Mystery Boxes From a Mystery Yard Sale

A few weeks ago, my step-mom dropped by for a few minutes on her way to some sort of wine tasting deal and dropped off the mountain of card boxes seen above. She said she was at a yard sale a while back and purchased these from some withered old man for the paltry sum of three dollars. After about a half hour or so, she headed off to her event and I did a quick peek through the boxes. It was too late at night to pull everything out and go through them so I left them on the kitchen table for the next day. The next afternoon, I started digging through the boxes. Yes, there was junk wax but not as much as I thought. Then, I did what any rational human being would do when presented with three well worn boxes of cards ... I sorted them!

As you can clearly see, there were cards from all different years and sets included. There was a lot more variety than I though there would be as I was expecting boxes filled with 1990 Donruss and 1989 Topps. Yeah, there was a lot of 1989 Topps, but it didn't phase me at all. After I sorted, I pulled the dupes and loaded some into the trade box and the rest went into the donation bag for Goodwill. After that, I went back through, pulled out the highlights and put the rest into my sorting box to await their turn to be put into pages and loaded into a binder (that reminds me, I need more binders).

Despite the influx of Donruss and Fleer in 1981, I still dig cards from the early 80s. There was a good amount of 1981 Fleer in the boxes so I scanned in some of the highlights. I about flipped when I saw the Jerry Koosman and Ron Cey cards, although I think the Cey might be a duplicate. There's just something about the Koosman card though, mainly because I'd forgotten he was still kicking around in the early 80s and there's also that awesome power blue Twins roadie.

1981 Topps is one of those sets where if you were to ask me what it looked like, it'd take me a while to try to remember it and at that point, I'd have to Google it. I feel it's often a forgotten set, overshadowed by the shiny new Fleer and Donruss sets (well, maybe not shiny on Donruss' part but definitely new). There were mostly commons from the set I found but a few minor stars from the time such as Randy Jones, Dave Cash, and Rick Sutcliffe.

A batch of cards from both 1982 Fleer and 1982 Topps. There weren't a lot of major "star" cards in these early 80s batches but still, there were minor stars, fan favorites, and some really fun photography.

Base set cards weren't the only thing in the boxes, there were some curiosities and randomness as well. Take these two 1984 O-Pee-Chee cards for example. Of all the O-Pee-Chee cards, somehow someway these wound up in a box in a dirty garage in southwest Ohio. As I was sorting through the cards initially, I hit a stack of 1984 Topps. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be something if there were some OPC cards in here?" Lo and behold the next cards were O-Pee-Chee. It's as if the cardboard gods were listening. (PS: Never mind the funky lines, my scanner decided it wanted to mess with me).

My curiosity was peaked with these cards as well. I've never seen cards from the 87 and 88 Topps sets that had the "now with ..." printing on them. I've only ever seen that with O-Pee-Chee cards. After doing a quick search on the Trading Card DB, it turns out that these are just standard old base cards, nothing special. However, to me they're pretty unique.

There were also a bunch of the glossy All-Stars and Rookie sets from the mid-80s. The Clemens All-Star card reminds me of something you might see from the early 70s with the palm trees and cars in the background.

Not to be outdone, Score joined the fun on the All-Star cards as well. The Mike Schmidt card looks like someone trimmed a side off of it with some scissors at some point.

One box was nothing but 87 and 88 Topps. I know everyone is probably sick of 87 Topps by now but these are a few of my favorites, especially the Jose Rijo A's card and the Langston M's card.

Some late 80's randomness including a Royce Clayton minor league card and a Tom Glavine RC.

Now a few of my favorites to wrap up the 80s, first this Randy Johnson 1989 Topps RC.

Some cards for the Eckersley collection.

And my favorite from the 80s cards .... Reggie as an Oriole!!!!

Ok, it's going to be hard for the 90s cards to top that. But that's to be continued on Thursday afternoon ...