Legends for less

 

It's almost nothing to own cards of retired players, so-called "legends cards," these days. Thanks to the MLB-Topps agreement, legends are included in virtually every current set. They're ubiquitous in inserts and in sets like Archives and Allen & Ginter. You can find cards of them for a quarter, which just doesn't seem right.

 

Maybe that's because I knew a different time. As a youngster collecting cards, my focus was solely on the players of the day. This was the 1970s and 1980s, and virtually all sets available, year after year, offered nothing but current players.

 

Cards of legends were mostly confined to past releases. Want a card of Willie Mays? Find someone dumb enough to trade you a card from the 1960s, because that's the only way you were going to get him.

 

Eventually I became aware of card issues from TCMA and Galasso and Laughlin. These were all oddball sets, not available at your store down the road, but they contained retired players. Through the '70s and most of the '80s that was how you obtained cards of legends unless you could afford to buy old cards. TCMA and the like issued sets through the '80s, which were mostly sold through mail-order.

 

It wasn't until 1988, when Pacific issued a Legends set, that there was a major release containing retired players.

 

This set was unique at the time, and although it's not much to look at, I've always been intrigued by it, and the Pacific Legends sets that followed, in 1989 and 1990. I've spent the last two, three years collecting them and now all three are complete.

 

It wasn't difficult to finish the sets, even though each are just over 100 cards and contain plenty of legendary names. The cards are cheap for a checklist like that and the only difficulty I had was keeping the three sets straight as they look alike.

 

I've finished 1988 and 1989, and Stuart from S.R. '75 Cards sent me all 29 cards off the want list for 1990 Pacific. So 1990 Pacific is now complete and it's my second completed set of 2025 (the 1970 Fleer Laughlin World Series set was first).

 

The 1990 set is a little more distinct than the previous two (or one if you consider 1989 as a continuation of 1988). I like it a little more.

 

These guys are an example of the legends that if I wanted to get their cards as a kid, I would have to know some older kid with access. But I didn't, so these players were simply unavailable.

 

 

Seeing cards of these guys would have either blown my mind or amused me as a youngster, as every one of these players were available in packs that I was buying at the store in the '70s and '80s. OK, I wasn't familiar with Steve Carlton as a Cardinal or Lou Piniella as a Pilot -- what was a Pilot? -- but anyone collecting cards in 1977 had a few of these players in their collection.

 

 

Had I collected as a youngster in the late 1980s, I could have learned about players like Pete Runnels and Bobby Shantz from my baseball cards. Instead it was a slow process and names like Billy Herman first came to light off the pages of baseball books. Eventually I'd discover Galasso Glossy Greats advertised in the pages of Baseball Digest and that's when I gained knowledge about the likes of Mel Parnell.

 

 

Then there were players who were waaaay old -- so old that the colorizing people of the period gave them frightening eyeballs. (Some of the images are repeated in 1990 Pacific from the earlier sets, maybe I'll do a post on that).

 

 

 Pacific liked to slip a couple of players into its sets who had just retired or maybe -- like Jesse Barfield -- was still playing! I'm not sure they qualified as Legends at the time, but it's quirky fun to see them in sets like this next to Clemente and Aaron.

 

So Pacific Legends is done and it's nice to have a moment-in-history set like this finished.

 

I still have a way to go on the three Swell sets, which are similar, but designed a little better though with a lot more black-and-white images. That'll be the next mission on my Legends for Less project.