March is dead again, you guys. Oh sure, it will come back to life, but today is a day to celebrate!
I often celebrate my least favorite month’s demise with some sort of card order. A COMC or sportlots arrival or something like it. In fact I am welcoming various cards from a sportlots order right now, but they’re not all here yet.
I can, however, take one of the cards that showed up and celebrate the completion of set — because on the very day March took its last breath, I completed 1983 Donruss.
This Ron Jackson card was the last one I needed to finish the set. Jackson comes in three varieties. There’s another one with a green border (which all of his Angels teammates have) and another one that reads “A’s” in the glove instead of “Angels”. I’d like the green border one someday but that’s not important right now. What’s important is THE SET IS COMPLETE!
Finishing the 1983 Donruss set was key because it’s one of the last main sets from my first collecting stage (1975-85) that I had not finished. The other one is 1985 Donruss and I’m currently working on wrapping that up, too.
As usual in the final stages of finishing a large set, I was in a full-on battle with gremlins. All of them this time involved Dodgers, which often happens as I forget to account for a second Dodger card apart from the ones that are in my team binders. Usually I take care of this by going to the big box of Dodger dupes and finding a card to fill the empty slot. But extra ’83 Donruss Dodgers were in short supply.
So I had to track down a few of those — Ken Landreaux, Jorge Orta, etc. — and Rick Monday was the final one to show up. And now all the slots are finished.
It took me a long time to come around on 1983 Donruss. There are early blog posts in which I recall my dismissive attitude toward the set. I collected in 1982 and ’83 Donruss is very similar to ’82 Donruss. I thought it was a lazy effort on Donruss’ part, merely swapping the ball out for a glove and rounding the colored borders. I bought like 3 packs of Donruss in 1983, which was far less than what I bought of Donruss in 1981 and 1982.
Just a random page example.
The photos in 1983 Donruss don’t exactly stand out, but it’s a nice blend of action and portrait. Many of the portraits are VERYCLOSE, which looks natural in sets from the 1950 through the 1980s. It looks weird with current players for whatever reason.
But that’s about all there is. Outside of the Diamond Kings at the front of the set there aren’t many extras. There’s The Chicken, of course, and some unnumbered checklists.
These two cards emerge out of nowhere from the back of the set like they’re 1969 Topps (I think the MVPs card needs an upgrade if I actually want to purchase a Giants card). But other than what I just mentioned everything else is single-player cards.
I kind of admire that. No league leaders, no record breakers, no postseason cards. Donruss even scrapped the 1981 trick of repeating players in 1982. It’s just 600-plus cards of players and some managers.
The set doesn’t hold the same memories and nostalgia as sets from earlier in the decade or from the ’70s. That would require faithful pack purchasing throughout the baseball season. It’s another reason why this is getting done 43 years after the fact.
There are a few other variations in the set but unless it’s a border difference I’m not interested and won’t chase it. This pursuit is finished for me and a set is complete that at age 17 I never thought would be necessary.
Happy End Of March!