Closeted Stuff

My wife is off performing 'nursing' duties for my father-in-law who is having some health issues. I'm home watching movies and listing to music and doing a consolidation of boxes and a culling of 'stuff'. Here are some random items I've come across in the last few days. Just because.

Signed 3x7 Tadder photo of Elliott Maddox, a Oriole in 1977 between stints with the two New York teams.

Sandy Koufax oversized card from TCMA circa 1982. Oh, those windbreaker-under-the-jersey days!

1979 Topps Larry Hisle comic. I think these came with gum, not inserted into cards.  Why I have this I can't really say. But I'm going to put it in the back of my '79 binder.

I love this next card, even though I shouldn't. First year Donruss Reggie.  I like this set and I don't care who knows it.

Philly Gum King Hill. One of the best football names ever. He's holding 'The Duke'. We would have sold our grandmothers to the cannibals to own one of those back then.

I've been on a St. Louis Browns kick since our trip up there this past July. Here is Satchel Paige from a 1977 TCMA/Renata Gallaso set.

 

I have a bunch of Pokemon cards in a box for no reason. They came from my sons and from kids at my school who defied my rules about keeping 'toys' in their backpacks. Next time I'm out at my school I'm going to drop these off if i find out they are still a thing. I'll check the next time I'm at Target. They have all sorts of crappy stuff next to their sports cards. Maybe Pokemon is part of that.

Hey.. he's called 'Kadabra'...I get it now. If you pair him with 'Abra' you get 12 zillion Power Ups.

Upper Deck Football Legends set is awesome. I have the base set and some extras like this signed card on one of my favorite players, Tommy McDonald.
 

1990s Bagwell from something called Impact. This I'm sure came from the boxes of stuff my boys left behind.

This card of The Dream needs to go into my University of Houston binder. I also need to blog my 'buying fried chicken for Hakeem' story one of these days.

Lastly, and perhaps most randomly... a Gardner's 1984 Robin Yount. The back is the same as the '84 Topps, I think. From a very brief Google look it seems Gardner's sold out to Bimbo some time back and is now gone as a brand name. truth is I can't imagine where this came from.

That's it for now. You simply wouldn't believe the amount of odds and ends i have stashed around here. Time to clean it all up!

Random 80's Crap from my Hobby Closet, Pt.4 (Why do I save this stuff edition)

Recently I pulled a random box out of my 'hobby closet' and opened it just for the hell of it. I have about a dozen of these boxes, most are the document storage-type things and I haven't looked at them in years. Inside the one I chose I found all sorts of junk I had picked up in the 80's. There is no logic to any of it. I bought whatever struck my fancy back in those days and I saved everything. 
I found small boxed sets that I had pulled the Orioles out of, commercially produced and team issued postcards, odd ball TCMA trash, unlicensed photo cards, pocket schedules, ticket stubs and much more. While I'm off visiting the Big Apple I thought I'd put up a few posts showing the 'stuff' I once valued so highly. 

I used to keep everything. No matter how useless it might be. Like ticket stubs, business cards of people who I knew I'd never need to deal with again, Reggie Bar wrappers, etc. Here's proof from my box of 80s junk:

First up a Ted Williams photo card that had a subscription ad for Baseball Card News on the back, dated 1983. I have six of them. Lord knows why. But I did like Baseball Card News. I liked all the publications, Tuff Stuff, The Trader Speaks, SCD. I got them all at one time or another.

This is a Mother's Cookies Nolan Ryan. I guess any Nolan item is worth saving. I bet a Ryan fan would like this. I always took my kids to Mother's Cookies giveaway days at the Astrodome. They liked the cards a lot. The distribution was intended to encourage kids to swap dupes to obtain a full set but I never knew anyone who did that.

I was puzzled when I looked up the date August 14th on the Yankee's 1980 schedule and it showed them to be in Baltimore that night. I had gone to Yankee Stadium on that annual summer trip and the Yankee logo caused me to assume it was from the game we saw against the White Sox. Then I realized that this was from a game in Baltimore against the Yanks that same week. The section number should have tipped me wise when I saw it. 

I had a brief fling as an Expos fan in the first few years of their existence. My family took a vacation in Montreal and Quebec City in the summer of 1969 and on August 13th we were at Parc Jarry when the played, and lost to, the Reds. It was a wild experience. The fans were really rabid and it was 'Bat Night'. You've never lived until you have listened to the sound of thousands of bats pounding on aluminum seats all at the same time. 

Another memorable thing about that night was following Jim Palmer's no-hitter via the scoreboard. The Expos game ran 11 innings and was over late and Palmer had wrapped things up by the time we left. The scoreboard in Montreal was updating the Orioles-A's game every inning. It was a very great night!

All of which is a roundabout way of explaining this Mack Jones postcard. I bought it and several others including Rusty Staub, at the concession stand that night. For a few years the Expos eclipsed the Dodgers as my NL team of interest.

How cool is Mack Jones?

College sports schedules are another thing I have tons of. I guess I ought to just keep one of each. This Phi Slama Jama one is pretty cool. That's Akeem (he was 'Akeem' before he was 'Hakeem') Olajuwon. That was a terrific team to watch. 

Why I have a small stash of 1984 Rice Owl football schedules is a mystery to me. 

This ticket stub comes from the Colts visit to the Dome in 1984. The Colts won, 35-21. Since the wounds of the Colts' departure from Baltimore were still fresh I was cheering for the Oilers despite having so many of my favorite players, Curtis Dickey, Ray Butler, etc. in Indy. Earl Campbell, one of the most fun players to watch ever, scored twice. Section 502 was behind the west end-zone upstairs. I also sat there for University of Houston games for many, many years.

And finally here is a USFL schedule for the Houston Gamblers. By all accounts they were a fun team to watch with the early version of the Run-N-Shoot triggered by Jim Kelly. I never saw them play. Not even on TV. I had no interest in any pro football league other than the NFL. I did meet Jim Kelly once though. One afternoon he walked in to a memorabilia store I frequented. the folks who ran the place were huge USFL/Gambler fans. He poked around, posed for a pic or two, signed a few things for them and left. I might have said 'Hi' or shook his hand. I don't remember.