Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 21,904 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1958 Topps #135 Moe Drabowsky It's easy to spot a picture of a Cubs player taken in 1957, as this one was.  That year was the only season that they had white piping on their hats.

1980s: 1987 Fleer #575 Chris Speier He really is getting down low to make this throw.  He almost looks like a pitcher.

1990s: 1993 Baseball Card Magazine #88 Sammy Sosa The magazine did a pretty decent job of reproducing the 1968 look, especially with the limited technology that was available back then.

2000s: 2000 Fox Sports Net #7 Eric Young These cards were give away by the Cubs at Wrigley on August 15.  Young batted leadoff that day and was 1-4 as the Cubs fell to the Cardinals 4-2.  

2010s: 2018 Factory Team Set #CC15 Albert Almora The 2018 season was his last decent season, as he hit .286 as the Cubs starting center fielder.  After that his averages were .236, .167, .115, and .223.  But despite the mediocre at best career, he will always be the guy that scored the go-ahead run in the 10th inning of game 7 of the 2016 World Series.

Eighties Alphabetically - KAS

 A few weeks ago I had the discs from the Chicago-area potato chip company, Jays.  And last week it was a disc set from 1985.

Today's set combines both of those as we have a potato chip disc set from 1985.  It is from another local chip company, not a national brand.  KAS was big in the St. Louis area, with their products made at a factory in Centralia, Illinois.

Their 1985 set was also produced by MSA.  It was smaller than the Jox set, with just 20 players on the checklist.  However, the KAS set has the same two Cubs as the bigger Jox set. 

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 21,901 Cubs cards from 317 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1974 O-Pee-Chee #584 Ken Rudolph The career back-up is shown at Candlestick Park, and that is where he spent the 1974 season as the Cubs traded him to the Giants in October, 1973.

1980s: 1980 Topps #381 Cubs Team The 1980 team was not very good and it started at the top.  Preston Gomez, who hadn't managed since being fired by the Astros during the 1975 season, was hired as manager.  He brought with him a career win/loss percentage of .392.  How could any general manager look at that and think to hire the guy.  Gomez didn't last the season, and was fired after just 90 games.  But he did do better than his career percentage as his time with the Cubs was .422.

1990s: 1990 Score #176 Lloyd McClendon  This shot gives you and idea of just how high the field was crowned.  Look at how much of the batboy in the background is hidden.

2000s: 2000 Bowman #121 Sammy Sosa  Love that Sosa autograph!  It looks like it was done by a second grader.

2010s: 2010 Topps #520 Randy Wells Seems to me they cropped this a little too tight and ended up losing most of both of his arms.

Eighties Alphabetically - Jox

When the running craze hit America in the 1970s, running shoes became the thing.  And they had to have stripes on them like Adidas shoes.  America's biggest shoe retailer at the time, Thom McAn, launched their own athletic brand to capture some of the market.

They called their line "Jox," but you don't have to be one to wear them.  And yes, they had stripes on them.

Thom McAn took a one year plunge into the card market and issued a disc set in 1985.  It was an MSA produced-set so there were no logos on the pictures.

The back of the disc was the same on each of the 47 in the set.  The two biggest names from the 1984 division winning Cubs were included in this 1985 set.

A Side by Side Look At The Three Levels of 2024 Finest

 So what do the three levels of this year's Finest look like?  Let's see them side by side.

Each of the levels has a slightly different background.  Also, the player name in the first level is right justified, and then it moved to the left in the second and third levels.  You can also see that for players with cards in multiple levels, different pictures were used for each card.

The backs have the same template in all three levels.  As I mentioned in previous posts, the level name is below the card number.  For players with multiple cards, the paragraphs were different on each card.  I was glad to see that because I was afraid Topps would get lazy and use identical backs.

2024 Finest Cubs - Rare

 Today's cards are the rare cards in this year's Finest set.  The rare are seeded one every three packs and are #201 - 300 in the set.  Initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to pick up the five Cubs cards because I thought they would be too expensive.  That wasn't the case, luckily, and I paid in the range of $3-5 for each.

Again, you can tell which subset a card belongs to by looking just below the card number.

 

Bellinger and Steele's only cards in the set were rare, while these are the second for Morel and Imanaga and Crow-Armstrong's third.

2024 Finest Cubs - Uncommon

 I wrote last week about the 2024 Finest and the three 100-cards levels in the set.  I got the common cards pretty easily.  It took a little time but I now have the cards from the second level, which Topps calls "uncommon."

Topps made it pretty easy to tell which of the three levels a card belongs to by putting the level name under the card number.  A less-easier way is by the design of the background on the front of the card.  I'll show all three of the different fronts in a couple of days.

I don't know if this was done with any of the other teams, but there are exactly five Cubs cards in each level.  Below are the five uncommon Cubs.

 

 

This is the only card in the set for Canario, Hoerner, and Swanson.  PCA and Imanaga ended up with cards in all of the levels.