Sunday, October 26, 2014

Oddballs from odd years

As I've stated several times, I try to stay away from card lots on ebay. I'll buy some Autos, relics or vintage (just bought a 1960 Willie Mays, I'm very excited to show it to you guys as soon as I receive it ! ), but I've been burned too many times by blind lots.
So when I saw that inserts and oddballs only lot of Toronto Blue Jays for a reasonnable price PLUS with a listing of all 160 cards included, I had to pull the trigger.

I'll show them by decade (more or less, that is, because the 80s go all the way to '91), which is the best way to see the evolution of the hobby.


My very first 1981 Donruss. Turns out it's autographed, but it could very well be, Bob Bailor, paper route boy in Chicago for all I know who signed it.


A whole bunch of Fleer boxed sets I had no idea existed (ok, I knew of a few of them). It's the complete Blue Jays checklist from each set, so that's good. Less to look for ! I love that they'd call 'limited edition' sets that were incredibly mass produced and that you can easily find for a couple of bucks. But hey, whatever works for them.


Remember retail distribution ? Well those were available only in Toys R Us stores. Not a bad design for an early 80s one. Oops. Hold on. Those are from 1990. I won't hold it against them.


Some K Mart, some Rite Aid, some Woolworth etc. Those were the days ! And licensed at that.


I had no idea what Drake's or Kay-Bee were, so I looked it up. Were there a lot in the US in those days ?


Some Score boxed sets.


And finally, some God ugly Classic blue cards from 1990 (and I'm sparing you their backs), along with the Blue Jays from a licensed deck of playing cards, so we'll say they have a place in my collection. Alomar will always be the Queen of hearts to me. And Carter deserves better than a 4, but hey, at least they are all nice and pretty and red.

The 90s get way more interesting, as card companies went inserts crazy and launched head first into parallels ! Stay tuned.

5 comments:

  1. A lot of the malls in my area had Kay Bee toy stores. They were always much smaller than Toys R Us, but still offered some cards in the store. Many have closed over the years.

    Drakes was a snack food company like Hostess.

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    1. Apparently Kay Bee used to do mostly mail orders...they were then bought out by Toys R us and no longer exist...thanks for the details !

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks Tony ! the lot was pretty cool actually, can't wait to show off the rest of it. And it was fun to do some research to find out what was what.

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  3. Glen Allen Hill? Ha, hadn't seen it spaced out like that before.
    Love all the McGriffs.

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