2018 other purchases: Topps sets from ARPSmith #1 (1984)

Way back in January I made a deal with Adam of ARPSmith's Sports Card Obsession to purchase four complete Topps sets from the huge collection he'd acquired.  Now I'm showing those sets off one at a time by highlighting the key RCs, PCs, and Tigers from each.

It's not quite opening day here in Michigan thanks to rain postponing the season opener until tomorrow.  Still, the return of the sport makes for a good reason to start this series which covers my first 2018 purchase, one that includes a ton of Tigers.

Topps' 1984 set, all 792 cards of it, was produced the last time Detroit won it all.  Since I was just a year old at the time I don't have the fondness for it that many of you do, but I still value the fact that it comes from an era when Topps wasn't mailing it in.  That's one reason I'm interested in filling out my complete set collection with some of Topps' efforts from around when I was born.  I also like the fact that it hits a nice number of my PCs, even if I've already acquired most of those cards individually.  But as you'll see in this series, each new set added at least one new card to one of my player collections, so that was a nice added bonus.

Adam did a great job of packing all four of the sets into team bags, usually about 40 cards at a time, hence the 20 bags seen here.  I thought it might be fun to give you all a look at some of the various subjects of the set even though most of you are already pretty familiar with it.  You can see a good number of stars up there like Dawson, Ripken, and--wait--

::enhance::
::enhance::
::enhance::

Confirmed:  Captain America is in this set, repeat:  Captain America is in this set!

Ok, let's start with the RCs I thought were the most important:

Mattingly is pretty much the only "key" first-year in the set at this point, though at least a few others are interesting.  Side note:  I told Adam to keep the Mattingly (and a few key cards from the other sets) to lower my cost and give him more bang for his buck too as I already had them.

The other three guys went on to pretty nice careers themselves.  Strawberry was a force until his demos caught up to him, Van Slyke put up a career bWAR over 40.0, and the late, do-everything Phillips went for about 51, a testament to his versatility and longevity.

Next up are the non-Tiger PC guys:

The Tony Gwynn that leads off this group is the only card of any player collection subject that was brand new to me here, but it's nice to have all of them in set form as well as some single versions.  Sorensen, Howe, Zahn, Boros, and Roberts are all Michigan Baseball guys, and you'll see two of them again in the next scan.  You also get two of Ripken's three issues in this set:  his All-Star subset and regular base.

These team leaders cards also serve as team checklists.  Zahn, Ripken, and Sorensen make repeat appearances from above.  Sorensen's poor team-best ERA led me to look up the '83 Indians and they were...not good.

And now we continue with the player collection theme, this time with those that were also Tigers in this set:

Gibby, Whitaker, and Tram are here, naturally.  I don't know my All-Star history well so I looked up why Gibson and Trammell didn't make it in '83.  Kirk had a bit of a down year that season before a nice bounce-back in '84, and I realized that he never made it to the Midsummer Classic!  Trammell, though, put up a typical 6.0 bWAR Trammell season, but lost out to Ripken, who to my surprise wasn't the starter, and top vote getter at the position Robin Yount.  Whitaker was a reserve behind Cleveland's Manny Trillo.

So Sweet Lou appears on three cards as he joins Cal in the All-Star subset, gets a regular base card, and also appears on Detroit's team leaders card with 2018 HOFer Jack Morris.  And the other guy I haven't mentioned yet is Tiger/Wolverine Rick Leach on his last cardboard appearance with Detroit before heading off to Toronto.

These final three scans capture the rest of the Tigers team set:

I know at least a bit about all of these players except Martin and Krenchicki.  Detroit drafted Martin in '78, traded him to the Cards a couple years later, purchased him back in '83, then saw him play his final Major League games that same season.  Krenchicki was a former first-rounder chosen by the Orioles who bounced around and lasted a bit longer but never amounted to much.  Meanwhile Brookens, Petry, and Morris were key members of the '84 champs.

Bailey and Gumpert are the unknowns for me here, with the former out of the pros after '83 and the latter bowing out after '87.  Of course everyone remembers HOF manager Sparky Anderson, who made history by winning titles in both leagues after the success of the '84 squad.  Castillo was a solid utility guy while Herndon manned LF.  Of the pitchers, Abbott and Bair were swingmen that mostly pitched out the 'pen, and Rozema was pretty much the fifth starter.

From this group Wilson and Jones weren't with the team in '84; Wilson was flipped to Philly in the deal that brought key guys Dave Bergman and Guillermo Hernandez to Motown before the season, and Jones fizzled out after signing with KC before that season.  Wilcox was excellent that year, going 17-8 over his 33 starts.  Lemon put up another strong season in center and his career 55.6 bWAR makes me think he lived up to being selected in the first round way back in '72.  Parrish was one of Detroit's best behind the plate and socked 33 homers in his third of five straight All-Star appearances.  And Morris was in good company in '83 in joining fellow HOFer Steve Carlton by leading his league in strikeouts with 232 (the only time he did so in his career) as the only ALer to go over 200.

I hope you all enjoy my look at this fun set from very early in my life.  Soon(ish) I'll get to the next one, and it won't require us to jump ahead in time very much at all!