Back in late May I made my largest JustCommons purchase yet: around 330 cards for about $57. That total included a few things heading into trade packages, but overall I added almost 300 new cards to some of my baseball PCs. Over something like seven different posts I'll cover those new cards, player by player!
Today I'm bringing you another well-known player, if not one lots of you collect (outside of Tigers and Dodgers fans, at least): OF Kirk Gibson.
Gibby's career spanned 1979-1995 (plus another five seasons as Arizona's manager), and a lot of what I picked up came from the first 10 or so years of that run. We'll start with a pair from my birth year of 1983: Fleer and O-Pee-Chee. The latter product appears a bunch here since junk wax-era Topps cards were plentiful, and in my younger days I began supercollecting Gibson before I even knew what that was, meaning the base flagship cards I need are few and far between. In this scan alone, cards #3, 6, 7, and 8 represent OPC from the '84-'87 sets, respectively. They're joined by 1985 Leaf and Fleer (not sure why I got those out of order), plus one of my favorite oddball-before-it-became-mainstream brands, Sportflics (from '87).
1988 and the owners' collusion resulted in Gibby, once again a free agent, heading to the Dodgers, and that's reflected on eight of the nine cards above. The 1988 group includes Donruss Baseball's Best, Fleer Update, O-Pee Chee (still a Tiger!), and Topps Traded. Meanwhile, 1989 is represented by Classic Travel Orange, another Donruss Baseball's Best, and Score. If you're looking for 1989 cards celebrating the '88 Series, well, I have one below, but most of those are already in my collection. Getting into the 90s, we have the first two of a trio with 1990 Donruss Best NL (a slight name change!) and the auspicious debut of Leaf's original-not-rebranded-Donruss set.
Three teams appear in this scan, and while one is the Dodgers--card #1 from 1990 O-Pee-Chee--the Tigers aren't in the group. The former '88 Series hero signed with the Royals as a free agent late in 1990, and he spent a decent '91 season with KC, as captured on 1991 cards from Fleer Update, Score Rookie/Traded, Studio, Ultra Update, and Upper Deck. Hooray for update sets! 1992 base cards from Donruss and O-Pee-Chee (last one!) close out his Royals run, but that year's Pinnacle product throws us a curveball by documenting Kirk's short-time stop in Pittsburgh, all of 16 games after a March '92 trade to the Pirates; he would be released in short order in May.
Fortunately for those of us who are Tigers fans, that brought him back to Motown for good, which ended up being the 1993-95 seasons. The first portion of this scan includes that run and cards from 1993 Fleer Final Edition, Stadium Club Members Only Parallel, and Studio (rally cap!), plus 1994 Pacific. Our final standard vertical card hails from 2008 Donruss Threads, a product from which I had two inserts but not this base card somehow.
Moving on to the releases of unusual size (ROUs), first up is the very looooong 1994 Fleer Extra bases. Then we get smaller with a 1985 Fleer Star Stickers appearance, an '88 Fleer Mini, and '89 Topps UK Mini. Last up is a 1991 Topps Micro card, so small you can't even be sure it's there, like a Republican Senator's heart (topical humor!).
In all I was fortunate to add some 42 new cards to my Gibson collection, jumping him over the 200-card mark to 202. Hooray for PC milestones!
Watch for my next post featuring an even more popular player soon.
It has been over a year I think since I've been to just commons. About 2 years ago I made a purchase there to help my crawling "strive for '65" set build. I think my card count was close to 40 for that one and only order I've made with them. Some of my disappointment is for many of the sets I need to finish I still have to find the hard to get expensive stars as well as half or more of the commons.
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