Cheap Slabs - Kirby RC

Time for the next installment of Cheap Slabs, a series dedicated to proving that collecting graded cards does not necessarily have to be expensive.  Each slabbed card featured in this series was had for less than $25.

Today's card is an iconic '80s baseball rookie card, and one that I can hardly believe took me a full 35 years to finally own a copy of...

Yes, it's the '85 Donruss Kirby Puckett RC!  For whatever reason, I've largely ignored the 1985 baseball releases for most of my collecting timeline.  I've long had it in the back of my mind though that I'd like to snag '85 Donruss Puckett and Clemens rookies though, and when the opportunity presented itself recently for me to grab this Puckett in a PSA 8.5 for just $12.62, I jumped at it.

Though his career was relatively brief at just a dozen MLB seasons, Kirby was a 10x All-Star who brought two World Series championships to Minnesota.  He was certainly one of the most effective hitters of his generation, and arguably the best hitter in the history of the Twins organization.  He's certainly in the discussion, anyway.

Here's the back, standard fare for Donruss throughout most of the '80s, other than the color changing and some minor cosmetic tweaks here and there...

A really great card here.  Typically I go for PSA 9s when it comes to cards from the '80s and newer, but in this case, like I said just stumbled upon this one and the price was right.  Someday maybe I'll pick up a PSA 9 and sell this one to offset some of the upgrade cost, but those are expensive enough that they wouldn't make the cut for this Cheap Slabs series anyway!  This set is really tough for grading due to those black borders, so this example is just fine for my purposes.  For much less than the cost of a retail blaster (even with shipping and tax included), color me satisfied.

What I'd really like is to get an '85 Leaf version of this one (and Clemens, too).  I enjoy the Leaf logo in that '85 set, but they're quite a bit scarcer and more valuable than their Donruss counterparts from what I can tell.  Maybe someday...

For now, thanks as always for stopping by my little corner of the internet!