Beauty and the beast

Over Christmas I visited a small card shop in Northern Virginia and was able to get a couple of things. One of them was a set that I had wanted for a long, long time. 1988 Fleer. It's not worth the paper it's printed on; but I just love the design. So clean, so barber shop. The box it was in was scuzzy, so I ditched that and in the process of flatting the cards, as they have bowed a bit over time. This weekend I put all the cards in number order and was thrilled to discover it was, in fact, a complete set. It had with the a twelve card insert set of the Cardinals and Twins World Series. 

The stickers were a bit wanting, however. I think the base set is 52 of them; and I had 22 but thirty dupes (well, 15 cards, each duped). So I guess it was just about triples of them. The cards I need are:

Atlanta Braves
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Reds
Houston Astros
Los Angeles Dodgers
Milwaukee Brewers
Minnesota Twins COR
Montreal Expos
New York Mets
New York Yankees
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
St. Louis Cardinals
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Giants

Baltimore Orioles / Atlanta Braves
Chicago Cubs / Oakland Athletics
Chicago White Sox / St Louis Cardinals
Cincinnati Reds / California Angels
Cleveland Indians / Cincinnati Reds
Detroit Tigers / New York Yankees
Houston Astros / Seattle Mariners
Kansas City Royals / San Francisco Giants
Milwaukee Brewers / New York Mets
Minnesota Twins / Pittsburgh Pirates
Montreal Expos / Baltimore Orioles
Pittsburgh Pirates / Toronto Blue Jays
San Diego Padres / Boston Red Sox
San Francisco Giants / Texas Rangers
Texas Rangers / Philadelphia Phillies

I am working with people on TCDb on trades, but if anyone has any of the above that they might be able to spare, please let me know! 

At the same time, I mentioned to the dealer that I had all Topps sets from 1979 to 1992 excepting 1980. Mostly because of the Henderson rookie. So he had a Henderson Rookie that we worked out a nice deal on, and then a week or so later, he let me know he found a mostly complete 1980 set which he gave me for $50.

Over the weekend I sorted the set!  

As you can imagine, some cards are rough, some are soft or bumped on the corners, some show a little creasing, and some are miscut; but I look at this as being ok. 

And it wasn't a complete set. It might not suprise you, seeing the list of needs below, that the 'stars' had been pulled... I've already worked a trade for a number of cards that I need, buy, my remaining needs are:

40 Carlton Fisk
70 Gary Carter
77 Dave Stieb RC
96 Oakland A's / Jim Marshall TC, MG
100 Johnny Bench
206 1979 Strikeout Leaders (J.R. Richard / Nolan Ryan)
210 Steve Carlton AS
245 Phil Niekro
274 Dale Murphy
335 Willie McCovey
393 Ozzie Smith
406 Paul Molitor
450 George Brett AS
500 Tom Seaver
540 Pete Rose
580 Nolan Ryan AS
650 Joe Morgan

That's alright though as the set did still include many.  I also had a bunch of dupes in the set, including, strangely, a nearly complete Red Sox team set. I'll try to get some of the cards I need through trading and hopefully I can even trade away some of my dupes for them.

Thanks for stopping by!