Eighties Alphabetically - Ames

 This is an easy one!

 

Ames discount stores put out one set in one year in the 1980s and had two Cubs.

You can see from the cards that they partnered with Topps.  In fact, Topps was doing several partnerships with discount stores during this time.  Ames wasn't a big player in the store world, but I suppose they wanted to keep up with K-Mart and Woolworths, among others.

This set came out in 1989 and featured 33 cards in a boxed set.  All of the players in the set had at least on season that included 20 homers and 20 stolen bases.  Dawson accomplished that five times, though never with the Cubs.  Ryno did it three times.

Justin Steele Living Set

Coming off of his breakout season, Justin Steele was recently added to the Living Set.  His 2023 included a 16-5 record and an All-Star appearance.   He must not have caught on with collectors yet, as the print run for his card was just 1,535 copies.  That is the lowest run of any of the Cubs in the Living Set.

The Cubs are on quite a roll with the set, having five cards since July.  The six cards for the year make this the highest year for the team since 2018, when six Cubs were also included.  There are now 25 Cubs total in the set and they look good in a 5x5 mosaic.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 21,422 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1961 Fleer #11 Mordecai Brown What an odd picture choice for Brown, with a card that came out about 50 years after his playing days.

1980s: 1982 On Deck Cookies Bill Buckner  MSA used the same disc design for over five years.  Does MSA stand for Make Same Always???

1990s: 1990 Score #229 Jerome Walton Walton was the reigning NL Rookie of the Year in 1990.  Sadly, he encountered the dreaded Sophomore Slump, along with the Junior Jinx, and  Senior Slump II.

2000s: 2001 Bowman Heritage #265 Ricky Gutierrez  Man, what a plain and boring looking card!  

2010s: 2017 Honus Bonus #68 Albert Almora  Most cards to it the other way around..the player in color and the background in black and white. Honus Bonus flipped it.

Eighties Alphabetically - All Star Game Program

For six seasons, from 1981 through 1986, the All-Star Game Official Program contained pictures of the players that were on the All-Star ballot.  Those pictures have been cut out and from those we have the All-Star Game program cards.  Cards is a loose term because they are just flimsy paper program pages.

Most of the cards are pretty small, much less than half the size of a regular baseball card.  They typically measure at 1¼" x 2".

Four Cubs were on the 1981 All-Star ballot.  None were voted in by the fans, but Bill Buckner was named to the team.

The 1982 All-Star Game was held in Montreal, so the cards are bilingual.  I have no idea why Randy Martz was included in the set.  

We're up to seven Cubs in the 1983 set and Ryno makes his first appearance.  Notice how the picture of Bill Buckner was the same one used in 1982.

The 1984 program had two different styles of pictures. And the same picture of Bill Buckner was used for the third year in a row while Ron Cey's picture was a repeat from 1983

The 1985 pictures for Ron Cey, Jody Davis, Keith Moreland, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, and Steve Trout were all repeat pictures in 1984.

The 1986 program was the last one with these cards.  Only two pictures were repeated (Sandberg and Smith), though the cropping was tighter in 1986.

2023 Panini Select

 Here's another set that came out after the end of the season, Panini Select.  We had to wait until the season was over to get logoless cards of minor league players and retired players.

The set has 300 cards divided into three levels of 100 cards each.  Cards become scarcer as you work up the levels.

 

 

These four are from the first level, #1-100, called Concourse.

 

Two Cubs were in the Premier level, #101-200.

The Diamond level has five Cubs.  I only have four of the cards.  The missing fifth belongs to Ryne Sandberg and it has been impossible to find.  So not only do we have a set that came out after the end of the season, but I've had to add a new card to my most wanted list.

2023 Cubs Calendar Update

 

Let's take a final look at the 2023 Cubs calendar as the year come to an end.

This is the picture from the preview story that I posted last December.  Four of the twelve players were not with the team when 2023 began.  And now that the year is almost over?

Just two more of the remaining eight are gone, Marcus Stroman and Codi Heuer.  And by the way, how bad were things in 2022 that Codi Heuer was considered calendar-worthy?

Half of the players are still with the team at the end of the year and that is actually better than the 2022 calendar that had just four of the twelve still with the team when 2022 ended.  That's progress I guess.

Singles From Santa Chad

In addition to all of the team sets I showed yesterday, reader Chad also sent a nice collection of assorted singles, including the Panini sticker shown above.

 

 

These are all assorted oddball... Leon Durham 1987 Boardwalk and Baseball, Jeff Reed 2000 MLB Showdown, Brooks Kieschnick 1996 Select Artists Proof, Rafael Palmeiro 1989 Broder Baseball Stars, and 1998 Jeremi Gonzalez Williamsport Cubs.  The Gonzalez card is a mystery to me.  Gonzalez played in Williamsport in 1994 and the card mentions that he was the first Williamsport Cub to make it to the majors.  The card isn't a part of the official 1998 Williamsport team set, nor is it listed anywhere in the Trading Card Data Base.

He sent two Sammy cards.  The bottom card is from the Video Replay insert set in 1999 Stadium Club.

Three Jerome Walton cards were include.  The first is from the Pocket Price Guide while the other two are unlicensed Broder cards.

There were four cards of Mark Grace.  I've never seen the top two.  On the top left is a card from an unlicensed set called Baseball Caramel.  The cards all feature pictures of modern players in old uniforms.  The work done for Grace is not very flattering.  On the top right is the a card from 1996 E-Motion XL's insert set D-Fense.

Finally, there was a nice selection of Ryno cards.  These will all be added to my Sandberg player collection.

Thank you Chad for an interesting stack of cards!