80s Week: More 1 of 1s

Because it is my birthday, I am continuing the theme of the 1980s all week.  As someone born in the 80s I have put together a contest for everyone to write about your favorite player born in the 1980s.  It is a blog bat around that leads into another Save Second Base contest where you can win a pink card of Gary Sheffield and Barry Larkin (two former superstars that made their debut in the 1980s).

Here are some more of my favorites from the 80s.

Video Game:
RBI Baseball

This was a toss up for me. I had an original NES and the only games I ever played were sports games or Super Mario Brothers. I never got into much else. I enjoyed playing MegaMan but could never defeat the last level.  My other favorite games growing up were Base Wars, Baseball Stars 2, and Mutant League Hockey.

If you have never seen the YouTube video of Vin Scully announcing Game 6 of the 1986 World Series to RBI Baseball, you are in for a treat. It is amazing!

Favorite "retro drink"
Ecto Cooler

I lived off of juice boxes as a kid. My cousin and I would pound a 10 pack of these in just a few hours.  Ecto Cooler has been brought back a few times since it was originally changed by Hi-C, but that original package with Slimer from the Ghost Busters is still a classic.

Favorite toy

Yesterday I said Thundercats was my favorite cartoon despite not having many toys of them.  One toy line that I had a lot of was Transformers.  It's weird that I can distinctly remember asking for certain toys and where I was when I got them or wanted them. Oddly enough they all revolve around Transformers.

I remember bringing my Rodimus Prime with me to Vermont to visit my uncle at a bed and breakfast.

I remember asking my dad if I could get one of the new Decepticon jets (Dirge I believe) and him telling me "you don't play with the ones you have". I ripped off Starscream and Skywarp's wings and threw them on the ground. "They're broke" I told him.

My favorite though was Blaster, the cool talking Autobot radio that debuted in the full feature movie.  I got him as a Christmas present from my Grandmother and played with it all the time, putting him on my shoulder like I was carrying around a boombox.  I loved that toy!

I also loved the Seacons and built the entire Piranacon combiner.

My favorite toy leads into
My favorite movie then (and still to this day)

Ok. This movie was a game changer.
I remember my dad picking me up from day care on his motorcycle as he rode us to the theatre so quickly.  My dad still tells me how I would fall asleep sometimes as he would ride me around strapped in tightly on his Honda.  Once we got the food and popcorn I sat on his lap, or stood actually leaning forward watching so intently on every animated scene. I loved all the new characters that were introduced.  Blaster and Hot Rod were my favorites.  I cried when Optimus died and didn't want to watch it anymore. Then the movie introduced Wheelie and I was fixated once again.  Everything about this movie is pure gold.  The pacing, the animation, the voice actors, and the soundtrack.  To this day it is my favorite movie I have ever watched.

I mentioned a long time ago that the soundtrack is one of my 5 favorite albums ever produced.



Now for some 1980s inspired baseball cards.

These are ALL 1/1S!
Yup, each card you see below is a 1 of 1 and is a pack produced card that drew inspiration from 80s baseball cards.

Let's start with Archives

One thing I absolutely loved about the Archives brand being reinvented in 2012 was having printing plates of current players on older Topps designs.  A lot of people hate on printing plates, but when you get them all together, they are one of the hardest parallels to piece together.

As you can see I am at 75% on a pair of 1983 inspired printing plate sets.

The 1983 All-Star design is from 2013 Archives.

The 1983 base is from 2015 Archives.

I also have this Archives black border 1 of 1 from 2015 Archives.

Topps had their annual Transcendent Party in 2018 and as a result they had a few buyback cards that were released as 1 of 1 stamps at the party.

Again, with 1983?

Sheesh....I need some other years.

3 out of 4 ain't bad

A few days ago I showed a trio of 1/1 printing plates from the 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker insert.  While sorting through my 99 printing plates I realized I had a few other partial rainbows that I have never shown off before. 

I only have one true complete printing plate rainbow where I have all 4 plates used to create the card.  I also 4 sets where I have 3 of the plates. 

I showed the cloth sticker trio plates here.

And waaaaaay back when I showed another trio of Allen & Ginter plates when I was missing Mandy Moore "like candy" as part of my Save Second Base event.

Here are the other two sets I am trying to complete.
2016 Bowman Chrome missing black plate
2015 Topps League Leaders missing black plate

The Mystery of Dirty Dishes?

The past few days I have been organizing my card collection and it has been a daunting task.  While going through the collection I have found things about the cards I never noticed before.

Take these three printing plates for example.

At first glance they appear to be just three more 1 of 1 printing plates for the collection, but if you look closer you can tell that these plates didn't fully dry prior to being cut up and grouped together.

Now the back of magenta and black plates both show signs of a wet press of cyan ink.  The cyan plate clearly shows signs of a black plate with wet ink on it.

In addition to that there is a clear 001 that appears to the right of Andrew's face on the cyan plate.

I adjusted the color so it can be more visible.

The same numbering appears on the back of the magenta plate in stamped black ink when flipped upside down.

More mystery surrounds these plates when looking at the top right corner of the black plate where there is clearly a banner for First Base.

The black plate in general appears to have finger prints on it.

The magenta plate shows a lot of streaks on the front.

There appears to be some mystery surrounding how these plates were stacked after printing was complete to make the finalized 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker

As you can see from the image above, Cutch's face got the same treatment as that "other guy" on Frank Thomas' 1990 Topps card.  His face appears to have been airbrushed.