1981 Topps Baseball Scratch-Offs.

In the 80's Topps was experiementing with different concepts and card sizes.  Probably to keep ahead of the new upstarts Fleer and Donruss.

Anyways here is a product, pre video games now, that was all about ruining the card.  Packs came with 18 cards. 9 National League and 9 American League, I'm assuming 6 panels total and a stick of gum.  You were suppose to separte the cards and put together a 9 person team and your opponent does the same.  Put them in order there is a little box on the back from batting line up.  Scratch off one circle per player until you get 3 outs.  The middle card has a scoreboard on it too.  Cards measure 5 1/4 inches x 3 1/4.  There were 108 different players depicted, but 144 player card combinations.

Mr. Yount has 4 different combos.

Robin s always the top panel on all the variations.  A complete set of panels is 144.  It's a neat oddball collectiable that is still really cheap.   I picked up a whole set of these for under 5 bucks a few years ago.  What's amazing is the price variations on ebay.  You can buy a pack for a buck, and some lots have 10 packs for 10 bucks, or a wrapper for 7 bucks??  mmmm someone needs to do some homework.  According to the Standard Catalog of Baseball cards  a complete set 108 cards is about 10 bucks with a wax  box going for 15.  The most valuable card is the Pete Rose worth about 2 bucks.  Panels are worth more than individual cards and of course nonscratched.  There are a lot of nice stars and semistars to be found in this cheap set and it's easy to find individual and panels unscratched all over ebay.  So if you collect a player who was playing in 81 there is a good chance he's in here.

Until next time.