Duo-Tang Topps Sports Shots Binders/Portfolios

I know what you're probably thinking... "What a horribly off-center 1989 Topps Strawberry you have there, Tribecards!" Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. You see, what you have here is a scan of a Duo-Tang Binder/Portfolio (like they sell to kids at Wal-Mart at the beginning of school to keep papers in). And the photo above is the best fit I could get the thing to stay on my scanner. To see how this ginormous 'card' compares to a standard-sized card, take a look at the next scan:


If you look very closely, you will see a standard-seized baseball card in the upper left corner. See it way up there, looking like some kind of "Fan Favorites Mini" card? Yeah, these binders are BIG, though flat with pockets in them.


Duo-Tang and Topps teamed up before with a 1988 set as well, as seen above. The binders/Portfolios measure 9-1/2" by 11-3/4" and are cardboard.


The 1988 set featured 130 players total. Some of them include Joe Carter, Robin Yount, Nolan Ryan, Tony Gwynn, Carlton Fisk, etc.


In addition to Molitor and Strawberry, the 1989 set featured players such as Doc Gooden, Mark McGwire, Ozzie Smith, George Brett, etc. The set was greatly reduced from 130 players down to 39 that year.

If there is great interest, I can post the checklists for each year, but you can find singles and 'sets' on eBay. Most of the sets you find for sale are actually compilations that someone else has assembled. The originals were sold in 50-piece boxes for retail stores to sell for $1 each. I don't even remember how I ended up with the ones I have... They will eventually be given away during one of my free-for-alls.

1988 Leaf Awesome All-Star Stickers

There's a recently-revealed blog called, "A Pack to be Named Later" upon which I am a contributing member. I bought four of these packs to post over there, and each pack will be displayed on a random date in the future. In the meantime, I thought it was an appropriate set for inclusion on this blog! After all, we're talking VERY weird cards and baseball. It's a match made in... Well, let's just get to the set, shall we?

The first thing we see when we open a pack is the gum:

I can honestly say I have no desire whatsoever to put this 21-year old gum anywhere near my mouth. The powder is still very fine and very messy. I'm sure I'll be cleaning my scanner for weeks to come.

There are 99 cards in the set, and in one of the packs I opened, I pulled the checklist - yay me! So, for those of you keeping score at home, here are the cards you'll need to complete your very own set of stickers:



The cards themselves feature various characters sporting relevant (or opposite of what one might think) names. Also, Leaf writers evidently had a hard time coming up with names to go with certain alliterations, as seen in the two cards here:


Larry Line Drive and Long Arm Larry... I guess they couldn't have very well used "Luke," now could they?

They also had no "Political Correctness" back in the late 80's, either:

You couldn't get away with a character named "Contra" nowadays, I don't think.

And in honor of Carl Crawford's recent accomplishment, I thought I would include his predecessor:


The backs of most of the cards include little write-ups about the player on the front. But, some cards have puzzle pieces on them:

Collect all the pieces and have yourself a big-ol' time completing the puzzle.

As I said, at least it's RELATED to baseball, right?