Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 16,809 Cubs cards from 198 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1963 Salada Tea #30 Billy Williams  Billy was one of the 63 players in the Baseball All Star Coins set.  They used a nice picture of him taken at the Polo Grounds.

1980s: 1987 Topps Stickers #60 Scott Sanderson  The RNG gives us a smiling Scott Sanderson.  Sadly, Sanderson passed away this April at the relatively young age of 62.

1990s: 1998 Stadium Club #51 Mark Clark  The Cubs won the NL Wildcard in 1998, but Clark was not much help to them getting there.  He was just an innings eater, going 9-14 over 33 starts and 213 innings

2000s: 2003 Heritage #241 Mike Remlinger That is a very odd-looking grin on his face.

2010s: 2012 Prizm #88 Darwin Barney Refractor  This comes from my player collection of the future owner of the Portland MLB team.

Capital Publishing Cubs

Today I've got a real oddball set.  Most likely you've never heard of it before.  I hadn't until a few months ago.

Capital Publishing Company issued a black and white set in 1974.  The players were not active.  In fact, many were old-timers from long ago.  The checklist in the Standard Catalog lists cards numbered from 1 to 104 though #102 is listed as "unknown".  The cards are large, 4 1/8" x 5 1/4".

The backs have the player's yearly stats along with a few career highlights.  The card number is on the bottom left. Capital's name is on the bottom right.  There is no copyright year, so I'm going by what the catalog says for the date.

The cards do not have any team designation, so I went with the team checklist from Teamsests4u and ended up with eight that they called Cubs cards.  Most of them are Hall of Famers or well-known Cubs... and a guy named Cliff Aberson, who played in a total of 63 games over three seasons.

#75 Cliff Aberson

#21 Cap Anson

#23 Mordecai Brown

#17 Frank Chance

#41 Johnny Evers

#7 Clark Griffith

#15 King Kelly

#85 Hippo Vaughn

Darwin Barney - Owner??

I've got 16,801 Cubs cards.

This is the only one for a team owner.  This is William Wrigley, who was the owner from 1916 until his death in 1932.

This is one of over 200 different cards I've got of Darwin Barney.

Barney is no longer playing in the major leagues.  He was in camp this spring with the Rangers but didn't make the team.  He called it quits.

But he's not done with baseball.  This Tribune article  details his plans as part of a group trying to land a franchise for Portland, Oregon.  They are hoping that MLB will add two expansion teams and are getting things lined up to land one.

He earned about $10 million over his career.  That's a healthy chunk of change for most of us.  It won't buy much of an MLB franchise, though.  Barney would be a minority minority owner.  But the group is looking to add names, and since he's from the area, he's a good name to add to their list.

1994 Church's Chicken Cubs

Church's Chicken issued a set in 1994, their one and only set.  There are 28 cards on the checklist, one player from each MLB team.  The set lacked an MLB license, so logos have been removed.

Ryne Sandberg was the one and only Cub.  Kudos to Pinnacle, who produced the set, on their picture selection.  From this angle you don't notice the lack of logos.  Well done!

21st Century Cadaco Cubs

Ten years after their final year set, Cadaco brought back All Star Baseball in 2003.

The 2003 set was a commemorative set and included Billy Williams.

 

 

The 2004 set had discs issued in what Cadaco called "All Star packs."  Four Cubs were included.  I've got the happy guys on the left and the we need our morning coffee guys on the right side.

These are the last of the Cadaco discs with pictures.

1980s & '90s Cadaco Cubs

Cadaco was a maker of games, many of which had a sports theme.

I had this one, Bas-ket.  I spent many hours shooting that ping-pong ball.

But this is a baseball blog and we need to talk about Cadaco's baseball game, All Star Baseball.  I never had this game.

It was around since 1941.  I has a series of discs and spinner that the batter would spin and then the fielder would follow.  Those told you how the play went.

Early on discs were made for both current and retired players.  They had player's names and stats, but no pictures.

That changed in 1989.  Baseball cards were a hot item and Cadaco hoped to cash in too.  Pictures were added, but they were logoless, and they had only a Players Association license.

 

 

These are the four Cubs from the 1989 set.  Pretty impressive that three of the four are in the Hall of Fame.

 

 

 

The 1990 set saw three more Cubs added, making a total of seven.  Notice that the pictures of the four hold-overs from 1989 were not changed.

 

 

In 1991 the number of Cubs was back to just four.  Maddux was out, replaced by Mark Grace.  And again, no pictures were changed.

There was no new player discs in 1992, so we move ahead to 1993.

 

 This time we have just three Cubs and all of the players and pictures are repeats.

A Major Award!

I won a major award!



The Chronicles of Fuji held a contest in celebration of his 9th blogiversary.  I was one of three winners and here is the loot sent my way.

First, a shameless plug... Marc was worried that I wouldn't need the cards he sent me.  That is never a worry.  I always have a place for extra Cubs cards as I give Cubs and Tigers cards to the kids at my school on their birthday... the number of cards they get is equal to their age, and I usually split them 50/50  between Cubs and Tigers.  And if anyone has some Cubs cards they're looking to get rid of, I can give them a new home!

Now back to my loot. Marc sent an envelope with 21 Cubs cards...

The oldest in the stack, from 2001 Upper Deck, goes into the Ernie Banks player collection

This is the second oldest,2002 Fleer.

Here's another for a player collection, this time Billy Williams.

More Mr. Cub, 2012 Gold Standard insert.

 

Some 2013 Finest.  How sad that in 2013, Kyuji Fukikawa was consider "Finest."

 

Up next are some from the 2013 Topps set...

 

...and some 2014 parallels.

Addison Russell was in the 2013 USA Baseball set.

 

 

Here's a few from 2014 Donruss.

Frank Chance was included in a 2015 Diamond King insert set.  I didn't know he was called "Husk."  "Peerless Leader" was the nickname I was familiar with.

 

A couple Panini Rizzo cards from 2015.

An autograph was promised and Marc came through with a member of the 2016 WS champs.

Thank you for the major award... and it was much better than a leg lamp!