Oddball Listia Find

This is the Eighties-ist.

I know that many have given up on Listia, but I still find it to be an occasional source of interesting finds. Even better (at least for me), I've been able to get rid of thousands of doubles and some junk wax era stars while making the folks at Big Postage Stamp very happy. I can always use more oddball stuff like this.

This is my first Squirt card as far as I know. It's very thin and just slightly more a rectangle than a square. The back is a no frills copy of the 1982 Topps template, squeezed down to fit on the reduced amount of space.

If you're in the mood to check out my '80s-ish want list, feel free to do so at your leisure. It's a bit lacking in the oddball department, though I've got all the main sets and O-Pee-Chee needs identified through 1988 at least.

Real Po-lice Cards

A look at some edumacational oddball Cards on cards.

Over the course of a few Listia auctions, I was able to accumulate a bunch of Kansas City Life regionally issued cards, commonly known as "police cards" because they're primarily distributed to children by people working in a police community outreach program. At least, I think that's how it goes. It's been a long time since Officer Friendly came to my school to give out Portland Trail Blazers cards that I took home and stashed in a cigar box to cherish forever and ever.

In addition to a lone 1999 Mark McGwire card, I also scored what I believe is the entire 1993 and 1994 sets, plus a good chunk of the 2006 set for good measure. I guess the guys at Kansas City Life Insurance Company have been doing this for a long time.

The 1993 set is very, well, blue. It also has the "red letters on blue background" thing that can make the letters jump around on you if you stare at them for awhile. Or if you're sleepy. Or otherwise chemically indisposed, I guess.

I like the 1994 design a lot more, although it's a little on the goofy side. There's a nice thick red stripe running up the side, and the player's number is printed on a baseball that's totally jumping out at you.

The biggest gain for me out of the 2006 set is that I obtained some cards of rarely seen Cardinals. In fact, several of these players never suited up for St. Louis in the regular season. Their Topps issued cards are Photoshopped, so these end up being the only issued cards of certain players in actual Cardinal uniforms.

In fact, I'm not aware of there being any Ricardo Rincon Cardinals cards at all. Rincon actually did pitch a few regular season games for the Cardinals before he ended up needing Tommy John surgery.

I haven't even gotten to my favorite thing about these cards. After the jump, we'll look at the very informative flipsides of the cards, where lessons are truly learned.

Grand Cardinals

Grand Cards did a week long "trade away" recently where people could bid on certain baseball card-related items with other baseball card-related items. It was a generous effort for certain, even though I'm convinced the entire thing was some sort of scheme to get rid of mass quantities of unwanted cards quickly. (That sounds like something I should strongly consider.) My lot was a group of non-Topps Cardinals, as I hoped to get some cool oddball-type stuff. Here are some of my favorites.

We did not have Rite Aids in the area until the mid-'90s, when they bought out Payless drug stores. Certainly, we never had Rite Aid baseball cards and I didn't know such a thing existed until I got John Tudor and Jack Clark in this package. Incidentally, Payless's presence in the area meant that Payless ShoeSource went by the name of Volume ShoeSource to avoid confusion.

On first look, I assumed that this was not a legitimate release but instead something that some company doctored with a gold stamp on it to promote whatever it is they were trying to promote. In this case, it was something called the East Coast National. This begs the question: How could something be called the "East Coast National" when it's supposed to be, y'know, national. I looked this up on Beckett, however, and they do have this stuff cataloged.

This set is either Kahn's or Hillshire Farms, whichever you prefer I suppose. The card stock is very thin, but it's apparently a nice little set of Hall of Famers that you could send away for with proofs of purchase (or is that proof of purchases?)

It took me a minute to figure out why I was sent this card in particular, but once I noticed the Cardinals cap I remember Tweety's stint in the Cardinals infield in the early '90s during the dreadful Joe Torre era.

Tweety was always threatening to take away some of Jose Oquendo's "utility" playing time until he just disappeared one day. Huh.

The Halloween Set

Happy Halloween! I will now subject you to every single 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best card I could find in my collection. The Secret Weapon is a great way to start things off if you ask me.

It's my birthday and I'll post what I want to...

Of course, orange and black is the theme here and the reason why some have dubbed this underappreciated set the Halloween Set. It pretty much kicks the sorry old Blue Donruss base set design in the teeth and sprinkles glossy coating on top for good measure.

Here is a mustache that is very nearly heartbreaking.

Ken Dayley says, "Seriously? You're taking another picture of me, Donruss? I thought we already took care of that with that crappy blue set."

Todd Worrell can't really wrap his head around the idea of a glossy retail set that somewhat parallels the design of the regular base set.

Enough with the head shots. John Tudor is almost ready for an action pose. Almost.

Well. I like the Cardinals baseball hats. There, I said something positive. Am I a bad Cardinals fan for not knowing what the patch is for? Upon further examination of Greg's card, it appears to commemorate 50 years in St. Petersburg, their spring training home.

Hey, an action shot. Magrane is now a Bay Ray Announcer Man in case you didn't know.

I wasn't kidding when I said I'd show you every card I own from this set. This is one of the few I owned until I bought a gargantuan oddball Cardinals lot from eBay several weeks ago.

Fake action shot.

RSC? What does that stand for, Pirates fans?

Keith Atherton, truly one of "Baseball's Bestsses."

I finally had to dig into my extensive Ozzie Smith collection folder thing to find a truly "Baseball's Best" player from this set.

As you can see, these sets distance themselves from the regular Donruss base by going with the standard vertical stats-on-the-back instead of the classic Donruss horizontal design. Sadly, there's no facts-on-the-back with these cards.

Rainy Tuesday Miscellany

On Friday I did a "Buy It Now" purchase on eBay that was a lucky find and really probably the biggest no-brainer online purchase I've ever made. 800 80's oddball Cardinals cards for 19.99 and free shipping. Did I really need another box of baseball cards taking up space in my small apartment? That's probably not the best question to ask right now. But this was right up my alley. And the cards came today, and I got not one but two (!) 660 count boxes of Cardinals cards and stickers, absolutely none from a regular old base set. And while I got my fair share of doubles (hello, other Cardinals team collectors!), this ended up being a whole lot better than advertised. Though, now I seem to have about 10 Cardinals team sets worth of 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball, whatever that is (I can't seem to remember.) Now I have a Chef Boyardee card. This was definitely my favorite card in the entire lot. Just check out Todd's mustache and wonder how often SpaghettiOs got stuck in it. (Actually, I think that was a Franco-American product.) (And on another note: I had no idea Chef Boyardee was a real person.)

This card came from the era of the National League's ill-fated brief experiment with the Designated Hitter rule, apparently.

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Congrats to the Tampa Bay Rays. Check that, my Tampa Bay Rays! We are officially finished with Ozzie Guillen face time for the season.

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I got my football prize package from the Cardboard Junkie himself on Friday. Unfortunately, I'm too upset about the Ducks, the Eagles and the American game of football in general to talk about the loot I received at the moment. But what in the world is the story with this card? It has some crazy hole in it. And that's very odd considering it comes from a set that calls itself Pinnacle Mint Condition.

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With tonight comes the first preseason game of the season for the Portland Trail Blazers. For this occasion, I am going to do something I haven't done in 15 years. You can read all about it at A Pack A Day. Be afraid, be slightly afraid...

For the Dogs

To try and distract myself from the Cardinals late-season fade, I thought I'd talk about one of my favorite aspects of baseball card collecting: the oddballs. This particular 2-pack of Cards was sent to me in a trade with Ben Henry of The Baseball Card Blog awhile back and I've been staring at it ever since. I finally decided to open the pack because I wanted to see what the front of Craig Biggio's card looked like, and also because I didn't think it would store very well in my Cardinals binders while still sealed.


The cards themselves are pretty hilarious. Beckett tells me that the 1993 Milk Bone Super Stars (stars that are super, not to be confused with superstars) set "was featured in specially marked packages of Milk Bone Flavor Snacks and Dog Treats. Two cards were inserted in each package. Also the complete set could be obtained by sending in a mail-in form along with three Super Star Seals plus 2.50." I'm not entirely sure what a Super Star Seal would be, but I'm guessing it was some kind of seal of purchase UPC code type of deal. Each player is pictured in casual wear with a generic MLBPA baseball hat and holding their dog. I'm not sure if the photos were taken in the player's home or some pseudo-home/photography studio set up by the Milk Bone people. There is also an inset photo of the players in action, which are small enough that their teams logos are not easily identified, which makes me think that this set wasn't licensed by MLB (but obviously was by the Player's Association.)

Todd Zeile never really lived up to the incredible hype he came into the league with after he started his career slowly from the plate and eventually converted to 3B where his numbers seemed even softer. He ended up having a very productive career when it was all said and done, but he never became the force for the Cardinals that many thought he would be. Still, his 15 HRs in his first full season practically made him Hank Aaron compared to the rest of the 1990 team. Check out the facts on his chihuahua, Tiffany!

Biggio's card is even cheesier than Todd's. If anyone out there is interested in his card, just let me know. It's definitely not in pristine mint condition or anything, but how could you miss a Shelbee card? I have more plans on the way to talk about oddballs, just to warn you all.