Wednesday, November 18, 2015

2015 Sportlots purchases: more than three quarters worth of Sweet Lou

I think it's about time that I finally get around to posting all the Lou Whitakers I landed from some Sportlots packages in the last few weeks:
1984 Donruss;  1985 Leaf;  1987 O-Pee-Chee
1988 Leaf;  1989 Sportflics;  1990 Sportflics
1992 Topps Gold;  1992 Upper Deck Gold Hologram;  1993 O-Pee Chee
Lots of variety here:  vintage, Canadian, holograms, and useless parallels (the UD card has a gold hologram on the back, trust me).  My favorites in the scan are the Diamond King (because duh) and then the Sportflics cards because they're always interesting.
1994 O-Pee-Chee;  1994 Triple Play;  1995 Collector's Choice
1995 Collector's Choice SE Silver Signature;  1995 Donruss;  1995 Emotion
1995 Flair;  1995 Fleer;  1995 Pacific
This is actually kind of a blah group of cards.  I do like the multiple fielding shots, though, and it's kind of fun to see some of the stuff Fleer threw out there in the 90s to see what would stick.  Spoiler alert:  Flair lived on in several incarnations while Emotion pretty much disappeared.  I'll award the Collector's Choice SE insert the best photo with the Emotion card as a reasonably close second.
1995 SP Championship Die-Cuts;  1995 Stadium Club Super Team World Series;  1995 Stadium Club Virtual Reality
1995 Topps D3;  1995 Topps Embossed Golden Idols;  1995 Ultra Gold Medallion
1996 Collector's Choice Silver Signature;  2004 UD Legends Timeless Teams #234 and #271
Now we're back on track, with eight pretty good cards surrounding an absolute turd.  Topps' D3 was their too-late attempt to try to compete with Sportflix, but besides the stupid logo I kind of like how they look.  The Embossed set is one for which I'll never forgive them, though.  Embossed sets rarely look presentable, and this one rates a Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas on the ugliness scale; the gold parallel proves that you can't polish a turd.
I've always enjoyed the "tribute"-type cards UD and Fleer made around this time period, though, especially when that effort resulted in something like the Collector's Choice card above.  And finally, UD's Timeless Teams set was a fantastic idea that was executed very well.  There was never really any question which two teams they'd choose for Sweet Lou, and I hope I can track down the various autographed versions of those two beauts.
1988 Topps Big;  1990 Topps Big;  1991 Topps Micro;  1992 Topps Micro;  1993 Topps Micro;  1994 Fleer Extra Bases
Finally, here are the oddball-sized cards that warranted a scan of their own.  It's fun having all of them on one page since it really messes with your sense of scale--nothing here is a standard size at all!

That's 33 new Whitakers, and adding them to my existing collection gives me a new total of 221/292, good for more than 75%!  A large chunk of those I'm missing are going to be tough-to-find hits so for now I'll take what I can get and see how much I can track down of the stuff made before he retired, but I'll keep plugging away!

6 comments:

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    1. *Reads comment in voice of "THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS!" guy from Kung Pow: Enter the Fist*

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  2. I've been a second set of eyes for you on the Whitakers. The good thing is he is somewhat affordable, the bad thing is those hits don't pop up a ton.

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    1. Thanks for looking for me! I agree with both statements. Not sure if it's scarcity, loyal collectors, or both maybe.

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  3. Always respected (and liked) Sweet Lou and even his DP combo Trammell, even if they were Tigers.

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    1. Yeah, I think they're the kind of players you couldn't hate even if they were your rival (like Frank Thomas and Paul Konerko, among others)

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