1981 Donruss Baseball

1981 Donruss: the set made on what has to be the thin card stock ever created by man. It's the card you can see shadows through holding it up to a 100 watt bulb. I'm not kidding. Go grab some out of your collection and give it a try.

When I bought this pack, it was the first one from a 'fresh' box and the card shop owner made no promises that it hadn't been searched. I thought to myself, based on Donruss' collation back in the day, there really wasn't anyway I would be able to know if it had been searched or not unless I got something.

Turns out, I would say it hadn't been searched:

The Highlights:

#218 Fred Lynn


#146 Ferguson Jenkins


#340 Frank White


This is the rare gum relic:

#230 Jeff CoxThe commons:

#147 Danny Darwin
#159 Glenn Borgman
#183 Mike LaCoss
#207 Sixto Lezcano
Checklist #361-480
#195 Randy Moffitt
#219 Chris Chambliss
#122 Randy Jones
#134 Jim Bibby


#51 Tom Donohue
#170 Fred Patek
#158 Jim Morrison
#194 Bob Knepper
#206 Reggie Cleveland

1981 Donruss Baseball

Here's the pack. I bought it for $2.50 while driving through Taylorsville, Utah. I also picked up a pack of 1981 Fleer, which I'll post about in a few days.
The first card I saw as I opened the pack was Andre Dawson (#212). The next one was #202 Rick Manning

#192 Earrell Evans, #182 Johnny Bench (a second card, not his main card)

#172 Alfredo Martinez, #162 Thad Bosley

#152 Rick Bosetti, #142 Larry Bowa (see a pattern yet?)

#1 Ozzie Smith, #231 Luis Tiant

#221 John Wathan, #211 Bill Lee

#201 Rick Waits, #191 Tony Scott

#181 Dave Concepcion, #171 Frank Tanana

#161 Rich Wortham, #? (I guess 151) Paul Mirabella

Here's the reason I had to guess at Mirabella's card number:

The gum was stuck to the card.

If I would have opened this pack as a kid, I would have been happy. Two Big Red Machine guys (Bench and Concepcion), a Phillie (Bowa), and a Giant (Evans). Those were the three teams I rooted for the most during that time. Dawson would also have been a good card to get. I knew Ozzie Smith was a great fielder, but I had no idea he was on his way to a Hall of Fame career at this point. Tanana and Tiant also would have been good cards to get. So not a bad pack. :)

This set suffered from miscuts, color problems, and blurry pictures, but it was a nice debut by Donruss.