Project70 postal saga

I don't seem to have a huge amount of luck with the post. Back in November last year I had the saga where Royal Mail charged me a customs fee and then delivered the parcel to the wrong house. I've also had cards occasionally arrive with dinged corners, although that's a packaging issue more than anything else. 

The saga over the past month has set a new low in terms of waiting for parcels that just seem to never come. I ordered two Topps Project70 cards via Dugout Classics and got the shipping notice about them on 26 April. I had hoped to have them in time to blog on my one year blog anniversary, but they seemed to disappear.

After several long conversations with Jason who runs Dugout Classics, we finally decided on Monday - which was 4 weeks after the cards had shipped - to call it a bust. Jason refunded my money and I felt disappointed, but okay about it. I figured the cards would tip up on the secondary market eventually. I even joked with Jason that we were tempting fate by doing the refund and now the universe was bound to find the cards for me.

Tuesday morning the postman put a form through the letterbox saying I needed to collect something from the main sorting office. Was this the missing Project70 cards? Was it something else entirely? I couldn't find out because they have restricted opening times at the moment, so I had to wait until Wednesday to go and pick the parcel up.

So, yesterday, the 26 May, one entire calendar month since the shipping notice, my wife went to the sorting office on my behalf and came back with a padded envelope with the Project70 cards in!

Huzzah!

(And yes, that is a thank you sticker on the back of a Fleer base card of Tony from 1989. I have several already - here's where I blogged about it just over a year ago.)

Card Number 678: Topps Project70, 2021; #51

I really like this card because it looks very different, designed to look like a fabric patch. Mimsbandz were embroidered designs produced for and worn by many players in the 1980s as a drugs awareness programme. 

I think almost all the player who wore Mimsbandz were black. Until recently Mimsbandz was the only black-owned company to have a contract with Major League Baseball, but that contract lapsed in 2020 and there are no black-owned companies linked to MLB. (Hat tip to Jason who found this out while researching about the Negro Leagues. recently.)

Tony wore Mimsbandz during his career and they are quite prominent on a couple of his cards, including this Topps Archives card from 2003:

Here's a close up of the patch.

The bands were also prominent on the Topps Super 70s Sports card released in 2020.

The back of the Project70 card has a bit more information about Mimsbandz. The repeating Topps logo are actually holograms.

Trading Card Database lists this card's print run as 2,713. Due to the huge postal delay, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that I was the 2,713th person to receive their card. (But I was the first person to upload a picture to TCDb!)

Total: 678 cards