Troll Cards IN!

Those of you that follow Marck at The Collective Troll know that he has been busting a lot of wax lately. All of the Cubs cards were coming my way. On Saturday, they arrived, a nice sized box filled with lots of Cubs.

Thank you Marck, for adding to both my collection and Wrigley Wax Jr's (he gets all of my doubles).

In addition to the busted pack stuff, lots of other surprises were included.

My two favorite were....



...this Topps 1973 Dick Butkus card. I don't have too many football cards. When the baseball season ended, I was kind of tired of cards. And besides, its no fun to ride your bike to the store for cards when its cold out. So I pretty much stuck to baseball. Plus, when I started following the Bears in the early '70's they were not good at all. Dick Butkus was the only name player they had, and he was awesome. But the rest of the team, not so much. The Jim Dooley and Abe Gibron eras were not good times for the Bears.

When this card came out in 1973, the Bears were starting their third season at Soldier Field. But for the first six years of his career, Wrigley Field was Butkus' home field.



In fact, the Bears spent 50 years at Wrigley Field until they were forced to move by the NFL because of Wrigley's small capacity.
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Here is my other favorite. This Don Kessinger card is from the 1992 Action Packed All Star Gallery Series 1. I love this action shot of Kess from 1969. If I had ever seen the original picture somewhere, I would have used it in my 1969 update set.



Instead, this was the best I could find.

The Action Packed set was another that I had never seen before. So it was off to the trusty Standard Catalog to see what I could about these. I learned that Action Packed football sets had been released before, but 1992 was their first venture into the baseball world. The set featured 84 retired All Stars. Five of them were Cubs: Kessinger, Ron Santo, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, and Billy Herman.

Next stop, Sportlots, where I found all five from one seller, each card 18 cents. Soon, this nifty little set will be added to my oddball collection.

Action Packed also released another 84 card set in 1993, but there wasn't a single Cubs among the set. What's up with that?

So, thank you Marck for a bunch of Cubs, a Bear, and for turning me on to a new set.

Go Cubs! Wrigley Wax Out.