Friday, February 5, 2021

1993 Ted Williams Baseball (Part 1)

I'm one of the few fortunate people to have not just one, but three card shops within driving distance, so it takes some of the sting off of the fact that you can't find cards at Target or Wal-Mart.

I've been going to one of the card shops weekly to buy supplies (i.e. plastic card cases). One of the recurring themes from my blog is the constant attempts to get organized. I have a lot of my cards in storage because they take up too much space and I do want to get rid of the ones I don't need. Part of the process of organizing is to determine which cards I don't need.

So since I've stated that I don't have enough room in my living quarters to store all of my cards, what else did I buy other than supplies?

More cards!

On the counter they have a display of dollar packs. Usually it's 1988 Donruss or 1990 Pro Set Football or something like that. Before I looked at the display I had noticed a empty box in the trash of 1993 Ted Williams Baseball. I thought to myself I would have liked to have bought that box. It's a set that I have some of, but not a lot. But lo and behold, there sitting in the dollar display box were the packs! I bought ten, and I will do two posts of five packs each.


According to Beckett, there were 119, 988 boxes produced in 1993 (which comes out to 9999 cases).


There are twelve cards in a pack plus a card with two POGs on it. According to Baseball Card Pedia, packs were $1.59 each. I don't remember ever seeing this release, however I had started college in the fall so I don't think I was going to shows at that point.

Pack 1


It is a 160 card set that focuses mostly on retired players, although there are a few cards of Juan Gonzalez and Jeff Bagwell (I suppose to attract collectors that may not have been interested in a set of  just older players).


It also features players from the Negro League and the All American Girls' Professional League ("A League of Their Own" had been released the year before).

Pack 2


Minnie Minoso had a card in the 1977 Topps set celebrating the oldest player to get a hit. He got a single off of Sid Monge of the California Angels during the first game of a doubleheader on September 12, 1976. Rich Gossage got the complete game win for the White Sox. (Yes, that's right...he started 29 games in 1976.)


This was not a set I would have been interested in at the time as I wasn't too engrossed in sets that featured (at the time) a lot of players that I hadn't heard of or were particularly intrigued about. 

Pack 3


I do enjoy seeing the inclusion of some of the players from the Negro Leagues. Unfortunately my collecting habits in 1993 did not give me much exposure to players from this league.


Dotty...now there's a name that you don't see much. The only person I've known with that name was my grandmother, but it was spelled "Dottie". She also went by "Dot", short for Dorothea. 

Pack 4


Its only pack number 4 and I'm already starting to get duplicates. 


This pack included a Roberto Clemente (Etched In Stone) subset card inserted 1:9.

Pack 5


(I accidentally deleted the scan of the first half of this pack and since I'm typing the text of this post on a tablet, I'm not going to drag out my laptop to rescan it.)

I've always been a fan of the Oakland A's uniforms.



And here are the pogs from all 5 packs. I never got into these.

Next post I'll show off the other 5 packs. See you then!


What I'm listening to while I post this:

Weezer - The Red Album


2 comments:

  1. I've completed this set, except for some of the inserts. It's one of the greatest checklist sets of the '90s.

    I never know what to do with the pogs. I think you had to be a kid then to appreciate those.

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  2. I remember when you could still buy a box of these for under $10. I know that things have changed, but even as fun as the set is, it's hard for me to imagine paying a dollar a pack for them.

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