My COMC Card Show, Part I: Some Yount Oddballs

As a team collector and a player collector with a crazy number of player collections, sometimes I forget to focus. My trips to card shows have been great this year, and I have knocked a bunch of Milwaukee Braves cards off my want list as a result.  

But the results from card shows are hit-and-miss.  Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy the interaction with the guys behind the tables and some of my fellow collectors a great deal. On the other hand, it's not always a pleasant result for my back or legs the next day from leaning over card boxes at a table, standing stationary most of the day.  It sucks getting old.

So, this time around, rather than go to an actual card show, I decided to go to an online card show at COMC.  I took the money I would have spent at a show and bought store credit on COMC and bought a bunch of cards.  Of course, trying to be somewhat frugal about it, I tried to make a bunch of offers on cards rather than purchasing them all outright. Most of my offers were accepted, thankfully, thereby making my dollars go further.

Today, I'll share some Robin Yount Oddballs I picked up. I can't recall what I paid for each of these cards, but I do know that I did not pay anything more than $2.75 or $3 for any one card.  The great thing is that a lot of these are cards I'd never see at an Atlanta card show.

Why?

Well, for one thing, we don't get very many Canadian stickers here in the ATL. Both of these are O-Pee-Chee stickers (the back for the horizontal one is to the left of it). I hated paying what I did for stickers, but I have not been very successful in finding too many of these around.  

I also plumped for a few cool oddballs:

At the top is the 1983 Perma-Graphics All-Stars Yount, and next to it is one of those "O'Connell & Son Ink" cards that probably is from 1984. The O&SI card is one I have looked for fairly regularly, but here I was able to get it for a reasonable price.  

The other four Younts are all 1987 oddballs. That photo of Yount was used by Mike Schechter and Associates for nearly all of MSA's unlicensed sets that year. MSA used it almost as much as -- or maybe more than -- Topps recycled that Carlos Gomez photo from last year's Archives set.  These four are: (1) the General Mills Canadian Fold-out (which includes 7 other players), (2) the True Value Hardware collector series; (3) The Kraft Home Plate Heroes card from the back of a box of macaroni and cheese, and (4) the full panel Dorman's Cheese set.  

Like I said, MSA used it a ton.

One of my favorite cards in this group tonight is actually an oddball itself, though it looks normal.

This is a 1987 Fleer Box Bottom card. Call me crazy, but I sort of miss the days when the box in which the cards came had additional collectible cards on the bottom.

Maybe because I am an 80s kid, but I love all these late 80s oddballs.  Here's another 1987 oddity:

This is the 1987 Hostess Potato Chips sticker, still in its original potato-chip-greased wrapper. It's such a great card on two levels. First, it's a weird, small sticker. Second, only Canadians were treated to the concept of Hostess Potato Chips.  When I think Hostess, I think "Ho-Ho's" and "Twinkies" -- not Potato Chips.  See, this is why we need food issues to return.  Too bad the money is too high these days for companies to do anything other than sponsor a single, local team or maybe partner with MLB as a whole.

Okay, two more oddballs for tonight.  First, let's go with the 1989 Gardner's Bakery Milwaukee Brewers:

This was the only card for which the owner turned down my original offer.  But, I had to have it. The 1989 Gardner's set was produced by MSA.  It's unfortunate, too, because when Topps printed the set in 1983, 1984, and 1985, they created colorful, fully licensed cards with bright backgrounds and photos likely taken in spring training.  When MSA got the gig when Gardner's tried to resurrect the set in 1989, MSA apparently got only crappy portrait shots against a blank blue background. Then, MSA accentuated that crappiness by creating a border that only the designer of 2010-2014 Topps would call interesting.  

But, I had to have it, I say again.

Finally, the last card to show off is another Canadian special.  

Post Cereals did card sets both in Canada and in the United States. Both sets had black borders. But there is where the similarities end. Because, in Canada, Post made this a pop-up card. I'd show it to you in that form, but there's no way I'm pulling this sucker apart.

Maybe if someone else sends me another one, I would. But for the one and only for the player collection? No thanks.

So, those are the Yount oddballs. I loaded up on a lot of Robin's cards from COMC, but most of them are cards (or, really, parallels of cards) that everyone's seen a lot. Stuff like Fleer Glossy, Topps Tiffany, Score Glossy, and even Starting Lineup Cards.  There is one card, though, that is now a main-line brand for Topps that stood out:

Topps's first attempt at the Finest brand. Obviously, the photo quality is a little lower than we get on our chrome-type cards these days, but this design is still pretty cool even though it is a bit loud.  

Stay tuned for Part II, when I show you cards other than Robin Yount -- including a strange basketball card.