A Birthday Card for Lou Gehrig...from Woolworth
A Cadillac boxed set driving among all the Pintos
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1985 Woolworth Lou Gehrig (#14) - Card of the Day
Back it the 1980s and even the early 1990s, everybody and their brother was issuing baseball cards. If you ran a (pick one) five-and-dime store/auction house/discount chicken dentistry shop/after prom committee/hedge fund, chances are you had your fingers in the hobby pie.
And, very often, your pie was shaped like a rectangular block, made of cardboard, and wrapped in more cardboard, with flaps. Yes, this was the era of the boxed set.
Of course, most of these were done in partnership with Topps or Fleer or some other licensed (or bootlegging) outfit. I mean, the chances that Abdul’s Aquamarine was actually going to fire up a printing press in the backroom to churn out that 33-card set of Baseball’s Biggest Fish and Hottest Catches were slim, none, and “how much are you actually willing to pay?”.
Collectors never took these cards too seriously back in those days, or on any particular day since, but they were and still are fun. And if you were building a player collection, the boxed sets were a great way to boost your checklist count without breaking the bank.
Some of these sets even introduced us then-whippersnappers to the names of bygone eras, and that was certainly the case with the 1985 Woolworth set. This 44-card issue focused on “All-Time Record Holders” and featured players like Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, and Willie Mays, along with lesser-knowns like Hub Leonard, Cliff Johnson(!), and Jim Gentile.
And, of course, Lou Gehrig, our man of the hour — who was born on this date in 1903.
Also of course, Gehrig needed no introduction, not even to us kids who were still new to the hobby and the game. But it was still pretty cool to get a new card of a stone-cold legend who had taken on mythical status.
As for the cards themselves, Topps actually produced these babies, and they were pretty nice as these go — thick white cardstock, clean backs, glossy fronts, good photos (though constrained by what was available).
Topps must have liked the cards, too, because their 1987 Boardwalk & Baseball All-Time Record Holders set is pretty much a carbon copy.
Today, the original Woolworths are a little tougher, and a little more expensive than most of their boxed-set brethren. Expect to pay $10-20, sometimes more, for a full set. And there’s actually a market for graded versions of many singles, which feels a bit like serving a slab of Topps bubble gum on a silver platter.
Then again, that gum is hobby royalty, so maybe that wouldn’t be so far-fetched. And among boxed sets, 1985 Woolworth is at least upper-level administration.
A Question for YOU (again)
Yesterday’s attempt at a poll just sat there like Ernie Lombardi on base, refusing to actually move or do anything. So let’s try again…
In the course of researching and writing this newsletter, I often come across fascinating (to me, at least) pieces of baseball history that I didn’t know about.
Like how Lou Gehrig and Dave Van Gorder debuted on the same day (OK, give or take 59 years).
Or how Joe Morgan’s last game took out a few other hobby regulars — if not exactly stars — of the 1980s.
Or how Lou Brock…well, you can read more about that one below.
Anyway, some of these tidbits end up in posts, but most of them either just wink at me on my way to wherever I’m going or end up on the cutting room floor.
So my question is, would you be interested in reading one or a series of short ebooks, each focused on a particular (maybe obscure) topic from baseball history? You know, along the lines of what I described above?
If I went down this road, the current format of this newsletter would remain the same, but I’d make the ebooks available as part of a paid subscription and/or through platforms like Kindle, Kobo, etc.
Let me know what you think!
Now, back to our regularly scheduled babble…
1976 Topps Ty Cobb Was a Shocking Discovery
By 1985, Topps was an old hat at bringing the old-school into their sets. A great example was the Sporting News All-Time All-Stars subset they included in their 1976 base set.
Gehrig was part of that one, as were several other, uh, all-time All-Stars:
Lou Gehrig
Roger Hornsby
Babe Ruth
Ty Cobb
I gave that Cobb card the full Wax Pack Gods treatment once upon a time. You can read that piece right here.
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Which throwback cards are your favorite? There are plenty of modern takes on old cards these days, and then there are the types of issues like the ones above.
I’d love to hear about your faves!
Thanks for reading.
—Adam
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