I did some light card organizing over the weekend. I moved my 1983 Kellogg's 3-D complete set from binder pages to top loaders, as it's one of the later sets that I'm confident won't crack when confined like that (unlike mid-'70s 3-D sets).
I also moved a small stack of 1981 and 1982 Topps stickers into leftover pages I had bought for early '50s Bowman cards. It took me forever to realize that the stickers would fit that size, too.
I have less than 20 stickers from the '81 set, so it fit into one page (pockets double-bagged). That's a good thing because my 1981 Topps binder is large and STUFFED.
There's a reason for that but just to illustrate how large the '81 binder is, here is a photo of the 1980 Topps and 1981 Topps binders -- both flagship sets complete -- side-by-side.
The 1980 binder is 44 pages (double-bagged, of course) and the 1981 binder -- maybe a little overstuffed is 71 pages -- 71!!!
Where does that compare among the largest binders in my collection? I've got a little list for that:
1975 Topps - 83 pages (that doesn't include the mini set)
1983 Topps/OPC - 73 pages (Topps is complete, OPC is almost complete)
2006 Topps - 72 pages (flagship and traded)
1981 Topps - 71 pages (flagship and traded and ...)
2015 Topps - 69 pages (flagship and traded)
'81 Topps is fourth but it's still notable because it's not a set I collected like a maniac like the others on that list and the jump in page number from 1980 to 1981 is the most important aspect.
The binder size explains what Topps was feeling in 1981 -- competition in other places.
Forty-five years ago, with the arrival of Donruss and Fleer sets in 1981, after virtually no competition for 25 years, Topps got its butt in gear. But instead of listing what they did, I'll let the binder tell the story.
The 1981 Topps flagship set, on its face, is like any other set it released at this time. It's 726 cards large, just like the three sets prior to it. It contains league leaders, record-breakers, postseason, future stars and team cards, all familiar sights in Topps sets for much of the previous decade.
All fairly standard for us youngsters buying packs. As far as we were concerned at the time, Topps wasn't any different, what was different was there were two other sets to buy.
But Topps was feeling the pressure and no doubt had plans in the works, because later in the year it released a Traded set.
This differed from previous Topps Traded sets that were either a subset within the main set or included in a pack of regular Topps cards. This was a stand-alone set that you had to order through the mail.
It was very popular and has lasted in popularity to this day, though mostly because of the rookies included, which was kind of an afterthought for many collectors at the time.
But Topps wasn't done.
In conjunction with Coca-Cola, it released individual, 12-card sets for select teams, similar to what it had done with Burger King during the late 1970s but on a larger scale.
It released another set with the soft drink Squirt, and woe to the collector whose family didn't drink Squirt (raises hand). I still feel deprived.
But what's that sharing the same page with the Squirt cards?
Ah, yes, Topps released a Scratch-Off set. (I never saw these in 1981). There were a lot of these suckers, and if you broke each panel into three individual cards there seemed to be a never-ending number of them.
We're still not done. Topps also issued a large sticker set. It advertised the stickers in packs and on the wrapper and you could send away for stickers as well as buy them in individual packs. We were all about this in 1981.
Topps also was behind something called "Perma-Graphics" that I saw only in advertisements in Baseball Digest. I wanted them dearly. These are also in my 1981 Topps binder.
One thing that Topps also made in 1981 that is not in this binder are the 5x7 (or thereabouts) glossy photo cards that were bestowed on only certain teams, much like the Coke cards, but there was also a national set. These I found at a deli, which was on our way to the drug store that sold cards, so we picked up some of those, too.
I have them in a separate binder, probably because I value the memory so much.
One more Topps-adjacent thing that is in the binder:
The 1981 O-Pee-Chee cards that I own. I know OPC is not the same as Topps but they sure look similar, thanks to an agreement between the two companies, with just enough differences that they require me to put them in the same binder.
And that's everything that's in my 1981 Topps binder thanks to Topps feeling the heat.
What's in my 1980 Topps binder?
The flagship set and some Burger King and OPC cards. Topps did the 5 x 7 glossy cards, too, and they're in the separate binder for those cards. Maybe some day I'll swap in the glossy cards and put OPC in its own binder for each year.
But anyway, that's what competition did in 1981 and it lasted through the 1980s, '90s and early 2000s. It definitely got to be a little too much, and there were some really dicey sets during that period, but it was nice to see different minds at work during that time.
I'll still always be a Topps fan over any other card company and that's always been the case. I just like to know that my preferred card company is not phoning it in ... which is what I feel today.
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