C.A.: 1988 Fleer Baseball All-Stars Orel Hershiser

("I've never met a beer I didn't drink." RIP, George Wendt, one of many reasons I was doing the same thing every Thursday at 9 p.m. in the '80s. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 352nd in a series):

 

The always friendly and informative Trading Card Database says I own 346 cards of Orel Hershiser.

 

Of that total, approximately 140 are from the years 1985 to 1989, or 40 percent. Of those 140, about 60 are oddballs, with 27, give or take a card or two, arriving in boxed sets.

 

Most of these cards are pervasive, extremely easy to find and I wouldn't be a serious Dodgers card collector if I didn't have plenty of extras. I've operated for a long time thinking I've owned just about every Hershiser card from this time period except for some rarely produced, unheard of item that only a guy like this, wherever he may be now, knows.

 

This is why my eyes practically popped out of my head recently when I saw the above card and knew instantly that I did not have it. HOW? How could a regular boxed set card from 1988 have eluded me??

 

Obviously I landed it right away. It's from the 1988 Fleer Baseball All-Stars set. I've known the look of these cards for a long time (Fleer's late 1980s obsession with stripes), and I was sort of surprised when I looked up the set on TCDB and saw that I didn't own a single card from the set. No wonder I didn't have that Hershiser!

 

I own nine Hershiser cards from nine different boxed sets Fleer issued in 1988. I don't know if the Baseball All-Stars set is more elusive than the others. I don't know if I had this card once and lost it. I don't know if there is even a good reason for why this card has eluded me for so long.

 

This, of course, causes me to wonder what other readily available Hershiser card from the '80s has avoided me. But I just rechecked the boxed sets for 1988 and I know at least for them, I now have them all.

 

Once again it's crazy how a card from such a well-combed-over era like the overproduction period can be needed after all this time collecting.

 

But sometimes, as a veteran collector, it's a relief to find a card that you need, that hardly costs anything.