A year of mystery

 

I have the three cards that I claimed in the latest Diamond Jesters Time Travel Trade series to show off today.

 

They all have something in common, which I didn't realize when I was requesting them.

 

 

Each of the cards are from 1986. This is interesting to me. Out of all the years in the 1980s -- and  I have a lot of cards from that decade -- 1986 is the year that contains the most holes.

 

I look at cards from 1986 with some unfamiliarity. This goes back to where I was at in life at the time. As I've mentioned very often, '86 was the year I broke free from my card collecting ritual. For 10 years I made sure to purchase Topps cards (and then Donruss and Fleer) in some sort of fashion each year. But in 1986 I was away at college and didn't bother with cards, not even a little.

 

This is why I've long considered 1986 Topps as a "mysterious" set. When I was finally collecting it during the first year of this blog, I discussed how fascinated I was with the look of the cards -- both the bold, dark, neon design and the often-muddled photos.

 

1986 Topps has long been complete now and I'm so glad it is, I don't need to look at the set from afar, like an intriguing woman spotted across a crowded room.

 

But it took the Time Travel cards for me to realize it's this way for me for all the major sets from 1986. 

 

 

1986 Fleer is complete now, too. But I've written a lot about how this is the most mysterious '80s set for me for Fleer, too. I've written about how I always forgot about it before I was collecting it. I'd often mix it up with 1985 Fleer, or even skip right over it in my mind and go directly from '85 Fleer to '87 Fleer as if '86 never existed.

 

 

1986 Donruss is burdened with two issues that has kept it out of my collection. One, it arrived when I was studying and drinking 200 miles away. Two, I hated the look of it instantly. Still don't like it. Don't want too much of it in my collection.

 

But I have come to realize that I shouldn't punish some of the players who appear in that set. Guys like Schmidt and Yount played when I was a youngster learning about the game and are in many sets that I adore from the '70s and early '80s. So I should at least get those guys from '86 Donruss in my collection.

 

 

And I've already written about 1986 Topps Football just recently -- how elusive it's been in my collection and how odd it looks to me, in terms of a Topps set.

 

The same goes for any other set from any other sport that came out in 1986. I wasn't collecting baseball at all in '86 so what chance did any of the other sports have? The '86 Fleer Michael Jordan? Yeah, knew nothing about it. I didn't know anything about any of the boxed sets that year either. What was a boxed set? Oddly, the one thing that I did buy in 1986 was a pack or two of Sportflics.

 

So that's where the mystery comes from in 1986, I simply wasn't paying attention. That first year away from the hobby was fascinating, a whole new world, and much more fascinating than the "missing years" of the late '90s/early '00s when I stepped away again.

 

The other thing that makes 1986 "mysterious" for me is the amazing number of collectors online who said they began their journey in 1987 -- one year after 1986. I've come across collectors who started in '86, but it is dwarfed by those who began in '87. Why always 1987? I'm assuming that's because the collecting boom really kicked in during 1987. But it makes '86 kind of an underdog year and I do like an underdog.

 

All right, that's probably the end of me writing about this year in collecting, I feel like I'm repeating myself all the time now. But the sheer number of collectors who began in 1987 sounds like a magazine article in a couple of years.