I actually did save up my contest cards though, and at some point towards the end of each summer, I could usually convince my parents to get a money order to send in for a sweet stack of 10 glossy cards. I actually think based on the number of cards in my collection, plus the fact that I probably split the cards my brother, I likely got a $4 dollar money order.
In retrospect as an adult, the fact that the money order probably cost $1 to buy, I am surprised my parents just didn't take me and my brother to the card shop to just buy the set of glossy send in cards.
Four to six weeks later in the mail, we would have a stack of the glossy send-in cards. They were really the same card design every year with a different colored border. Still pretty exciting for the time when there were not many choices of sets to collect in the baseball card world.
I have a few from 1983, but there are too many that are in too good of condition for them to be something that I actually got that year. Plus, that was the first year I collected. The first year where I actually have a somewhat significant amount of the glossy mail-ins cards is from 1984.
Again, same design every year.
I know that some of these cards that are in my collection have been with me since 1984. They have rounded corners, or for some reason, the fronts of the cards are different colors than the backs of the cards. A little weird considering my house was definitely smoke free.....
and I kept my cards in boxes and pages. You can see the edges of this Quisenberry cards are a little bit yellowed, as is the Carew card above, especially when compared to the back of the card. I'm actually guessing that I probably put these cards in sheets at some point. I recall having a notebook for my cards later elementary school years that were filled with the best cards in my collection.
In other words, my glossy mail-ins and Vince Coleman rookie cards.
Other copies of these cards in my collection have clean white borders and no rounded edges. Likely because I bought them as an older collector.
The Raines card above is not well centered, but is a much better card than the Quisenberry. There used to be a card shop in south St. Louis County off of Telegraph Road where I actually think I ended up with a lot of these cards. The guy who owned the store had a lot of sets like these and the cards usually ended up in dime and quarter boxes.
Surprisingly, I have large amounts of most of these sets, but none of them are complete. Of the sets that I have, I am actually missing a lot of the Cardinals out of the them. Maybe they were not in the dime and quarter boxes at that store, or some other reason that I cannot think of at the moment.
I am not going to post the checklists of all the Glossy Mail-In sets, but I will break down each of them and give a percentage that I am starting out at. Some are going to be easy to finish, perhaps a COMC order, others I am going to spend a little time digging around for the cards. I have a few road trips coming up in the next few months, plus there are a few card shows around here.
1983 - 31 out of 40 78%
1984 - 28 out of 40 70%
There are several 1984 cards that I will likely replace since my only copies were clearly from my actually collection in 1984. The seven year old me was not good with corners. Really lower than 70%
1985- 35 out of 40 88%
These are all pristine, not sure I actually ordered any as a kid in 1985. Maybe my brother ended up with all of them.
1986- 42 out of 60 70%
1987- 22 out of 60 37%
1988- 42 out of 60 70%
1989- 58 out of 60 97%
1990- 55 out of 60 92%
The percentages are all pretty high starting points, outside of the 1987 set, but I still need almost 100 cards, roughly, when taking into account all the different years that I am trying to assemble here. I am going to say that this is going to take until February. I will be shocked if I finish it sooner.
I am going to tack a few other set projects onto this before the end of the year.
I'd love to one day own all of these sets and have them displayed in a single binder.
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