I am many months behind on thanking my hobby friend Angus of Dawg Day Cards for some wonderful stickers and cards that he sent my way. Let's rectify that now...
We'll start off with a pair of stickers from the 1982-83 Topps Stickers release. These are notable in that only O-Pee-Chee produced a full-fledged licensed trading card set of NHL hockey cards in 1982-83 (my birth year!). These stickers are the closest Topps got that season. For my Whalers team set Angus supplied me with goaltender Greg Millen...
...and Chris Kotsopoulos, whom I remember fondly thanks to his airbrushed atrocity of a card in the 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee set. Seriously, check this out:
Yikes!
Sticking with the theme of under-sized cards for the moment, we've also got a pair from the 1988-89 O-Pee-Chee Minis set. These bring back fond memories from my collecting youth.
I think I have a complete set around here somewhere, but have never
found the time to scan it in and add the cards to my collection proper
so these qualify as "new to me" for now.
How about some more stickers? The next few are from the 1986-87 O-Pee-Chee Stickers set. These are a little tricky for collectors to track, since some stickers like Dave Babych here feature a single player on a full sticker...
...yet others combined two stickers on a single backboard. This sticker is actually both #51 Ron Francis and #190 John Vanbiesbrouck. You can actually see the sticker numbers in the lower left below the photo (you can click the image for an enlarged version).
Mike Liut's sticker is of particular interest, knocking a Whalers need off my list while simultaneously providing me with a tremendously awesome oddball of The Great One!
Sylvain Turgeon received his own full-sized (though smaller than a normal modern-day trading card) sticker. I have no clue how O-Pee-Chee went about determining who received their own sticker vs. who was teamed up with another player.
Hockey fans will recognize long-time Blackhawks and current Panthers coach Joel Quenneville on the left side of this one!
Believe it or not, there were a small handful of cards in the package that are normal size, and that won't stick to anything without some glue or tape being involved. The first of those is this obscure 1992-93 Upper Deck McDonald's All-Star of center John Cullen.
The next three cards were the shocker of the package for me in terms of "I don't have this already?" factor. I probably had two dozen copies of this John Cullen All-Star card from 1991-92 Pro Set growing up, but somehow none of them survived into my adult collection. According to The Trading Card Database, this completes my 1991-92 Pro Set Whalers team set! 28 years turnaround time on that, not too shabby.
I picked up a complete set of 1990-91 Score not long after re-entering the hobby. In fact, I put together a rather lengthy post on the release back when I had a lot more time for blogging in 2010. This Adam Burt, however...
...and this Terry Yake, are from the Canadian version of the release. Still working on cobbling that team set together all these years later, and these were both needs to that end.
That does it for the hockey cards this time around, but Angus hooked me up with some sticky baseball "cards" as well. A nice pair of well-known names here with color commentator and fan favorite Jerry Remy...
...joining the great Tony Perez.
I generally prefer action shots, or obscure photos, to standard portraits. With that being said, this is how you design a portrait-based set in my humble opinion. This is my first 1988 Panini sticker, don't recall ever having seen one in hand actually. I'd make it a point to grab more of these if I ran across them at a show, or at a discount online.
We'll close out the package with a batch of 1986 O-Pee-Chee stickers. Like the hockey release from the same season, the majority of these team up two smaller stickers on the same backing.
Always love a new Oil Can Boyd!
Not the most flattering photo of Marty Barrett here.
Anyone? Yep, that's the infamous Bill Buckner, may he rest in peace.
This one had me stumped, but it's Bob Stanley. In my defense I would have been around 3 years old when these were released.
Tony Armas...
...and no mistaking this one, HOFer Wade Boggs!
Lastly, there were some solo stickers in this set, same as the hockey. Wade Boggs got the full-size treatment, which is understandable given that he was an absolute superstar in his prime around this time.
That's a wrap for tonight. If I still had a Trapper Keeper I'd consider peeling these stickers and putting them to use, but as it is I think I'll keep them with my Red Sox baseball cards for now.
Angus, thank you so much for the thoughtful surprise, and I sincerely apologize for taking so long to get these posted. They are absolutely appreciated and have been given a good home!
2024 Adventures in Repacks - Part 36 - Blah Baseball
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They can't all be winners.
At least there's a somewhat interesting horizontal entry to start.
This grouping might be the most interesting of the lot. I li...