All right, for anyone who may remember all the way back to our first Card of the Week post, you may remember that 1982 Topps Football was one of the first sets of cards my brother and I ever collected when we were little. Real little. As in didn’t know any better than to take care of our cards little.
I still have those cards somewhere–even all beat up. I think there’s even a Joe Montana that’s missing a big chunk, but fortunately, I think that’s the only real tragedy–to my knowledge, we didn’t have any Ronnie Lott or Lawrence Taylor rookies, back in the day.
Of course, when I first started to get serious about collecting again a few years ago, I thought I’d see if I could rectify some of the transgressions of my youth–and bought a bunch of unopened 1982 Topps cello packs.
So, when I went on my recent binge of unopened packs, as soon as I noticed that the seller I was buying from had a ’82 Topps Cello pack for sale, I went ahead and snagged that too.
The results:
#8 NFC Championship
#400 Sammy White (hmmm…he looks familiar)
#125 Miami Dolphins Team Leaders
#79 Randy Gradishar
#5 George Rogers 1981 Record Breaker
#137 Tommy Vigorito
#1 Ken Anderson Record Breaker
#223 San Diego Chargers Team Leaders
#284 Mike Kenn
#404 New Orleans Saints Team Leaders
#506 Mike Washington
#278 Wallace Francis
#263 Football Brothers – Chris and Matt Bahr (that’s right–not just kicker cards, but BROTHER kicker cards).
#29 Jim Haslett
#221 Sticker – Dan Fouts
#383 Rich Saul (Saul had announced his retirement after 1981, but still got a card–of course, with that picture, he probably would have preferred not to have)
#11 Raymond Butler
#504 James Owens
#492 Freddie Solomon
#75 Charles White (seriously, what is it with me and guys named White?)
#101 Vernon Perry
#455 Jerry Robinson
#417 Rob Carpenter (father of Cowboys LB Bobby Carpenter–who wasn’t even born yet, at the time of this card…**sigh**)
#329 Danny White (**sigh**)
#19 Randy McMillan
#39 Ken Anderson In Action
#14 Zachary Dixon
#277 Lynn Cain
#293 Brian Baschnagel (is it just me, or is it going to be tough for a WR to catch passes with that cast? And yet, 1981 was his career year…)
And, as a bonus, I snagged a wax pack too–I prefer not to buy old wax packs, given the possibility that they’ve been searched–but this seller’s reputation was solid, so I figured what the heck. Of course, for some reason I didn’t scan any of these…
1982 Topps Wax Pack
#417 Rob Carpenter (oh crap…)
#329 Danny White (#$%^&*())
#19 Randy McMillan
#481 Randy Cross (at least they’re not ALL doubles)
#383 Rich Saul (**sigh**)
#11 Raymond Butler
#504 James Owens
#492 Freddie Solomon
#6 Sticker – 1982 NFC Championship
#212 Franco Harris In Action (Best card from either pack?)
#71 Mike Pruitt In Action
#429 Bill Neill
#270 NFL Brothers – Dewey and Lee Roy Selmon (I didn’t know Lee Roy had a brother who played in the NFL)
#428 Curtis McGriff
#139 Uwe von Schamann In Action (I can’t believe I didn’t scan this–that makes two von Schamann cards in three packs. Oh, and a kicker ‘In Action’ card?
#525 Checklist 1-132
Just one more pack to go on this run…
[phpbay]1982 topps football pack, 5[/phpbay]
question for you – i have not bought in 20 years and i love old packs….you stated the searchable factor in the packs – can you tell me more and how they do it and what are things you look for?
thanks
danny
Danny, thanks for checking out the site–not sure how your comment got passed me. With old school wax packs, some people have been known to carefully open the pack, take any cards they need (or more likely any cards that are worth something), and re-seal the pack with a heat gun.
If they’re good, they’ll also replace the card with something less valuable, so you still get the right number of cards, and most people would be unaware of the change.
I’m pretty sure I saw this once, with some older (1984 & 1987) Topps Baseball cards I bought in bulk–there were all kinds of problems with some packs (gum on the wrong side, cards misaligned, cards damaged in a way not possible while sealed in pack. Yet somehow, I still pulled some Mattingly, Bonds & McGwire rookies (back when they were worth something).
That’s why I prefer cello & rack packs for older cards–in addition to getting more cards, it’s almost impossible to re-close a cello pack. Some people may search the rack packs by trying to fan the cards, but that’s tough to do reliably–and they still can’t reseal it if they do open it.