Tuesday, July 23, 2019

7-Up and Cupcakes: An Oddball Post

During our city's annual celebration week, I took my kids over to the park and we caught a reptile show.  Afterward, I wandered around and looked at the vendors.  Lo and behold, I caught sight of a vendor who I've known from the local card shows.  I picked through his dime box and found about ten cards, but I was more interested in a bunch of sets on shelving unit.  Some of them were marked buy one get one, some were just discounted.  I ended up getting one of those sets.  I didn't know much about what I was seeing, besides that I needed to have it.



It was a 1985 7-Up Chicago Cubs set.   There are 28 cards in the set, so I'm thinking the entire 25-man roster, manager Jim Frey, and a coach card.  I'm not sure who the 26th player was; I'm thinking there were a couple of players floating back and forth from the minors and were both included in the set.  I love the completeness of this checklist, though.  Guys that were by no means superstars, or even starters, got cards here.


That's not to say that the superstars were lacking, though.  We have a staff ace and three Hall of Famers, including newly inducted Lee Smith, here.  The Ryno card was on the top of the shrink-wrapped set, so the corner is bent.  It is the only such corner in the entire set.  I keep imagining a bullpen of Eck and Smith, though.  I was too young to get baseball when they played together with Cubs, but how about a couple of the greatest closers in the same pen?


There were some other good players on the team, too, even if guys like Bowa, Lopes, and Cey were past their prime.


I even like the photography.  If I had heard about a 7-Up oddball from the mid-80s, I would have pictured a lot of bat on the shoulder, posed shots, but the photography is top-notch.  I still have no idea where this set came from.  Does anybody know?  It's a pretty great oddball set.

Let's not stop the oddness here.  I just recently got back on the trading horse at TCDB after turning off trade proposals in January to fix my scattered, inaccurate tradelists.  One of the trades I've completed this month came from nwcardsupplies, and he provided me with some oddball set help.

I don't know how many Hostess Baseballs I ate as a 10 year-old to get these cards, but I recently decided to go back and finish the set.  Nwcardsupplies got me within 8 to 75% completion with this trade.

Two transactions, 36 oddball cards, 2 junk food produced sets in one post.  I have to wonder how much sugar fueled this post.

3 comments:

  1. I constantly like to read a top quality content having accurate info pertaining to the subject and the exact same thing I found in this article. Nice job.Soccer trading cards

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  2. Wow. Eck and Smith would have made a crazy bullpen. Don't think I ever realized they were teammates until this post.

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  3. That is a great Cubs team set, and I love oddballs like the Hostess cards. Cool cards to get in a trade.

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