30 Year Old Stickers and More!

Things seem to have slowed a bit on the group break front, but that's okay with me. I admire how much effort that the break hosts must undertake to put on something that in spirit is more of a labor of love than something designed to be profitable. I do have a couple of breaks that I still need to post about, and one of them was absolutely perfect for me - a break of a box of 1983 Fleer Stickers. I'd much rather fill some Cardinals binder needs than go chasing for the big hits, and host Garvey Cey Russell Lopes was exceptionally cool about purchasing extras for people when it was suspected that there might have been a bit of foul play involving the distribution of the stickers and lack of certain stars. Thanks to GCRL, I now have the full 1983 Fleer Stickers team set, with plenty of doubles to trade to friends or stick on my Trapper Keepers.

The sticker images may be closer than they appear. Or larger. Something like that.

One of the scandalously missing stickers from the box break was Willie McGee. I don't know if someone thought they might get rich off of a rookie year McGee sticker with a "book value" of 30 cents, but whatever.

Any Ozzie for the Ozzie binder is a good thing. When it's an '80s Ozzie, it's a great thing!

I didn't know that the stickers were distributed in strips, such that you actually have to separate the perforated things if you want to have individual stickers. I'm guessing that no significant devaluing happens here, unlike the old '80-81 Topps basketball cards when they are pulled apart.

We also set up a trade that crossed paths with the mailing of my group break loot. (I still need to send my end of the deal. Oops.) GCRL has a spinoff O-Pee-Chee blog that completed its run awhile back. I am always fond of seeing variations on the standard issue Topps cards, so it was a must-read for me. That being said, I must have forgotten that the "In Action" cards from the 1982 Topps set made it to its northern counterpart.

I'm pretty sure this is the first 2003 Donruss Studio card that I own.

Another one of the assorted Cardinals that I received was a Scrabble Target parallel. I really want to focus on getting all of the retail variations of the base (Cardinal) cards from the last 5 years, and every little bit helps.

Here is probably the highlight of the Cardinals portion of the trade. I don't know why I'm such a sucker for serial numbers. You don't see this style of printed serial numbers on cards anymore, not that anyone is complaining.

Finally, I received a whole stack of 2003 Topps cards for my ongoing set project. I didn't want to detract from the awesome array of Cardinals I snagged, though, so I decided to keep it to one scan. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Manuel Ramirez!