Great Hockey Photos AND Wise Advice? I'll Take It!

You know what I enjoy?

A good 1980s hockey police card set.

For one, they're rather plentiful.

They also provide excellent information on the card backs. Local police departments at the time would encourage kids to exercise, study hard in school, and develop self-esteem. They also warned us sternly about the dangers of hanging out with the wrong crowd, and of drugs and alcohol.

And a third reason? 

 

You'll find some surprisingly good photography. Check out this shot from the 1986-87 Washington Capitals Police set:

Now that's hockey action. 

Bob Carpenter is waiting for a shot to come in from the point. He'd love to try and redirect it with his stick blade or shaft and score a goal that way. But at very least, he's succeeded in making life difficult for Islanders goaltender Kelly Hrudey. Just look. Hrudey is trying his hardest to keep an eye on the play in front of him by crouching down and looking around Carpenter, while maintaining some sort of angle with the shooter. With all of that happening, the crowd behind the glass knows a scoring chance is coming. Just look at their focus!

Can you find this same kind of action in the 1986-87 Topps flagship hockey set? Fat chance!

And that's not all. Check out this next card:

 

 

 

I think more goal celebrations like this one should be featured on hockey cards. I love it because Lou Francheschetti and his teammates are not elated. They're not exuberant. They're just some blue collar players getting together after scoring a goal. 

 

Good job, guys.

 

And then it's back to work. 

 

The camera angle and proximity almost make you feel like you're celebrating right along with them. Fantastic.
 

 

Both of those cards are now in my collection, thanks to a small trade on TCDB. Here's the third card that was part of the trade.

 

 

 

Mike Gartner scored 708 career goals. He's a member of the Hall of Fame, and was selected as one of the NHL's 100 greatest players during the league's 100th anniversary in 2017-18. He was also one of the fastest skaters of his generation. Despite all this, I feel like he's underrated—or at least a little bit underappreciated. For all those reasons, I snatched up the card. I like how the image shows him in action, using that speed. 

 

Now here are the card backs, featuring some of that wise advice mentioned earlier.

 

 

Do police departments still have these kinds of programs today? If not, I think they should.

 

Regardless, I'm pretty happy to have these cards in my collection, and I think I might search around for examples from other teams to add.

 

With all that being said, however, I think it's only fair to mention that not every card in this police set is fantastic. The TCDB member I traded with was kind enough to add an extra card for me in the envelope. 

 

 

Who's there? Michal? Is that you? Tap your stick on the ice three times if that's you. 

(Taps stick on ice three times. Sound echoes through empty, dark hockey rink.)

 

Yep, that one's kind of a stinker. But think back to those flagship Topps and O-Pee-Chee sets of the era again. You'll find image after image of players standing around in warmups, or waiting for a face-off to start. So even with the few stinkers, you've still got to be impressed with police sets like these.

 

How about you readers and collectors? 

 

Do you have any police cards from a local team, be it hockey or another sport? Do any of the cards boast surprisingly good photography? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

Completed Set: 1989 Topps Baseball

Quick: Imagine the most generic baseball t-shirt you can.

It probably looks something like that one, right?

Well, I'll tell you something. It's exactly what the 1989 Topps design reminds me of. Just look at the bottom of this next card, for example.

It's so generic that Dallas Green appears to be wincing with disappointment.

And if you want to get the full thrust of it, here are the logos from the t-shirt and the card together, matched for color.

Same thing? 

Yeah. Pretty much.

And listen. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Baseball cards are about fun. And familiarity. And baseball. So if you were a baseball-playing kid back in 1989 and saw that the script team name on your Little League jersey looked very much like the script team names on the new Topps baseball cards that you were pulling from packs, you might have been psyched about it. After all, you can't have too much baseball in your life, right? So again, not a bad thing.

But for the 1989 version of Gregory Ninepockets, the design did seem a bit plain.

He had just started getting into the sport of ice hockey, and Topps hockey cards were much more interesting that year, with the pushpin design in the top corner and the Roy Lichtenstein–style dotted background underneath the player name.

So that didn't help young Gregory's opinion of 1989 Topps baseball cards.

You know what else didn't help?

The Upper Deck company.

They released their inaugural baseball card set that same year. And it was not plain.

I wonder how closely the new company kept everything under wraps back then. Just imagine the team at Topps finishing up production of their 1989 baseball set and feeling pretty good about it. Then imagine them seeing Upper Deck's set for the first time, with its foil pack wrappers, bright white card stock, hologram technology, and full-color images on the card backs.

I can picture a Topps exec opening his first Upper Deck pack that year, and reacting like this as he flipped through each card:

I know many of us kids back then reacted in a similar way when we saw Upper Deck cards for the first time.

In any case, let's look at some 1989 Topps cards, because that's really what we're here for today. And there's some goodness to be had.

Topps was always solid when it came to providing us with some classic batting stance photos.

Same for the pitching poses. The photographers made Goose look 10 feet tall. And Jim Gott looks rather heroic from that angle, don't you think?

Headshots abound in this set, which might seem boring. But oftentimes the players are very happy. I like that in a baseball card. To reiterate: Baseball is fun.

You know what else is fun?

Subsets!

And 1989 Topps gives us a few good ones.

The #1 Draft Pick cards were pretty cool for young collectors, and showed players in their college uniforms. (Or in the case of Steve Avery, high school!) Topps earns a little bit of credit there.

The rookie cup subset featured some big names at the time, too. (See how nice it is when the cup is always tucked in the bottom corner like that?)

The All-star design continued the generic script theme, but fancied things up a little bit.

The Team Leaders subset returned, and for the fourth year in a row, Topps went with the same cloud-like border. But that repetitiveness almost doesn't matter, because these cards tell the story of baseball so well. Bonus points to the Topps photographer who captured the "Bash Brothers" doing their thing on the Oakland A's card.

Topps also brought back some other favorite subsets, like Record Breakers and Turn Back the Clock. As for the checklist, it felt slightly more modern than standard.

Speaking of more modern, the Future Star cards received a new design. Sheffield, Jefferies, and Alomar were all highly sought after back then.

And on the subject of young stars, Topps did get some good rookies into the base set. In addition to Sheffield and Alomar up there, Biggio, Johnson, and Smoltz would all end up having Hall-of-Fame careers. 

The glaring omission, of course, was Ken Griffey Jr. Most of the other major brands did manage to get him into their base sets, so it was disappointing to young collectors that Topps missed the boat there. (The Topps Traded set was where you'd find Griffey Junior, along with other stars like Deion Sanders, Tom Gordon, and Omar Vizquel.)

But let's get back to the good stuff.

There are some nice action shots to be found throughout the base set.

And some cool cards featuring players with their choice of lumber.

Players with glasses were still a thing, too.

In addition, some excellent color matching occurs in this set. I think a binder page filled with 9 players from any of the teams above would look pretty sweet. (Other teams leave something to be desired. For example, the Angels have a magenta-purple-yellow thing going on, while the orange and blue Mets almost had something special until Topps gave them a red border for some reason.)

Anyway, let's look at a card back now.

The good stuff continues here. Not only is the black text fairly easy to read on that light pink background, but Topps added an interesting little table at the bottom of many cards. The "monthly scoreboard" section allowed us to go a little deeper into the stats of our favorite players, showing total home runs and RBI per month. For pitchers, the table displayed wins and strikeouts per month.

So that's 1989 Topps baseball. Fun, and some good qualities, but if I'm completely honest? A little bit underwhelming.

Regardless, I'm happy to have this set completed and checked off the list. 

How about you readers? If you were collecting back in 1989, how did you feel about the Topps baseball release? And how do you feel about it these days?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

More Adventures from a Time Gone By

A few months ago here on the blog, I shared four cards that I'd picked up from a 1956 set called Gum Inc. Adventure.

Combine the fantastic artwork on the fronts, the captivating stories on the backs, and the era in which the cards were released, and you get a set that I think quite a few of us would have been all over, had we been kids back then. (I know I would have!)

And actually, I'm kind of all over it now—so much so that I picked up a few more cards recently. So transport yourself back to 1956, and get a load of these five gems:

That's America right there, baby.

Just imagine a bald eagle (and its 7-foot wingspan) swooping down to land on your arm. That guy's leather glove had better be pretty thick and tough.

The write-up on the card back mentions how the bald eagle's territory and numbers had been in decline, and how it could only be found in Florida, and around the Great Lakes and the New England coast. I'm happy that things have noticeably improved for our national bird over the past decade or so. We've seen quite a bit of them here in New York.

The heading on the back of this card reads, "Mobile St. Bernards". Here are the details that appear underneath:

Negotiate 20-foot drifts, climb the steepest hills, slide and skid along impassable highways to effect rescue of many who find themselves snowbound in the north country—in the Rockies, the high Sierras, or New England’s wind-swept hills. Powered by mighty engines and propelled by cleated tracks, machines reduce blizzards to naught.

Now look at that image on the card front again—but this time do it as a kid in 1956 who's growing up in a warm climate like Southern California or Texas—and imagine you're plowing through a blizzard in that machine to rescue those folks in the background.

You're a hero.

 

I can't even describe the awesomeness shown on this card front, so I'll just share the entire card back.

 

A one-man flying platform could conceivably be the much desired airplane in every man's garage.

Imagine reading that as a wide-eyed kid in 1956? Outrageous!

If you've ever flipped through an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine from back in the day, this kind of stuff will feel familiar. If you haven't, I highly recommend finding a copy and giving it a read.

Here in 2026, some sort of committee would immediately flag about 35 safety violations evident in this illustration. And those two guys steering the bobsled would have immediately replied by saying, Outta the way, squares!

The card back mentions the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, and refers to its bobsled track, complete with S-shaped curves and walls of ice banked to heights of 20 feet, as "spectacularly dangerous". I like how the two men pictured on the card front look more like everyday guys out to test their mettle than they do professional bobsled racers.

And finally, the scene on this card has everything fantastical to a kid who would have been growing up far from the ranches of the American West, tuning in to programs like The Roy Rogers Show and The Lone Ranger. 

Here's the card back:

Man, if I were a kid in 1956 I would have been all over this story, imagining myself on a ranch with some horse-breaking do to. Taming a horse seems like such a cool, noteworthy thing to accomplish. They're amazing creatures.

 

 

Anyhow, there you have it. Another five Gum Inc. Adventure cards for my collection.

 

There are other interesting and artful cards in this set as well, including a hockey version and some boxing stars. So at some point I might add a few more to the collection. Thankfully, many of them are fairly affordable, especially if you don't mind off-center cuts or a few little dings and creases. (None of the cards you see above cost more than $7.00, for example.) 

 

Ultimately, these Gum Inc. Adventure cards are the kind that energize my collecting batteries these days. 

 

How about you readers and collectors? Have any of you picked up some interesting or obscure vintage cards lately? Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!

The 1989-90 OPC Hockey Sticker Album Project: Packs 7–12

We're going back to the 1989-90 NHL season, where young Gregory Ninepockets has been bitten by the hockey bug and is attempting to complete the current year's hockey sticker album. Previous entries in this series available here.

It's Sunday morning, and young Gregory has woken up early. Will he go into the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cereal?

No.

Will he go into the living room, turn on the TV, and look for some cartoons?

No.

He's going straight over to his desk, where the 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee hockey album sits. The box of sticker packs is in the top-right drawer, and when he opens it up, he grabs 6 packs from the top-right segment of the box.

 

It's very quiet in the house, but young Gregory knows that wax packs aren't very loud if you open them carefully. So he gets right to work.

 

Pack 7

 

Sweet! A Brett Hull sticker, a Mario Lemieux Art Ross sticker, and a Mario Lemieux all-star! 

What did Super Mario do in order to win the Art Ross trophy the previous season? Are you ready for these numbers? 85 goals, 114 assists, 199 points. A remarkable 31 of those goals came on the power play, and another 13 came shorthanded. The total of 85 led the league, and the 114 assists tied for the lead with Wayne Gretzky. In his final game of the season, Lemieux scored 2 goals against the Flyers in a 6-5 overtime win. You'd have to imagine his teammates tried their hardest to get him to the 200-point mark. It's too bad they came up one point short!

As for Brett Hull, while young Gregory was finding sticker #22 above, The Golden Brett was starting to come into his own. He'd lead the entire league in goals with 72, which would be 10 more than his nearest competitor, Steve Yzerman.

  

 

Pack 8

 

Yes! A Wayne Gretzky base card! During the season these stickers were released, Mr. Gretzky (40 G, 102 A, 142 PTS) would reclaim the points leader position from Mr. Lemieux (45 G, 78 A, 123 PTS). And if these sticker hits keep coming, young Gregory might wake up the rest of the family. And the dog.

 

 

 

Pack 9

 

Alright! A Patrick Roy all-star sticker back, and a Chris Chelios all-star subset sticker! The Canadiens were popular at this time, and they had a very good team. Patrick Roy was a sensation in goal.

 

 

 

Pack 10

 

No way! It's Patrick Roy's base sticker! Hockey is awesome! The dog is now awake, and sniffing outside of Gregory's door.

 

 

 

Pack 11

 

There was nothing of much interest in this pack, and young Gregory is totally fine with that. He's found enough superstar stickers already this morning. He does notice that some of the stickers have trivia printed on the back, however. Some of the backs contain questions, while other backs contain the answers. It's just more hockey knowledge for Gregory to soak up. 

 

 

Pack 12

 

A Joe Sakic rookie base sticker? This is just too much, already. As for Guy Lafleur over there on the right, he came out of retirement for the 1988-89 season. Did three years away from the NHL slow his production down? Not much. He totaled 18 goals, 27 assists, and 45 points in 67 games played for the Rangers.

What a great run of 6 packs! 

 

 

Favorite Page

 

  

Young Gregory added the Wayne Gretzky base sticker to the Kings page, and the Wayne Gretzky all-star sticker to the all-star page across from it. Hard to beat that! 

Now here's the updated summary for the set build:

Main Set (182 total panels)

 

New panels: 33

New duplicates: 3

 

Total panels: 69

Total duplicates: 3

 

Panels needed: 113

Set completion: 38%

 

 

Future Star/All-Star Card Backs (34 total)

 

New backs: 4

New duplicates: 0

 

Total backs: 13

Total duplicates: 0

 

Backs needed: 21

Set completion: 38%

So far, the quest to complete this set is going rather well. I'm 38% of the way there—both for the main set and the sticker back set—and I've only opened 25% of the total packs. As I continue to fill the album, I'm sure the law of diminishing returns will make its appearance. But so far it seems like O-Pee-Chee did really well with the collation of their packs in 1989-90. A total of only 3 duplicate sticker panels across 12 whole packs is excellent!

Best Stickers

Wayne Gretzky, Joe Sakic, and Patrick Roy base stickers; Patrick Roy all-star sticker back; Mario Lemieux all-star sticker.

 

Which were your favorite stickers this time? Share in the comment section, and thanks for following along! 

These Binders Were Too Cool for School

Back in the 1980s, there was a particular type of binder that schoolkids everywhere wanted. I mean, really wanted.

The Trapper Keeper.

In fact, if you were to create a list of the most popular items of the decade, the Trapper Keeper might find itself pretty high up there, alongside items like Swatch watches, Bubble Tape, Transformers, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Walkman.

Now, the particular Keeper you see above is not an original. It's a reproduction. Around the year 2021, the Mead company decided to release some new designs inspired by the originals. As of this writing, it seems like they're still at it. 

The 1980s rule!

I won that Trapper Keeper in a contest a few years ago. And for a while after that, it just sat around with nothing inside. But recently the muses fell upon me:

Why not fill the Trapper Keeper with cards from the era?

It's only fitting, right?

I gave it a little more thought, and narrowed down the options. A complete set of 1980s sports cards wouldn't work, because the rings of a Trapper Keeper have a very small diameter. They just wouldn't be able to hold so many 9-pocket pages.

And actually, sports trading cards in general didn't seem like a very novel idea, because I had so many of those in binders anyway.

But what about non-sport cards?

Yeah, that put me on the right track. The 1980s boasted quite a lot of iconic non-sport and oddball sets, along with some multi-sport sets and food-issue sets. And I already had a bunch of examples in my collection, just sitting in boxes, in the closet, in the dark. How much better would it be to keep them in pages—in this binder—so I could rip open that trademark Velcro flap and enjoy them every once in a while?

So, I started looking through my collection on TCDB. Soon enough, I found some excellent candidates for the binder. Want to see the results so far?

Let's roll.

 

 

  

I'm going to start off by sharing a reproduction of one of those classic Trapper Keeper–branded folders. So far, the only thing I have slotted into this one is my Project P.R.I.D.E. police workbook from 6th grade. (Complete with "hockey guy" illustrations by young Gregory Ninepockets.) 

I'm wondering if I have any other schoolwork saved somewhere in a box in the attic. If I do, that's the sort of thing that I'd also slot into this folder.

Next up, we have the cards. And there was no doubt about which ones I'd display in the first few pages.

I'm not sure if there's a brand of non-sport trading cards more synonymous with the 1980s than Garbage Pail Kids. I've got such good memories of opening packs with my sister and my mom, and laughing at all the zany—if not mildly rude—illustrations and names. You just never knew what you'd uncover in those packs. 

All the cards in my collection are from Series 2 (1985) through Series 7 (1987), and I enjoy them so much that I've got six full pages in the Trapper Keeper. All the card brands that follow are limited to one page each.

How many of you '80s kids were psyched when Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine debuted in 1989? I'm pretty sure I had a subscription for part of that first year, and I remember wondering with excitement about which athletes would be featured on the perforated 9-card insert that was placed inside each issue. 

Unfortunately, none of the cards you see on the page above are originals from my childhood collection. On the positive side, this has allowed me to select the cards that you do see above based on personal nostalgia. For example, I remember Carl Lewis being one of America's darlings during the 1988 Summer Olympics. And if you were into skateboarding back then, Mike McGill was a hot name, right alongside guys like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Christian Hosoi. (Note: I kind of cheated a little bit with that Boris Becker card in the bottom right corner. It's from the 1990 set, so it's technically not an '80s card.)

 

The first five stickers on this page are from the 1983 Topps Video City set, and feature classic arcade games of the era like Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and Frogger. The last four are from the 1980 Fleer Pac-Man set. Even though my young collecting days wouldn't start until a few years after the Pac-Man wax packs were available for sale in stores, I do remember having some of them in my collection. I don't know how. Maybe I got them from an older kid in the neighborhood. Regardless, it's a good indication of how wildly popular the arcade game was back then.

 

I didn't have any of these 1985 Hasbro Transformers cards when I was a kid. In fact, I didn't even know they existed back then. But a few years ago, I discovered them and added a handful to my collection. I'm not sure an '80s binder would be complete without a page of these. As for the little guy in the bottom right pocket? That's an example of a sticker that was issued one per hanger pack.

 

These 1987-88 New York Islanders Police cards certainly don't fall into the non-sport category, but they were the cards that came along with that Project P.R.I.D.E. police workbook I mentioned earlier. I was a young kid who was just getting into the sport of hockey back then, so these cards bring back enough fun memories to grant them a spot in the Trapper Keeper.

And what would an '80s binder be without some wrestling cards? I mean, sheesh, that era had so many larger-than-life characters. Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Jake the Snake Roberts, Jimmy Superfly Snooka, King Kong Bundy, The Honky Tonk Man, Ric Flair. The list goes on and on. The first few cards you see on the page are from the 1987 Topps WWF set. The bottom three are from 1989 and 1990 Classic WWF. And that Ric Flair card? 1988 Wonderama NWA. Woooo!

I know, I know. This is not a 1980s set. But I had to include these 1977 Topps Three's Company cards and stickers in the binder anyway. I have some pretty special memories of sitting on the living room floor, watching reruns of this show with my mom and sister back in the mid-80s. John Ritter was so brilliant with his physical comedy. 

How popular was the mascot featured on the first three cards of this page? Well, Donruss decided to include him in their flagship set for three years running! The San Diego Chicken was (and still is) baseball mascot royalty.

Speaking of royalty, the next three cards feature some guys who briefly fit that description in the late-80s. They're from the 1988 Zoot The California Raisins World Tour set. If you like dad jokes and corny puns, this set is for you.

As for the three 1990 Confex Fun Stuff and Nasty Tricks cards on the bottom row, I know they're not from the 1980s, but they FEEL like they are. If I did have some of these cards in my collection back then, they would have definitely been in the Trapper Keeper. Young Gregory appreciated that brand of humor. 

 

 

  

 

Years ago on the blog, I mentioned how some of the light cycle cards from this 1982 Donruss Tron set are more like little pieces of futurist art. I still feel that way, and I think the original film maintains enough cachet to earn some representation in this '80s binder.

 

 

Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out were all made legendary by the Nintendo Entertainment System, so these cards from the 1989 Topps Nintendo set were absolute must-haves for the binder. I can still hear the soundtracks to all three of these games in my mind, and it's not just because I spent quite a number of hours playing the video games. The music itself holds more than enough merit. I mean, various professional orchestras have covered the soundtracks to Mario Brothers and Zelda over the years. That should tell you everything you need to know.

Speaking of memorable music, can you hear the theme song from this franchise? The 1989 Topps Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cards you see on this 9-pocket page are taken from a set that's fun, action packed, and actually tells a story as you progress through it. I was a touch too old to be consumed by Turtle-mania when this set of cards was released. My stepbrother, on the other hand, was a few years younger than me, and he had some of the action figures and was really into it. Apparently, so was my dad. It's all given me a solid appreciation for how Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo captivated so many people at the time.

 

And that's my 1980s binder so far. There's still room for a few more pages, and there are plenty of other iconic 1980s sets out there, so we'll see where I go next. 

Until then, I've got a couple of questions for you readers and collectors:

(1) If you were to put together a Trapper Keeper full of non-sport cards from the era, which sets would you include?

(2) If you went to school during the '80s, did you have a Trapper Keeper? If so, what design did you have? (I had the one with the red Lamborghini on the front.)

Let me know in the comment section. I'm looking forward to your answers!