The bitter end

 

I've been in full set-building mode for a number of weeks now. I expect that to continue through the end of the year and beyond, with periodic breaks to pick up some Dodgers.

Since it's difficult to pick up more than a couple cards at a time from my 1967 and 1970 Topps quests, I've latched on to easier pursuits (or somewhat easier pursuits like the Hostess cards).

One of those is finishing another 1980s Fleer set.

Since I announced my intent to complete all the '80s Fleer sets a few years ago, I've finished 1981 and 1982, 1988 and 1989. I finished 1984 within the first few years of the blog, and I'm pretty far along with 1985 and 1986 (Completing 1985 is next). I have quite a ways to go with 1987.

That brings me to 1983 Fleer.

The '83 Fleer set is part of that wonderful quartet of Fleer sets from 1981-84. For me, these are the "most Fleer" sets with those pictures that summed up Fleer in that era. The later '80s sets have some of that, but not as much as the early '80s cards.

I've never liked '83 Fleer as much as '81, '82 or '84. It's been like that since I first pulled the cards from packs that year. The brown-gray borders don't do it for me. It's also one of those "sad-time sets," in which the Dodgers were breaking up the old gang that I knew when I first started watching baseball. (One day I'm going to write about those years where every little thing was going great in life ... except baseball).

I've come around over the years -- hey, '83 Fleer is great in comparison to what Fleer did in the years to come! And so I decided to try to pick up the last few cards I needed for the set.

Just about all of these came very cheaply as you can imagine. The great, old weird poses and interview sessions are still there.

 

These are two cards that I owned for a long time and then traded them away ... I wasn't serious about '83 Fleer then. I realized my foolish ways -- Mahler is one of the Greatest 100 Cards of the 1980s! -- and bought them back. And now I'm realizing that there is someone talking to Parrish who has been removed from the scene.

 

Some great images and not-so-great images there. Rice looks pissed or drugged. The Ryan is miscut, which I don't care about in the least, but I had to adjust the way I captured the image because the cropping on the new scanning app was all screwed up.

 

There were some needed checklists in the mix, too, as usual. Collecting '80s sets means collecting checklists -- get used to it!

And that brings me to the bitter end of the tale.

I knew I wouldn't finish the set in one fell swoop. I didn't feel like spending the 10 bucks required to pick up the Tony Gwynn rookie -- I'm not spending double figures for a Padre, maybe Winfield, that's it. So I knew that would be a separate purchase and that my set would be one card from completion.

But taking a recount of my 83 Fleer binder, I realized there was another card I need.

Ugh. A checklist. And a Dodgers one at that.

But no problem, right? All I had to do was go to the giant box of Dodgers dupes and find an extra!

That didn't work either. I found five different Fernando Valenzuela '83 Fleer cards, and multiple versions of virtually every player card. But there wasn't a single extra checklist.

The checklist above is actually mine. It sits in the Dodgers team set in my Dodgers binders. But I've got to get that extra one!

So that stunned me a bit. But it happens.

I've already added the checklist to my Sportlots cart. I'll add the Gywnn card when I feel like it and then I'll be done! I don't know if I'll do a retrospective celebration post when I get those two cards, we'll see.

OK. Up next, I'm moving 20 years forward for another completion tale.