1980 Topps Superstars

Another online purchase I made recently was for a box of 1980 Topps Superstars. This is another example of a box you could find at card shows in years past for probably $5. You could probably even find it in a box of random items in a bin under the table where the dealer would say, "10 bucks and you can have the whole bin." I overpaid per usual now...it was around $20.

I had never seen these before, but once I saw "1980", I knew it would be players of my youth and a fun trip down memory lane.

It was off to a good start with Willie Stargell at the top. The box was not sealed, so the potential of shenanigans did cross my mind. Since I knew nothing about this product, I did a bit of research and found a good amount of information on "Sports Collectors Daily".

Turns out this was how they were packaged. You could rifle through the box and pick out who you wanted. If you weren't interested in Jason Thompson, you left him behind. They were also distributed in unopened packs of 5 with a cardboard header that contained a checklist on the back. You could also send in $9 plus a wrapper for the complete set.

Here is the back...very simple, no statistical information.

Now here is where it gets interesting...Topps later released a "white back" version that was sold only to dealers in complete set form. This set was packaged in manilla envelopes making the corners very susceptible to dings.

This is picture of the back. The picture is not lit up very well, but take my word for it, the back of this is pure white. Notice the lack of the Topps logo.

How you may ask, was I able to take a picture of one of these? Elementary, my dear Watson, as there happened to be 12 of these inside the box. 

So this was obviously NOT an "unopened" box as I'm sure it was just put together by who knows who. However, I did manage to end up with 54 cards instead of the 48 I was supposed to get. There were some triplicates in the box (Randy Jones, Buddy Bell, Lee Mazilli), but there were also plenty of stars (especially the cards with the "white backs"). So I'm thinking they were added to offset the mostly commons that were left behind originally.

As you can see miscuts weren't a standard size card only problem.

This was not something I remember seeing but to be fair, at the time I was only 11. That was a long, long time ago and there are a lot of things from back then that I don't remember seeing.

As you can tell, the cards are a bit oversized...about 5x7 inches.

Here a picture of the checklist (also borrowed from "Sports Collectors Daily").

All told, I did enjoy this trip down memory lane. Not a financially smart purchase of course, but how many of these are?

Thanks for reading!

What I'm Listening To While I Post This 

Nutshell - Alice In Chains