2022 Opening Day Cubs Inserts

 Each year it seems like Topps is adding more insert sets to Opening Day.  This year there are seven.  Cubs cards were included in three of the seven.  The four without Cubs are Dugout Peek, Luck of the Irish, Triple Play, and Walk This Way.

Those with Cubs are...

... Opening Day.  The Cubs lost 5-3,

... Mascots.  The card mentions that Clark was voted the #1 mascot in baseball in a 2021 PlayUSA survey.  Our team stunk but our mascot was #1.

...Bomb Squad.  Topps has had more Sosa cards in the past few years.  They are more welcoming to him than the Cubs organization, which views Sammy as persona non grata.

1984 Cubs Game Program #3

 It has been a long time since I've added a new program to my collection.  My goal is one of each edition from 1982, the year the Cubs started selling game programs.  For the longest time I've had all but four.  One of the four was finally listed on Ebay, and now I'm down to needing three.

This is the third edition from 1984.  I have no idea why it has been so scarce.  The Cubs were in the thick of a pennant race and drawing huge crowds by the time this issue was being sold.  There should be plenty of them out there.  But this is the first time in a year that I saw one listed.  Luckily for me there aren't any other collectors chasing this and I was the only bidder.  I picked it up for the opening bid of $2.99.  

The cover features Bowa and Sandberg and there's a nice article about them inside.  However, my favorite article is this one...

... which talks about the Cubs wonderful new clubhouse.  It was a priority of Dallas Green to upgrade the Cubs facilities and he spent $1 million to get the team a new clubhouse.  The article quotes Green as saying the Cubs now have one of the best clubhouses in the major leagues.

By the time the Tribune sold the Cubs, the clubhouse was by far the worst in the major leagues.  1984's Taj Mahal became 2015's outhouse.  

When the Cubs built a new clubhouse (which cost in the hundreds of million dollars) , the old one became batting cages.  Expectations and needs of today's players are a whole lot different today than they were in 1984!

I'm now finished with 1984 and need just three more programs, one from 1990 and two from 1996.

1975 O-Pee-Chee Cubs

Today I've got my oldest complete OPC Cubs set, from 1975.

Set Size: O-Pee-Chee - 660, Topps 660  

Cubs in set: O-Pee-Chee - 31, Topps 31

O-Pee-Chee's set was the exact same size as the Topps set.  The fronts were identical and the backs had the usual bilingual wording and OPC copyright information.  Otherwise, they were the same as Topps.

The Cubs set was the same as the Topps set, too, with 31 different Cubs cards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1979 O-Pee-Chee Cubs

 After shrinking in 1978, OPC increased their set size by 132 cards for 1979. The extra 132 cards added three more Cubs over 1978.

Set Size: O-Pee-Chee - 374, Topps 726  After shrinking in 1978, OPC increased their set size by 132 cards for 1979.

Cubs in set: O-Pee-Chee - 11, Topps 27

The O-Pee-Chee logo makes its first ever appearance on their baseball cards, replacing the Topps logo.  That's the only change made to the fronts. 

The backs have all of the usual changes and nothing got moved around.  According to Google Translate, "Baseball Dates" gets translated as "Dates de Base-ball" in French.  Is that why it didn't get translated like everything else in that section did.

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, both the Mejias and Sizemore cards are the traded cards.  Sizemore's late February trade must have been right near the print deadline.